1 bit of ASM advice needed...

[Stopp,Gene]

I'll have to check what type of solder I use - I'm sure it's Kester of
some kind, and I think that it's the "water clean-up" type. It's
whatever we used at my old company on the production lines. I'll have to
get back to you on this one (I'm at work, solder's at home). But the
problem is real - no cleaning, no work, clean, it works.

The problems are erratic, but seem to affect VCO's the most (like they
don't have the right range and don't have the proper scale factor). The
multimode VCF in the ASM-1 gets all kinds of multi-volt offsets and
locks up at the supply voltage when the frequency CV is too negative or
positive. Like I said, only a throrough cleaning makes things work
right.

 - Gene

 ----------
From: Tony Clark
To: Synth-DIY
Subject: RE: 1 bit of ASM advice needed...
Date: Thursday, February 26, 1998 2:16PM

> One thing that always seems to plague me, even when I plan for it, is
> the disturbance caused by solder flux.

   Gene, please explain what problems you are having due to flux
residue!  What kind of solder/flux do you use?  We use Kester 63/37 with
flux type "44".  Stock standard solder as far as I can tell.  In all my
years here at my company, we have _never_ cleaned a single board and
have
never had a single board fail or behave strangely due to flux!
Practically
every occurance of board failure that I've run across (remember we're
moderately low tech here) can be traced down to the following problems:

 1) Wrong components installed
 2) Bad solder joints (specifically cold solder joints)
 3) Broken or shorted traces (manufacturer's defects)
 4) Faulty components

   Most synth circuits that I've seen aren't so sensitive that a
stable non-conductive flux is going to cause to majorly fail as was
described earlier.  Granted, I don't know what kind of solder was being
used so it's hard for me to imagine what the real culprit is.  So I'd
certainly like to hear from various DIY'ers to see what kinds of
solder/flux is being used.  Then I'll know what to stay away from...

   BTW, this is something that would really be a nice addition to
Archive's soldering page.  So I hope to get some good responses to this
post!

   Tony