Liberty Intercept Blog

In conversation with a young union pipe fitter (Local 537) at the local pub, he shared how they prepare metal surfaces for welding, soldering, joining, and where the stress points are. Our man emphasized that with any pipe system, it is the joints or the connections that are the most susceptible to failure. It occurred to me that is the case with most products, simply, the weakest link is where materials meet.

     For instance with electronics, the problem may be with bad solder joints where they may crack or lift off and similar with our pipe fitting discussion, the key is having clean, non-corroded surfaces to solder or weld to.

     “In electronics, copper and silver-based connectors and printed wiring boards are subject to corrosion, as are all silver containing surfaces. Reduced corrosion will decrease the number of connector-related circuit failures and enhance solder-ability.” - John Franey, Bell Labs Distinguished Member in Reliability Physics Group, Retired.

    Joints and/or connections may also have the meeting of dissimilar metals. Resistors, capacitors, inductors, integrated circuits, the printed circuit boards themselves and other components span a wide range of materials. When two different metals come into contact within an electrolyte they create a circuit. Ions begin to move and react with metals, creating oxides and  metal salts, i.e. corrosion. This process is called galvanic corrosion.

    Galvanic corrosion has required long pipeline management and large ships to have expensive impressed current systems installed to counter-act the galvanic corrosion circuit. This same circuit type corrosion is also thought to be the essential action of other types of corrosion, like pore, pitting, filiform, crevice and to some degree stress corrosion cracking.

    We offer a strategy for protecting the metal surfaces and connections. Intercept packaging protection keeps all metals clean and safe. Static Intercept can inhibit galvanic corrosion as well as the other forms of corrosion. The Intercept packaging strategy will provide lower overall product costs for parts and equipment by improving reliability, extending product shelf life, and reducing product failures.