goldsilverpro said:
For electronic components, Lino's suggestions would likely work. For these, the fluxing mix (except for the amount of sugar or flour) is very forgiving. Ores are a different story. I doubt if Lino appreciated your rude rebuke of his suggestions. I know I didn't.
Hey Chris,
My concern with the use of elemental lead vs the lead oxide is largely the mixing. In this case, I'd be mixing a powder (ashed chip) with a solid metal. I was under the understanding (very likely wrong) that with powders or microscopic metal fractions it is extremely important to have intimate contact with the collector. It may just be the way I'm understanding it, but with elemental lead, you'll have a metal with a very high surface tension, and a flux that will be a separate entity, with some surface mixing. Whereas with a powdered litharge, everything will be near the same size, and the reduction of lead oxide is just icing on the cake for the collection, with no worries that anything is going to stay in the flux.
I guess I see it as the ball pit at chucky cheese, as strange of a metaphor as it may be.
Even distribution of different colored same size balls happens readily. Spray all the balls with a bleach solution, and you can imagine it being pretty evenly distributed as well.
Whereas, make ONE of those balls large (the lead) and the rest still different colors, it's going to be much more difficult to get an even distribution of the bleach. You'll have much more bleach on all of the small balls because of their low surface area, and it's going to be more difficult get get everything together.
Meaning I'm having trouble seeing all of the miniature prills come in to contact with each other, as well as the bulk of the lead collector, to evenly mix, even in the presence of a fluid melted flux.
Whereas with karat scrap, or even electronic pins, it seems like it's much less of an issue to just wrap it in a lead boat and melt it all together. You've got big balls mixed with big balls coated with bleach....all evenly distributed.