HapticZ said:
some newer flux will wash away with water solvent based cleaners
rubbing alcohol is fine too
flux is non-conductive, residue wont affect anything, except if you
constantly obsess about it and gaze affectionately at your work
i mostly just leave it on, just like the asian mass produced junk we keep
seeing.
aesthetics really dont affect electrical performance!
;-)).
Now you see, I just can't do that ! It's ingrained in me. Many years ago, I
was taught as an apprentice, to have a tidy mind, and to leave things as you
found them. My apprentice mentor was one of the best service engineers that
I ever came across - then or now - and he taught me many things that have
served me well throughout my professional career in electronic service work.
One of those things was that the only way anyone should be able to see where
you've replaced a component on a PCB, is if your soldering is *better* than
the factory original, and that involves removing flux residue.
There is a practical side to it as well. When flux is left on a board for
any length of time, something happens to it (so it must still be reacting in
some way ??) such that it becomes a brilliant resister of a soldering iron
tip. I repair some commercial boards that used to be done by a company that
did thoroughly scruffy work, and always left all of the flux on the board,
from where they had replaced components which regularly fail. When I now see
these same boards, the rework vacuum iron, really struggles to remelt the
joints which are covered in flux, against those that are not. It also clogs
up the vacuum tip much more regularly than when I am working on boards that
are flux-free. Perhaps I'm just a sad old pedant on this sort of thing, but
it pleases me to look on good workmanship and practices, and I'm far too
long in the tooth to change now ... d;~}
Arfa