Why you should use flux when soldering

#soldering

[Lishtenbird]

Pro tip: always use flux when soldering capacitors. That's the only proper way to get a Flux Capacitor.

[clintcolombin]

This is, without a doubt, the best demonstration of the concept I've ever seen (& I've worked in mechanical engineering, tinning wires wit flux & a solder pot)

[mariushmedias]

There's a series of soldering lessons which explain why flux is important and also how to solder - on Pace's Youtube channel - they're a company that makes soldering stations and related stuff. It's dated video (instructional videos for companies buying their stuff, made in the '80s I think) but don't be fooled, the information is still valid.
Solder these days has flux inside - most solder wires have one core of flux, others have multiple strands of flux along the length of the wire (Multicore brand for example has 5 thin cores of flux). The flux melts faster than the actual solder and drops/pours on the surface and attacks the oxides, then solder melts and makes a chemical bond with the clean metal. Sometimes if the soldering iron is too hot or the oxidation is too much, the flux inside the solder wire is not sufficient to do the job, so it always helps to add flux (doesn't matter if it's cream, liquid, paste, whatever). The flux is neutral in its default form, but as it gets heated by the soldering iron it becomes acidic and attacks the oxides and crap on the surfaces of metals and takes them away, so that the actual solder can react with the metals and form good connection.

[martinhogan]

It is really great for soldering very close, very fine pins. It makes it so that the solder bonds with the pins more than it bonds with itself, so it naturally removes shorts between pins from solder.

[Welshy-bkrh]

dude you've made me want to solder again such a simple description that is bypassed by soooo many others when showing soldering

[stevewatson]

A topic Buildzoid can't stretch to an hour? If I hadn't seen it for myself... A lot more useful and informative than your average YouTube piece of 5-10 minutes.

[JumpingJoseph]

Wow em that’s awesome never realised that.
I did AO electronics, etched my own pcb’s etc and was always using brand new clean stuff, so never touched flux at all at the time, and didn’t understand what it really did for the task until now. Thanks :)

[VashNyght]

Buildzoid is like no flux given
Louis Rossman is like the bigger the glob the better the job!

[MazeFrame]

Flux and good Solder are 2 of three steps to a good joint. Thanks for making this demo!

[DJSammy.]

Simplest & Best way demo how important flux is! WoW!

[CptPatch]

Praise be to Rossman and oxides to the nonbelievers.

[SudokuMann]

Many thanks for the demonstration. It was very educative!

[mrlithium]

That was useful i never realized the extent of the oxide layer eaten by raw flux

[shaneeslick]

G'day Builzoid,
Simple but Brilliantly Informative

[kennethhicks]

Clean, flux, eutectic solder, correct temp/tip, make good concave fillets, clean, /inspect.

[davidestabrook]

Super useful video, I have 3 Logitech G602 mice that need microswitch replacements to fix the double click problem. I thought I had everything, but your video showed me that I need to buy some flux. Thanks Buildzoid 🙂

[KrisFixGermany]

Good choice of soldering iron and flux 👍

[fracturedlife]

Pretty cool to see it like that. On a rossman video he adds it like vinegar to chips.

[tanishqbhaiji]

What about surface tension? And getting the perfect amount of solder on the joint only if you have flux applied.

[flowild]

i would love more shorter videos like this just explaining random stuff <3