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

Just made another double sided board with 10 mil traces. Quite a few
traces run between dip pins.

Anyway, I solder it all up, stick my DC ammeter on and power it up.
150mA on a board that should take 6mA. I went looking for shorts
with my trusty razor knife - couldn't see any but I did some
scraping in really close spots anyway.

Still 50mA... Spend two hours desoldering, inspecting and re-
soldering, check and still 30mA. What the heck is going on I say to
myself!

After another hour of farting around, I came to the conclusion that
my flux is conductive! Using a rosin flux remover pen and some paper
(to soak the sludge up) I cleaned out the tightest spots and down go
the mAs to 10. Ran out of my spray on cleaner and its sunday of
course, no electronics suppliers open around here.

Looking at my flux container, I relized I'd grabbed my plumbing flux
instead - Oatay #5. I never realized that plumbing flux was so much
different from electronics flux. Lesson learned!