| Electronics > Beginners |
| no clean corrosive flux vs non corrosive |
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| TuxKey:
Hi guys, I just placed my first order of solder tin and everything i think i would need. With that order i chose an affordable liquid flux, because i saw how good of a job David did using flux i thought i might as well start with a small bottle to tryout. So i bought this "TE410/500" https://www.tme.eu/en/details/te410_500/fluxes/cynel/ and this is the RF800/1 link: https://www.tme.eu/nl/details/rf800_1/vloeimiddelen/ag-termopasty/ i was pretty sure it would be electronics save and it is no-clean.. in my mail to tem.eu i asked if it was save for electronics and what the difference was with something like the more expensive RF800/1 but just got an answer days after my order of course.. His answer was TE410/500 is save for electronics and is fairly similar to RF800/1 and that the difference in price is because the RF800/1 is non corrosive.. i have mixed feelings about this answer.. As i don't fully understand what this means.. :-// so it's no clean meaning that it needs no cleaning and wont damage my board correct ? Still i plan on cleaning my work with an Isopropylalcohol mixture with acetone.. as i found a diy flux remover on youtube. https://youtu.be/S99RjSC8VtY Still i thought the point of rosin was to be mildly corrosive and remove rust to let the solder flow easily to the joint ? am i worrying for nothing or will i damage my pcb's using this flux ? Or do i need to be extra careful and meticulous in cleaning my board ??? Will cleaning my work with a q-tips and my mixture be could enough..??? btw i thought that most if not all the rosin would evaporate while soldering ?? Should i consider this flux a fail and try to get the RF800/1 instead ?? Would appreciate any help guys.. thanks again.. btw don't know if that's important or not i'm mostly planning on soldering and desoldering mechanical keyboards at first and later on learn more an perhaps do more diy building..start of slow.. |
| KL27x:
--- Quote ---Still i thought the point of rosin was to be mildly corrosive and remove rust to let the solder flow easily to the joint ? --- End quote --- The reason rosin is nature's flux is because these long rosin molecules are acidic when liquid. But you have to heat up the rosin to make it acidic. After the rosin cools down, it solidifies and becomes inert. It is also waterproof, so the metal salts that are left after the acid eats away the oxides are safely bound up in the rosin residue. "Corrosive" doesn't necessarily equal acidic. An acid can't eat unoxidized metal. It selectively removes the metal oxide layer. So if the residue contains active acid and it also allows oxygen penetration to the metal, it is corrosive. If it contains halides (like chlorides/flourides), it is corrosive for an additional reason which is more specific to iron alloys. The halides penetrate and embed into the surface of iron and induces rusting on any exposure to oxygen and moisture. This provides oxidized metal for any active acid to eat away. And it also can cause connections to break, mechanically, because red iron oxide is bulky and spongiform and pushes itself apart. --- Quote ---So i bought this "TE410/500" https://www.tme.eu/en/details/te410_500/fluxes/cynel/ --- End quote --- The link says this is rosin based and halide free. And it can be cleaned with alcohol. It sounds perfectly fine to use on PCB's. I would imagine you can probably leave it on there with no ill effect in most applications. There's nothing there to suggest that this flux is (too) corrosive for electrical work. The datasheet and the "no clean" designation, and the placement of this product in this specific store ALL SUGGEST that this flux is designed and appropriate for what you're doing. If you don't trust that this is the case, then stick with rosin flux. --- Quote ---and this is the RF800/1 link: https://www.tme.eu/nl/details/rf800_1/vloeimiddelen/ag-termopasty/ --- End quote --- Is that German? --- Quote ---the difference in price is because the RF800/1 is non corrosive.. --- End quote --- Don't put too much stock into this answer. People ask questions, and store owner must provide response. In another universe, you would get answers like "I don't know. These are just two different SKU's to me. We make a X percent margin on this one. We make Y percent on the other. People like variety and are pretty stupid. Some people like A because it's the first one they tried, and it worked fine and they will use it for 20 years until they die. Other people have tried B and they will swear by it until the day they die. We have to stock them all because having a variety of products is appealing to consumers. And there is a significant segment of the population which perceives higher cost as attractive. If you present them with 3 options, they automatically desire to have the most expensive one. Whereas if we only stocked that expensive one, it would be perceived as a ripoff." In short, there may be some important and significant differences between the two fluxes. The guy that answered your question might even know what they are. And he might have told you, correctly. But if he is talking out of his ass, he is always going to say something that justifies the cost of the more profitable (or at least more expensive) product. If not to sell you, at least to satisfy that you got a prompt response and weren't left hanging. But this guy probably spends at least 2 hours a day answering questions of customers buying thousands of different products which he has never even used. R, RMA, RA have a very specific definition. A manufacturer can make RMA flux and sell it as their own special "no clean." But unless it meets specs for RMA, they can't take any flux that works just like RMA and sell it as RMA, unless it is actually RMA. R, RA, RMA designators hold more "meaning" than "no clean," even if some no cleans are more or less the same as rosin fluxes. So if you are skeptical about what you have, you might want to buy a mil spec rosin flux for a baseline comparison. |
| TuxKey:
--- Quote from: KL27x on April 17, 2018, 08:24:07 pm --- --- Quote ---Still i thought the point of rosin was to be mildly corrosive and remove rust to let the solder flow easily to the joint ? --- End quote --- The reason rosin is nature's flux is because these long rosin molecules are acidic when liquid. But you have to heat up the rosin to make it acidic. After the rosin cools down, it solidifies and becomes inert. It is also waterproof, so the metal salts that are left after the acid eats away the oxides are safely bound up in the rosin residue. "Corrosive" doesn't necessarily equal acidic. An acid can't eat unoxidized metal. It selectively removes the metal oxide layer. So if the residue contains active acid and it also allows oxygen penetration to the metal, it is corrosive. If it contains halides (like chlorides/flourides), it is corrosive for an additional reason which is more specific to iron alloys. The halides penetrate and embed into the surface of iron and induces rusting on any exposure to oxygen and moisture. This provides oxidized metal for any active acid to eat away. And it also can cause connections to break, mechanically, because red iron oxide is bulky and spongiform and pushes itself apart. --- Quote ---So i bought this "TE410/500" https://www.tme.eu/en/details/te410_500/fluxes/cynel/ --- End quote --- The link says this is rosin based and halide free. And it can be cleaned with alcohol. It sounds perfectly fine to use on PCB's. I would imagine you can probably leave it on there with no ill effect in most applications. There's nothing there to suggest that this flux is (too) corrosive for electrical work. The datasheet and the "no clean" designation, and the placement of this product in this specific store ALL SUGGEST that this flux is designed and appropriate for what you're doing. If you don't trust that this is the case, then stick with rosin flux. --- End quote --- :-// i was under the assumption that this was rosin flux ?? --- Quote from: KL27x on April 17, 2018, 08:24:07 pm --- --- Quote ---and this is the RF800/1 link: https://www.tme.eu/nl/details/rf800_1/vloeimiddelen/ag-termopasty/ --- End quote --- Is that German? --- End quote --- hahah i understand the association no that's dutch i forgot all about the language settings i forgot to select eng before posting the link sorry about that.. https://www.tme.eu/gb/details/rf800_1/fluxes/ag-termopasty/ --- Quote from: KL27x on April 17, 2018, 08:24:07 pm --- --- Quote ---the difference in price is because the RF800/1 is non corrosive.. --- End quote --- Don't put too much stock into this answer. People ask questions, and store owner must provide response. In another universe, you would get answers like "I don't know. These are just two different SKU's to me. We make a X percent margin on this one. We make Y percent on the other. People like variety and are pretty stupid. Some people like A because it's the first one they tried, and it worked fine and they will use it for 20 years until they die. Other people have tried B and they will swear by it until the day they die. We have to stock them all because having a variety of products is appealing to consumers. And there is a significant segment of the population which perceives higher cost as attractive. If you present them with 3 options, they automatically desire to have the most expensive one. Whereas if we only stocked that expensive one, it would be perceived as a ripoff." In short, there may be some important and significant differences between the two fluxes. The guy that answered your question might even know what they are. And he might have told you, correctly. But if he is talking out of his ass, he is always going to say something that justifies the cost of the more profitable (or at least more expensive) product. If not to sell you, at least to satisfy that you got a prompt response and weren't left hanging. But this guy probably spends at least 2 hours a day answering questions of customers buying thousands of different products which he has never even used. --- End quote --- i'm not one to judge a product by it's price guess i'm past that phase of life but not without ego as Leo from "actualized.org" would say..hahaha.. --- Quote from: KL27x on April 17, 2018, 08:24:07 pm ---R, RMA, RA have a very specific definition. A manufacturer can make RMA flux and sell it as their own special "no clean." But unless it meets specs for RMA, they can't take any flux that works just like RMA and sell it as RMA, unless it is actually RMA. R, RA, RMA designators hold more "meaning" than "no clean," even if some no cleans are more or less the same as rosin fluxes. So if you are skeptical about what you have, you might want to buy a mil spec rosin flux for a baseline comparison. --- End quote --- For future reference and being able to recognize a flux that meets the specs you mention here. if i look at the product sheet of the "CYNEL TE410/500 " i bought and compare that with to other products on their site the first difference i noticed is the info line that says "Kind of flux" RMA for example this one. https://www.tme.eu/gb/details/10_1000/fluxes/kontakt-chemie/74527-002/ or this one. https://www.tme.eu/gb/details/kalafonia-20/fluxes/ag-termopasty/ The one i got doesn't say RMA just under the product name right at the top.. also no RMA in the Technical information i mentioned. if that's not what you mean here is the product link with all fluxes. (just as a refrence) https://www.tme.eu/en/katalog/#id_category=100484&cleanParameters=1¶meter_boxes=9&page=1&s_field=artykul&s_order=ASC :-+ thanks KL27x appreciate it. Your answer is both clear and insightful. Really happy to hear that i won't be messing my first build project. i'm going to keep your answer in my bookmarks as a reference.. Thanks for taking the time and explaining it all to me / us noobs..Thanks for sharing the knowledge.. |
| KL27x:
You're welcome. It sounds like have it figure out, now. But just in case --- Quote ---:-// i was under the assumption that this was rosin flux ?? --- End quote --- Without delving deeper into the MSDS, the product info says that it is "rosin-based." Unless it is designated as "R/RMA/RA," it might not meet milspec for rosin flux... or it could be completely identical in ingredients to RMA but the manufacturer chooses to call it "no clean" for whatever reason they want. If it is sold as "no clean" you have to delve just a little deeper to see what kind of flux it is. In this case, it should likely be interchangeable and compatible with rosin fluxes. There is another "main" category of no cleans that are designed on the principle of barely having any active ingredients, and they are more specifically made for use in manufacturing, where the boards are pristinely clean to start with. They will have very little rosin (or synthetic resin) to encapsulate ionic residue/salt, so they will leave a very esthetically clean board. The industry lingo for this kind of flux is "low solids" flux. For the home gamer who uses lead solder, as long as you are avoiding no cleans that are low solids and/or incompatible with alcohol, you are probably fine with just about anything else labeled no clean. Or you could stick with RMA/RA and be good to go. But if you use lead-free solder or if you do BGA reflow, you may get better performance with some more specific fluxes. |
| helius:
There is an even more specific standard than R/RMA/RA, called J-STD-004A from the IPC. It specifies 24 different flux types! The ones that are particularly suitable for hand-soldering of new electronic devices are ROL0. |
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