[Llama16]

Hello everyone

Recently an agonizing question started walking around in my head.
As I'm rechecking my parts list for my MINI³ project for the 5th time or so, I was thinking about cleaning the board after assembling it.
I read that a 'flux pen' comes in very handy when soldering the opamps (smt) as I'm only having solder with flux in it and no seperate flux.

I went and check farnell (the only site I'll be able to order from) and this seemed like the most suiting one.

Now I was wondering: How do I actually clean it around the opamps? The only experience I have with cleaning flux is on my SSMH, and I did that easily with a toothbrush and the isopropyl alcohol from the local pharmacist. Now I have worries about it flowing UNDER the opamp and not be able to clean it. Or is it generally easy to reach with my tootbrush, or would I damage the parts.

I also spotted the same pen, but the CW-8100 model, which uses a No-cleaning flux, after googling it I decided not to go for that as it seems like a pain to clean when it has to be cleaned for certain reasons, nor do I want it to mix with the flux from my solder.

Thank you in advance,
Dries

 

[amc]

hey. know how you feel. I did a y1/2 as my first SMD project. Your really gonna need flux. I used liquid rosin flux and it worked great. I also used TONNES of it. It makes the solder go where it needs to. Dont worry about cleaning. The parts are so small that your toothbrush will be able to get the board clean - it will just take lots of cleaning cycles. Try soaking the board, brushing the board, then blowing the board with canned air. Then repeat lots of times until the board is clean. Flux under the part wont stay put if you dilute it enough with alcohol and blow it out with air. Bushing with a toothbrush wont damage the parts - at least it didn't for me.

If this is your first SMD soldering attempt please watch the tutorial video (see my post quoted below) a few times, and I found it helpful to start with the part that had the largest spaces between pins until you get your technique down. Its amazing how little solder and how little time you need to heat the leg and pad with SMD parts.

I wrote a bit about my experience - you may find it helpful - or not. here is a link to the Post in the gamma 1 thread

 

[Llama16]

Thank you

I'm glad to here some experience from others. I've never thought about a toothpick before and canned air (that'll speed up things ALOT)

I've watched several SMD tutorials several times an I hope I'll manage it. The problem also is: for one of the opamps in the mini³ i'll have to use some heatconducting paste between the board and the SMD opamp, this hinders me from soaking it to much in the alcohol.