Soldering iron and tips

[glitch]

Ok I admit I am no solder genius. I was using acid solder flux to clean everything up until I starting asking on this forum how to solder the XTIDE. In short I found out acid solder flux is nasty.

This is not entirely true -- the old acid fluxes are terrible for PCBs (or any electronics, they're not even recommended for point-to-point tube wiring), but there are many modern fluxes that are based on organic acids. If you really prefer using a liquid flux and solid solder, give Alpha 850 flux a try. We use it for all of our assembly at work, even though we use Kester 63/37 "organic core" solder. It's an organic flux that remains water soluble after use, so you /must/ wash the board afterwards, but it gives really great joints. All of the XTIDE boards I assembled for Hargle were given a brushing of Alpha 850 before soldering.

 

[sombunall]

Do you have a damp sponge to wipe the tip on periodically? That helps keep it clean.

I am doing what is shown in this video of how to solder from the XTIDE build site:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NU2ruzyc4

I have the solder stand with the yellow sponge under it and the brass sponge. I clean it first with the wet one, then poke it in the brass one a few times and then tin it with Kester "44" Rosin core 60/40 that I just bought a few weeks ago.

Picture:


Maybe I should add that I used it to solder some wires to dragon clips with it so far but I tried to clean all surfaces (except the tip) with rubbing alcohol and q-tips. But before that there was no brown on it.

 

[glitch]

The brown/yellow residue looks like melted rosin flux from the solder. It's normal to have it build up on the iron. You should wipe the iron while hot onto the wet sponge periodically to remove the flux buildup and any lead dross that forms on the iron tip.