| Electronics > Beginners |
| Cored Solder - not behaving |
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| tooki:
I wonder about that, simply because rosin is, for all intents and purposes, amber-to-be. Wouldn’t it, if anything, be a preservative of sorts? As for solder itself, my oldest solder is still from my childhood, bought at some point before 1992 (when we first moved from USA to Switzerland). All of that still works, even if it’s no longer got a shiny surface. The Radio Shack 60/40 I use for tip tinning and to mobilize old joints — I’ve come to prefer 63/37 for actually making joints. The only old 63/37 I have is a roll of really thin .015” (0.4mm) Kester with 282 flux I got from some (probably surplus) vendor out of the back of Popular Electronics. It was mothballed for probably 20 years before I got back into electronics a few years ago, and underneath the outer layer of tarnished solder, the layers below are still relatively nice and shiny! (Edit: I just did a bit of searching and it seems the Kester 282 solders are still made, and seem to cost about $125/lb for the thin stuff!! :o ) |
| Cnoob:
The solder I favour is LMP type 362 dia 0.7mm which was purchased over 25 years ago and it still gives nice shiny joints using my pace wjs 100 set at 280 C |
| stj:
flux absorbs moisture from the air, try throwing away the first meter of it and testing again. btw, flux is not Rosin, that just happens to be the main ingredient - atleast in the past. |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: stj on February 11, 2019, 02:21:43 pm ---flux absorbs moisture from the air, try throwing away the first meter of it and testing again. btw, flux is not Rosin, that just happens to be the main ingredient - atleast in the past. --- End quote --- Nobody said it was. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I mentioned it because it’s the primary ingredient in nearly all non-water-soluble fluxes for flux-core solder, as well as the main active ingredient in many liquid fluxes. (There are many, many kinds of rosin, which is why it can be made into no-clean fluxes and the like.) |
| Ian.M:
I think one needs to make the distinction between natural rosin, synthetic rosin and other mystery resins used as the main component of fluxes. Natural rosin on its own is a mild flux suitable for SnPb and high Sn on clean surfaces of easily solderable metals - either freshly cleaned copper, brasses and bronzes or tin plate, or reasonably new PCBs with immersion tin, ENIG or OSP finishes or clean HASL, and using components with clean unoxidised leads or terminals. Its more convenient dissolved in alcohol or mixed with petroleum jelly to form a gel or paste flux. However its more usual to have a small concentration of one or more activators mixed with the rosin to enable it to handle more oxide contamination of the pads, component leads and solder surface. N.B. Beware of rosin fluxes with ammonium chloride or zinc chloride activators which leave a corrosive residue making them unsuitable for electronics work. |
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