Measure & Control Stress in Acid Tin Plating

A. Hello Sreehari, there are standards for compressive stress in tin plating, but you would have to have the equipment to measure for it. For Mil Spec applications a plated "foil" is normally submitted to a reputable lab that has the equipment to check for it. As you know, whisker growth is the sign of undesirable stress in the deposit. The whiskers can appear right away or in weeks, months or years in storage. If you are using a organic additive keep tight control of the addition rate. Your Tin supplier may offer compressive stress testing. The bend test is probably the most common way of monitoring. You could also perform your own storage test with samples dated. Good luck!