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In my (limited) exposure of products failing in the field due to whiskers, the mitigations included coating the entire board in some kind of film, and changing layout to make the board less vulnerable in the first place. Probably designers just got good enough at that to the point where it doesn't matter

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Conformal coating is not related to whiskers, it's to prevent condensation damage in certain applications. Used where it is called for regardless of solder type.

Some of the linked articles in this comment section claim that conformal coatings mitigate whisker shorting because the whiskers can't pierce the coating.

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