Alpha HI FLO solder

| | | We are currently fighting a dross battle on our non-inerted waves. We are currently using a bar solder that barely meets QQS-571 for Alloy/Impurity. | | | | | | Is anybody using HI FLO in a non inerted wave? Do you see a measureable decrease in dross? | | | | | | Thanks. | | | | | Gregg: Pump speed, rather than virgin solder quality, is the biggest driver to dross formation. TTYL Dave F | | | Gregg, | | I don't personally use HI Flo in a non-inerted wave; I'm lucky enough to have nitrogen. BUT, my engineering counterpart in a sister plant of ours swears by it. And he's a really good engineer, so he's not just falling for ALpha's marketing propaganda. He said that at one time, his soldering went to hell and he was seeing lots more dross, and after spending three days trying to figure out what went out of control, he found that his distributor shipped him Vaculoy instead of HiFlo. So he dumped the pot and went back to business as usual. He regularly performs dross inclusion tests on his pot, so he has data to support his conclusions. | | Speaking of Alpha's marketing approach, they offer a "pot swap" program. They'll bring in enough bar solder for you to drain your pot and refill it with Hi Flo for your evaluation free of charge. If you don't like it, you don't buy it. I don't know all the specifics on the program, but I may give it a whirl this summer after I get baseline data on how the surface mount grade of bar behaves. Contact your local Alpha guy and check into the pot swap deal. Sounds like a no-lose situation. | | Chrys | Hey Chrys: What's a "dross inclusion test?" How do you perform one on your solder pot? TTYL Dave F

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