ROHS compliant 63/37 leaded solder paste?

[JoeN]

I consider MG a top notch supplier for small quantity chemicals. Misprint happens, but at least the product rocks, at least for me.
Not to be compared with Kester or AIM, but anyway these brands don't do business with individuals.
In the (not-repackaged/rebranded) hobbyist-friendly market with wide range of supplies, I really can't find a better brand than MG.

I've not had trouble buying Kester by the pound from several suppliers for around $18-$30 a pound, depending.  That's what they charge for a pound of MG solder at Fry's.   I don't consider buying a pound to be excessive for hobby use.  For a casual hobbyist it might take a while to go through.  For a dedicated hobbyist you should kill it off within a year.

[tooki]

The brand is "MG Chemicals", which seems to be enough of a name brand to be sold at distributors like Mouser and Digikey. As far as origin, it says on the back "M.G. Chemicals Ltd. Ontario, Canada. Product of the USA".

The reason I'm asking about this stuff is that while I'm just an amateur at SMD soldering, I've had far better luck with other pastes than I had with this crap. It was thick, dry, wouldn't push through the needle, and didn't melt or flow very well. Made me wonder if I somehow got lead-free instead of leaded. The part number (4860P-35G) clearly resolves to a leaded product though. The ROHS compliancy must be a misprint.

So it does appear to be a name brand, but I wouldn't put it past Amazon to sell a counterfeit, or for it to have sat unrefrigerated on the shelf for an unknown period of time.

I've got a tube of the same item, bought about a year ago. On closer inspection, the package does have the RoHS logo, but not all the wonky text. No RoHS logo on the tube itself. I lazily threw it on my scanner for you:

[Ian.M]

Did you get it from a major distributor or other traceable supplier?
Has it performed as expected?

Yours uses "CAT. NO." and "NET WT.", consistent with the MG site and their other product labels whereas Smbaker's fake used a # before the part number and nothing before the weight.

Its interesting that the card reads "SN63/PB37", rather than using the correct chemical element symbols "Sn63/Pb37",  as on the tube.  Assuming that's the genuine article it looks like some marketdroid at MG went wild with All-Caps!

[tooki]

Did you get it from a major distributor or other traceable supplier?
Has it performed as expected?

It was bought from Amazon.com as well. I've never used solder paste before, so I have no baseline by which to compare it. Seems to work fine.

My hunch is that the OP's is genuine as well, for a simple reason: none of the other vendors on Amazon use Fulfillment by Amazon, so it's unlikely Amazon's stock is contaminated with fakes. I also don't think that MG is a brand with enough brand recognition to be on counterfeiters' radar, given that Kester and others are FAR more famous.

I'm guessing that MG wants to expand beyond North America and tasked someone with making new packaging, and they fucked up royally in their cut-and-pasting. Removing English verbiage (CAT NO --> #) would be consistent with internationalization.

A tube of flux gel I bought more recently has a multilingual package insert whose design is somewhere in between the two solder pastes' packaging (scan attached). Both inserts look color laser printed to me, which is entirely reasonable these days.

Their packaging isn't consistent anyway. Their solder wick uses "Cat#".

[Bob_McBob]

I've sent an email to MG Chemicals technical support and USA West sales with a copy of the packaging and the lot number of the paste. Hopefully they will get to the bottom of whether or not it's legitimate product. You'd think they would want to know if counterfeit or expired product is being sold at a major retailer like Amazon.

Comparing the paste I received to pictures of the paste on digikey and mouser, the syringe itself looks identical, though the needle shown in the pictures is different. That might not be significant, it could be they switched needle suppliers since digikey and mouser received their artwork. The label on the syringe itself appears legitimate (no language oddities), although a piece of scotch tape has been attixed to the seam of the label, perhaps to keep it from pealing off.

It's also the case that this was shipped without cold pack, though the lack of a cold pack may be a casualty of buying from a generic retailer like Amazon. I have to wonder how long it sat on the shelf, potentially unrefrigerated, before I received it.

I'm betting on Ian M.'s suspicion that this is expired bulk product that someone is repackaging and selling as individual new retail.

Scott

Scott, did you ever hear back from MG? I got a tube of the same paste from a local distributor in Ontario and the Canadian packaging has the same error. I'm not sure if this is old stock or they are still printing it like this a couple years later.