wrote in message
oups.com...
Thanks for the detail on lead-free solder.
Can you elaborate on the different types of fluxes.
No clean, water soluble and standard rosin.
Thanks


Again, it depends on what you are intending doing. My main line of work
involves repairs to existing equipment. For this I use both leaded and
lead-free solders of the multicore varieties - that is bog standard
off-the-shelf wire solder, with multiple built in cores of flux, that are
predominantly rosin. These tend to leave the customary brown residue behind
them, which is claimed by the manufacturers to not require cleaning off.
However, I always do just to make the job look tidier. Many many years ago,
my apprentice mentor told me that the only way you should be able to tell if
a component has been replaced, is if the soldering is *better* than the
manufacturer's original. For this reason, and this reason only, I always
clean the board after doing any soldering work on it. For this, I use a a
product called De-Flux 160 from Servisol.

I do build the occasional one off piece of equipment, sometimes for a
customer, sometimes for myself, and I just use the same solder for the job.
I have been doing this for 40 odd years now since I was a kid, and have
never had a problem. So if you are just going to be repairing, with the
occasional new build job, don't worry too much about fluxes. Any pre-fluxed
solder wire that is sold as being suitable for electronic work will be just
fine. If you are going into production, however, then flux types become more
important, and there are production solder people on here who can better
answer you on this. Basically, as I said before, you need to tell us the
area that you are going into so that we may better advise you. As an aside,
if the work is going to involve surface mount repairs that will be done by
hand soldering, then you will need to have some liquid flux to hand. This is
essential if you want to do a reliable job. I use a product from Electrolube
for this, and have done for some years.

Arfa