What to do--Have 70s 80s Vintage Instrumentation & Circuitry

[Palladium]

Interesting read Chris. Along the same lines of what you are talking about i was reading an interesting article the other day about silver whiskers.

 

[Metalgold]

The traces are not silver. They look like lead/tin solder plate to me. In 47 years, I have never seen silver plated traces on circuit boards. I'm not saying silver traces don't exist but, if they do, they are extremely rare. Silver isn't used since it has about the greatest tendency to migrate between the traces, onto the board material, and cause partial shorts. Here's an excellent article on electromigration.
http://www.te.com/documentation/whitepapers/pdf/p313-89.pdf

Other than the fingers and the black (and blue) plastic DIP (or ceramic) IC's, I see little or no PM's on those boards that are pictured.

Great info thanks!

 

[johnny309]

The traceses are 100% lead and tin solder(30/70 on basis) ....rare boards from early 70's to have Pd platting,but they used this for connections(like linear switch made on PCB .......many resisistor along the module)