Hi,
I've been soldering for a few years and I've always done it directly with the solder, which has a flux core if I'm not wrong. Nevertheless, I see a lot of people, specially in small surface electronics, use flux all the time. I really don't know what's the purpose of flux. Sure, I've read that it cleans the area and helps to solder, but I haven't had any problem with my solder wire alone.
Anyway, I just ordered a La-Co flux, black canister with red top, very famous. I've used it to solder here and there, and I've not noticed any important improvement. Then today I put it to test and tried to use it to help me solder on a 3.8V battery. You know, batteries normally have a treatment or something that makes it really difficult to solder a cable on them, specially the positive. So, I put a little bit of flux on the positive, heated it up with the soldering tip, I see flux evaporating, then try to solder the wire to the positive, and nothing, not the the slightest improvement over trying it without flux. I cleaned the area, may be you had to clean it completely, although I see that when they solder chips with 20 pins or so, the flux is all around... but nothing, the solder won't stick to the battery.
So, if I really don't notice the difference when soldering is easy, and when the solder won't attach to a surface, the flux don't make any difference, what is it for?
You can explain from experience also why do you use flux, what am I doing wrong, what is it for... may be I can learn the basics.
I've been soldering for a few years and I've always done it directly with the solder, which has a flux core if I'm not wrong. Nevertheless, I see a lot of people, specially in small surface electronics, use flux all the time. I really don't know what's the purpose of flux. Sure, I've read that it cleans the area and helps to solder, but I haven't had any problem with my solder wire alone.
Anyway, I just ordered a La-Co flux, black canister with red top, very famous. I've used it to solder here and there, and I've not noticed any important improvement. Then today I put it to test and tried to use it to help me solder on a 3.8V battery. You know, batteries normally have a treatment or something that makes it really difficult to solder a cable on them, specially the positive. So, I put a little bit of flux on the positive, heated it up with the soldering tip, I see flux evaporating, then try to solder the wire to the positive, and nothing, not the the slightest improvement over trying it without flux. I cleaned the area, may be you had to clean it completely, although I see that when they solder chips with 20 pins or so, the flux is all around... but nothing, the solder won't stick to the battery.
So, if I really don't notice the difference when soldering is easy, and when the solder won't attach to a surface, the flux don't make any difference, what is it for?
You can explain from experience also why do you use flux, what am I doing wrong, what is it for... may be I can learn the basics.