[sdiy] Organic Water Soluble Flux

[Tom Arnold]

I know this topic has come up now and again but I can't find details in one
spot.

I'm doing some boards that I want to be clean.  Normally I just use no-clean
flux but these boards have high density DIN 41612 connectors on them and
even no clean starts to look more nasty then normal.

So, I want to use water soluble flux which I haven't used in years.  WHen I
did use it, I never had to deal with it.  Just solder and chunk in the
board washer.  Most boards I did back then I used normal Rosin core and just
washed the boards in nasty chemicals.  They looked great of course, but...

So.  My plan is to solder the boards up and then rinse under warm filtered
water while lightly scrubbing the solderside of the board, probably using
some Simple Green cleaner.  Then fully rinse once more, then final rinse
with distilled water ( possibly in ultrasonic cleaner ).  I'll wash them as
completed so should be about 20 minutes from start of soldering to washing.

After that a good blow with compressed air to knock the water off and then
in front of a fan for a while.

This plan sound good?

I'm kinda rolling the dice on whether these connectors are washable.  I'm
not certain who made them.  I've looked at the Tyco and AVX datasheets for
similar connectors and they don't mention washing, or any other handling for
that matter.

I kinda volunteered to assemble these things for some friends. Half dozen
80pin connectors on each board.  If I can't get warm fuzzies on working with
this solder, I'll just wind up using no-clean and either cleaning with
alcohol which is a mess, or putting a lid on my anal-retentiveness...

And yes, I've done extensive web searching on this topic and failed to find
the details I was looking for.

Thanks!

-- 
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 - Tom Arnold       -  Free Synth DIY webspace http://www.sdiy.org 
 - SynthGeek        -
 - BBD Fanatic      -  "...is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" 
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