Watch Mike's Radio Repair review of removing old flux fast from a radio PCB. Find the MicroCare TriggerGrip system here: https://electronics.microcare.com/pro... Follow Mike's Radio Repair channel: / trclubricants for expert advice and how-to videos. ISO 9001:2008 Registered. ©MicroCare 2018. All rights reserved.
SUBSCRIBE to our VIDEOS to stay UP-TO-DATE on the critical cleaning industry: http://bit.ly/Watch-MicroCare-Videos
Follow us on
LINKEDIN: / microcare-corporation
TWITTER: / microcarenews
FACEBOOK: / microcarecorporation
WEBSITE: https://www.microcare.com/
Transcript:
I'm doing surface-mount work. Some of the cleaners and I use them, you get them
in a spray can with a nifty little spray top and they have a brush built
into them. The problem with those is as you tilt the can, the pickup tube becomes
uncovered and then it can't spray. This system has, now you can use this as a
normal spray can, but you get this nifty little handle here okay, that has the
brush. I'll be playing with this stuff and I like it but, it has this
really nice, heavy-duty stainless steel jacket on the outside. This is depressed
all the time. That's just like you pulling the trigger. You get a little
rack for it, that hangs on the side of your bench. Keeps it off the bench,
valuable bench space. So for starters, you're not holding the twelve-ounce big
spray can in your hand. You just got this little thing, fits right in the
palm of your hand. There's a lot of bristles there, so I like that, especially
if you buy the kit. They have a starter kit comes with the handle, one
spray can, the the holder and a pack of their lint-free, highly absorbent wipes.
And that's these, and there are a woven. Now, normally I use chem-wipes.
So one place you really don't want to use chem-wipes is surface mount because
they're low lint, they're not lint free. That's the problem. Just getting a
little piece of lint on the board before you put the part on it, that could be a
make or break it, bad solder joint. But these are circuit board wipes, that's
what these are made for. They're not cheap however. None of this is
cheap. But there are cases where I'd like to use this and I found some advantages
to this. For starters it doesn't smell very bad. SPR the super clean, it's non
flammable, big thumbs up there. Some of those cleaners man there who they're
horrible in the nose. This isn't. It actually has a halfway pleasant almost citrus y
and they do make a citrus based one, but works really well. So we got lots of flux
residue there, you just give a squirt, get a little bit of the solvent and
you can see, that stuff's caked on there because it's still there. You know it's
not liquid. Now this stuff over here yeah, the instant I touch that, you can see
that RMA that King Bo flux because like I say that stays basically, the gel is gone.
There is a super heavy-duty layer of this stuff on here yeah, the RMA flux is
already off. The RA flux over here, that residues still there a little bit.
But I really baked that stuff on there and like I said, I had a lot of it. And
you have to remember, there's also flux in the solder I was using. Again this
is almost a torture test for this stuff. The amount of flux residue, that is not
normal. Normal flux residue, normally you'd have just a little bit and that
would be it. Actually on the bottom side, yeah there's a little bit of flux
residue, there because remember, I did solder that. So that would be more
practical and a normal clean up. There's some crusty flux residue. This
circuit board is like early 1980s vintage, so that flux has been on there
for a long, long time. So that's a good test of a flux remover. It's coming
off, fairly easily. Now IPA, I can tell you right now, just
from experience, it would have taken a lot more scrubbing than that, to get it
off. It's gone. That cleaned up very fast. You use this stuff, man this
dries fast. It does not leave that white, chalky residue. You usually see the
boards, they're nice and shiny. Well they weren't when I got done cleaning all the
flux residue off. They had that white haze on the board. You don't have that
problem with that stuff. It doesn't leave that film.