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Missing items to buy for my soldering kit
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AndyBeez:
It's all Rosin (tree resin) just at different purities with various solvents to make it more or less solid-thru-liquid. Pure rosin is crystaline, liquid fluxes are a lot of IPA. Hence liquid fluxes boil off their solvents very quickly - which means you need to work fast. Gel(atine) fluxes have a longer workability time but, can leave a mess to clean off.

So... also add a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol to your soldering kit for cleaning both pre and post soldering.
Ian.M:
Unfortunately flux is no longer all pine Rosin.  A lot still is, or is synthetic rosin equivalent or modified purified rosin based, but you'll also encounter synthetic resin based flux that cant be fully removed by the solvents commonly used for rosin fluxes, and so-called water washable fluxes, either modified rosin (pre-saponified?) or low VOC organic acid based.   The water washable fluxes (and other organic acid fluxes intended for electronics) are fine for production use but are totally unsuitable for repair workshop, development lab, or DIY use as no one who's not in the PCB assembly business has the high pressure near-boiling water jet board wash machines required to get their residue out from under ICs and off the board properly and any trace residue of acidic fluxes is a circuit-destroying corrosion time-bomb! 

The trouble with liquid fluxes if you are in a hurry is the solvent boiling driving the flux away from the joint.  However with a little more patience, you apply the flux and let it dry some and thicken up before you start soldering.  It doesn't take long (seconds or minutes at most) for a thin film of liquid flux to dry till its tacky to the touch, at which point it stays where you need it when you apply heat.  The solvent does *NOT* help the fluxing action as its all evaporated and gone by the time the joint reaches the melting point of solder.

Beware of any mineral acid or chloride containing fluxes. Their application is plumbing and sheet metal work, never electronic and electrical assembly as even slight traces of their residue will quickly rot wires, tracks and component leads.   Many paste fluxes in tins are this type and unsuitable for electronics.

Edit: clarifying types of acid flux
tooki:

--- Quote from: EPAIII on August 20, 2022, 09:18:58 am ---Solder wick is not my first choice for removing old solder. I prefer the solder suckers. They are better than the wick or the vacuum pumps connected to the hollow tip of the iron. Why? Because the solder suckers apply a sudden and intense vacuum which removes the melted solder quickly. Vacuum pumps apply the vacuum over a longer period of time: sometimes that works and sometimes not. And solder wick depends on capillary action.

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If you think a solder sucker is better than a continuous-vacuum desoldering system, then you haven’t used a real one, or don’t know how to use it. (And some, like Pace, do in fact create a sudden high vacuum before continuing with a lower continuous vacuum.) Continuous vacuum is really the only reliable, halfway gentle way to desolder through-hole components from plated through-holes. Neither wick nor a solder sucker can clear the solder between a pin and the plated hole. Continuous vacuum does, because you suck out the molten solder and keep the pin moving while the continuous vacuum cools the pin and plated hole, preventing them from re-adhering to one another.
tooki:

--- Quote from: Boris_yo on August 20, 2022, 11:57:55 am ---Can I clean soldering tip in rosin flux that is in a tin can instead of in tip tinner in a tin can?

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No! Despite what EPAIII says, soldering flux isn’t intended for cleaning your tip at all. (And note that tip tinner is very harsh, and should only be used on tips that resist being tinned with your regular solder.)

Just use good quality solder, whose flux core will allow the tip to tin properly.

As for the rest: stop fucking around with garbage supplies from China. Your sanity, and the components you intend to use, aren’t worth it. Even “expensive” solder is still cheap because you use so little of it. Who cares if a 500g reel costs $50 if it lasts you 5+ years? My favorite solder so far is Kester 63/37 with type 44 flux core.

And watch this soldering tutorial, if you understand it and follow it, your soldering will improve: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL926EC0F1F93C1837
EPAIII:
[ Specified attachment is not available ]That tip does not appear to be plated. The plated area would have a silver like appearance while the area above it may be tarnished after use. Here are three tips you can compare it to. The left and center ones have been used and the line between the plated area and the rest of the tip is fairly clear. The third one has not been used and while the entire tip appears to have a silver like color, if you look close you can see the line between the plated area at the tip and the rest of it.






--- Quote from: Boris_yo on August 20, 2022, 11:54:07 am ---
--- Quote from: EPAIII on August 20, 2022, 09:18:58 am ---The tip in your photo is hard to see clearly. IMHO, the best tips are plated. The bare copper tips are both harder to use and the copper will slowly dissolve in the solder making a replacement needed. The plated tips last for many years - I even have some that are many decades old and still working just fine.

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Thanks for soldering advice.

I have attached a close-up photo of solder tip. Do you think it is plated?


--- Quote from: EPAIII on August 20, 2022, 09:18:58 am ---And the iron tip can be dipped in the paste type flux. I do that often to clean it. In my decades of soldering I have never even had any liquid flux for electronic soldering. If I did use it I would want one of those needle style bottles to apply small drops.
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Paste type flux like this one or you meant tip tinner in a tin? AndyBeez posted above rosin flux in a tin which I think is similar to this one that I posted now.

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