Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Someone (I think it was Stefan) recently mentioned using IPA to thin
dried-out solder paste, and had problems with spattering which he thought
was due to the IPA having too much water in it. I thought I'd experiment
with some 99.7% IPA I've got.

I didn't have any dried out paste, but the syringe was over a year old. I
applied some small blobs to a scrap of PCB material and heated it with an
embossing heat gun; it melted OK. I then mixed some with a couple of drops
of 99.7% IPA, and applied that to the copper. Heating it resulted in the
paste again melting satisfactorily, without any spattering, although it was
too thin to use with components.

It looks as though ∗pure∗ IPA can be used to resurrect old solder paste.

Leon