OK, lemme take a different angle on this, �cuz I forgot to touch on this when I first responded. I mentioned a study ["Evaluation of Low Residue Soldering for Military and Commercial Applications: A Report from the Low-Residue Soldering Task Force" June 1995] a cuppla threads ago. [Actually, I tried to find it by using "search", wanting to review what I said, in hopes of not saying two different things about the same study and forever ruining my believability index. But, I must need a nap.]
To further confound my believability index, some momma bear has swiped my copy of the study. [Like that�s something that people around here would really care about!!!] [Or I�ve filed it some where "really intelligent". Or it�s in that pile of stuff under the Krispy Kream Donut box. Er, who knows???] So, we�re going on pure muscle here. [Scary, eh???]
They designed a common board to be used by all in the study. It had a power supply, a high voltage section, a digital section, a RF section, and maybe more. The design had machine soldered SMT and PTH components and hand soldered jumpers. [I�m workin� here!!!] The study used the board to compare coated and uncoated NC fluxed boards built at several [4?] plants [using different processes and NC fluxes] to the same board soldered with RMA flux and cleaned in both coated and uncoated versions. As I remember, they said some thing like � "Hey, [Yano, those government technical reports always start with "Hey".] we messed-up the board design a little and the production processing of the boards could have been better, but we don�t see much difference between the operation of these boards." Or words to that effect.
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