It should be easy peasy to solder to gold plating using any standard electronics soft solder. It is common to specify an electroless nickel immersion gold finish on PCBs prior to automated assembly.

No special fluxes are needed, so I’d question the solder being used. Or, possibly, the iron?

Julie

Actually it confirms Julies claim. The high solubility of gold in tin should make it easy to wet. That it can lead to long term failures is another (but still relevant) issue.

One possible explanation could be that the solder strips off all the gold, exposing a less compatible metal underneath?

This is a well known problem in electronic engineering circles though having been off the coal face for a couple of decades I’m a little hazy on the details. Although it seems to solder easily especially with older solder at the interface a gold/tin eutectic forms which is brittle. The compound grows over time by diffusion of the gold into the solder so can take a while to fail.
Our technique on gold plated copper was to apply solder (“tinning”) then wick off the solder which had absorbed the gold. Repeat 2 or 3 times which was found to be enough. When possible the gold was nickel plated as a barrier.

Stephen

A flash of gold plate is a very good way of keeping [say] a solder pad on a PCB free from corrosion … The devil in your case comes in the detail, as evidenced by the discussion.

I mentioned embrittlement [which can develop with ageing] because it could be significant in your ‘dynamic’ situation.

I fear that “only time will tell” … but at least you are now aware of the possibility.

MichaelG.

Something over 50 years ago I was an electronic engineering apprentice at Marconi in Chelmsford and spent a bit of time in the wiring shop training centre. This was in the days when the discrete components – resistors, etc – that I used for building amateur radio kit at home often needed a quick pass with fine sandpaper to clean off corrosion before soldering. Semiconductors sometimes came with gold-plated leads which always soldered very easily. At Marconi, we were taught that the joint was potentially unreliable (as mentioned already) and given that they built avionics and “stuff” that went in the sharp end of missiles, that was unacceptable. So we had two small pots of liquid solder in front of us, electrically heated. You dipped the leads in pot 1, then pot 2, to remove all gold but leaving the leads tinned and ready for soldering. From time to time, someone came along and took pot 1 away for gold recovery. Pot 2 was promoted to pot 1 and you were given a new pot 2.

Never worried about it at home and never had a problem soldering to gold-plated leads.

Gold plated connectors are common for the RC market to get the best from your batteries and RC gear, can’t get much more dynamic than high performance RC cars, planes, boats, helis etc.