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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.61] on Tuesday, March 24, 2015 at 21:54:54 :

In Reply to: Re: The battery powered iron is new. The 110V one is ancient posted by Jess [64.180.200.4] on Tuesday, March 24, 2015 at 21:38:31 :

The key words there are "rosin core". Bucky's description sounds like a lack of flux to me. Electronic component leads and PCB pads (the rings around the holes) are pre-tinned. They don't generally need to be cleaned unless they're quite corroded. They should be easy to solder. But you have to use electronic solder, which has a rosin core.

"Silver solder" and "silver bearing solder" are two completely different beasts as well. Silver solder is like a brazing compound, which melts at a high temperature. It's used for jewelry and sometimes for refrigeration. Silver bearing solder is typically something like 95% tin, 5% silver and is used for soldering specialized electronic components that have silver-plated contacts on them, where regular tin/lead solder would suck the silver plating off and leave them dry.

For the most part, for electronics you want 63/47 rosin core solder. "Kester 44" is the proven old standard. If you're irrationally afraid of lead, you can try the silver-bearing unleaded solder, but be sure it has a rosin core. Most does not.

Lead does several good things in electronics solder, besides make it cheaper. It makes it more flexible and less likely to crack due to vibration and thermal cycling. It prevents it from growing "tin whisker" which are tin crystals that grow out from unleaded solder and sometimes short against adjacent components. It also makes it flow better and be a bit easier to work with. Thanks to ROHS, everything in new production has gone to lead-free these days. After 10 years or so they've finally worked most of the bugs out and the stuff is reasonably reliable, but for repair work, I'd still stick with conventional solder for reliability and ease of use.

Once you get good solder, make sure the iron is tinned (you might need to sand it to bright copper first, but be careful because the tips on better irons are iron-plated to keep the copper from dissolving in the solder), and then make sure it's hot enough that the rosin smokes as the solder melts. It's at the point of smoking that the rosin does its job of removing oxides from the metal.



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