Enlighten a total novice

[Jim Patchell]

    Cleaning some flux is mandatory.  I prefer to use Kester 331 for doing PC board assembly.  When using this flux, you must clean the board when
a session is over.  It will not wait until tomorrow.  Cleaning is easy, just soap and water.  For breadboards, I use Kester 44.  If you want a
mess, mix Kester 44 with Kester 331.  The combination of these two fluxes make a mess that cannot be cleaned, and will eventually ruin the PC
board.  Place I used to work sometimes the assemblers would mix the two out of carelessness.  In one instance, where the equipment was powered by a
300 amp power supply (yes, 300 amps, more current than my arc welder), that mixture of fluxes somehow became conductive and caused traces to
vaporize on the board.  I wish I would have kept that sucker, it was pretty cool looking.

    -Jim

ebn808afxcut at email.com wrote:

> Before this topic came up on the list, I'd never heard of washing the flux off the circuit board, or even having separate flux from the solder.
>
> 1.  How do you keep the water from corroding the leads and components on the other side of the board?
>
> 2.  What's the advantage of cleaning the flux?  Is it a performance improvement or simply a cosmetic one?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
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