Up until very recently I was still using lead solder, and some unlabelled solid flux paste when necessary (borrowing both from my parents). I don't have much of a steady hand, and my joints didn't look too good, but they worked.
I recently bought some new lead-free solder (96% tin 4% silver, it says), plus a temperature controlled iron with a finer tip. And I thought I should also replace the flux, since the old stuff has no indication of what's in it and could be pretty toxic too. So I got the Circuitworks no-clean flux pen. (The tip wasn't quite what I expected, and maybe I'm not applying enough of the stuff, which could be part of this.)
So I started using my new items and it wasn't working at all. The solder just didn't want to stick to anything, and when it did stick, it was coming up rough and grey and not very strong. I tried adjusting the temperature both ways, without much luck. Eventually I tried using the old flux paste again, and it started to work, but I seem to be needing rather a lot of it. And even when I've tinned the two parts, they seem to want more flux before they'll stick together, which is something I've never seen before. (I've only *had* to use the separate flux when tinning objects that weren't exactly designed to be soldered, though sometimes I used it anyway to make things easier.)
Any ideas what's happening here? I've read that lead-free solder is "more difficult", but I didn't expect it to be quite this bad
I recently bought some new lead-free solder (96% tin 4% silver, it says), plus a temperature controlled iron with a finer tip. And I thought I should also replace the flux, since the old stuff has no indication of what's in it and could be pretty toxic too. So I got the Circuitworks no-clean flux pen. (The tip wasn't quite what I expected, and maybe I'm not applying enough of the stuff, which could be part of this.)
So I started using my new items and it wasn't working at all. The solder just didn't want to stick to anything, and when it did stick, it was coming up rough and grey and not very strong. I tried adjusting the temperature both ways, without much luck. Eventually I tried using the old flux paste again, and it started to work, but I seem to be needing rather a lot of it. And even when I've tinned the two parts, they seem to want more flux before they'll stick together, which is something I've never seen before. (I've only *had* to use the separate flux when tinning objects that weren't exactly designed to be soldered, though sometimes I used it anyway to make things easier.)
Any ideas what's happening here? I've read that lead-free solder is "more difficult", but I didn't expect it to be quite this bad