Alan B. Pearce <A.B.Pearce <at> rl.ac.uk> writes:
> >As long as the flux says 'no-clean' flux you can trust it to be so. 
> I guess that depends on the reliability you want from the circuit

I do not agree. Rosin flux is the one I trust most. Long term reliability is 
above any suspicion (remember where they found the DNA to revive the dinosaurs in
Jurassic Park ? - that is going a little too far but on the other hand the little
information available about fossil insects comes from creatures trapped in amber
for a couple of tens of thousands of years - and the fact that some of that amber
spent a considerable part of those tens of thousands of years on the bottom of
the Baltic Sea, in salt water and being sloshed about in the ball mill that is
the sea bottom, only adds to the confidence I have in it).

Of course the rosin has to be pure for this. And the one I use is. I use the 
best music wire rosin I can get for making prototypes ...

Also my experience with restoration of electronic equipment from the 1920s 1930s
and so on, when rosin flux started being used, is very good. There are
practically no failures due to leakage in rosin flux residues even in valved 
circuits with resistances in the 10s of Megohms and hundreds of volts across 
them, as long as there are no other polluting materials in it. And rosin is easy
to seal: just reheat it to 150-160 deg C with a blower and it becomes smooth and
crack-free, and will exclude any contaminants, acting as a conformal coating.

Of course it is not 'snake oil'. In high temperature circuits it can oxidize and
start its own set of problems.

Peter P.


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