tooki - you seem to have a habit of always going against what I say.
I’ve only ever responded to you in two threads, this one and one other. That doesn’t constitute a “habit”.
Whether it's fake or not (which if being fair, none of us can say for 100%) I still stand by my conclusion due to the reason I've already stated.
Correct, neither of us can be 100% certain. But NOS on eBay from Poland (the only place that seems to have it) is certainly more likely to be genuine than stuff on AliExpress, where nearly any name-brand product is likely to be counterfeit!!
Regardless, it seems to be unusable, and even if it was, how can you possibly say that solder that uses flux that is both conductive & corrosive is good for electronics? I'd personally steer clear from such.
Because, as I have already stated, it is literally made and sold for electronics use. The flyer for it lists typical electronics applications. The datasheet shows the
electronics industry standards it complies with. The listed compatible liquid flux describes explicitly that it’s designed for printed circuit boards.
As I also already have stated, I also do not recommend such fluxes for most users because of the strict requirements for their use: nothing where it can wick, and only where heated ultrasonic or high pressure washing can be performed.
Water soluble fluxes are quite common in mass production of circuit boards, where the fluxing and washing processes can be very carefully controlled. They are not suitable for every board, which is why no-clean fluxes and fluxes that require solvent cleaning exist.
Anyhow, I'm pretty sure the Mechanic solder I linked to is original, and I've never heard of their leaded solder being faked, only their lead-free (Sn42Bi58 one).
On AliExpress, almost everything name-brand is fake. Mechanic brand bought from a proper distributor is certainly fine, but come on, man, AliExpress?!?
And as for Kester solder as a whole, it's not the only manufacturer of high quality solder, and you can only get it at fair pricing in the US, outside of it, you'd get ripped off and it won't be cost-effective.
Where did you see me say it’s the only manufacturer of high quality solder? Again, nowhere, because I didn’t say that. Stop putting words in my mouth.
I (and many others) have found Kester 44 to be the nicest solder to work with, bar none.
But there are indeed numerous good brands. MG Chemicals, Almit, AIM, Indium, Felder, and Tamura-Elsold, to name a few. The only popular name brand solder I dislike is Stannol, which I find to spit a bit more than most, and whose lead-free doesn’t flow as well as other brands (like Felder, currently the best lead-free I’ve tried, though I haven’t yet ordered any Kester lead-free.)
Kester solder is easily shipped to most of the world by digikey and mouser. But yeah, it’s not the cheapest. (Nor the most expensive.) I always maintain that the cost of solder wire is ultimately trivial: you use so little of it per joint that the cost is simply irrelevant until you’re at large-scale production. Whether a spool costs $30 (like your aliexpress Mechanic solder) or $60 like a spool of Kester makes no difference given that a spool will last me many years. So I choose to go with the “premium” option simply to eliminate the risk of poor solder ruining a project, or even just being slightly more annoying to use. And that’s what I recommend to others, too. (Buying solder paste is a much more complex affair, in that its very limited shelf life means that you need to buy in small containers that you can finish before it goes bad. Unfortunately, many solder pastes, including the GC 10 that many consider to be the very best on the market, are only sold in industrial size containers.)
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