glitch
Veteran Member
Ok I admit I am no solder genius. I was using acid solder flux to clean everything up until I starting asking on this forum how to solder the XTIDE. In short I found out acid solder flux is nasty.
This is not entirely true -- the old acid fluxes are terrible for PCBs (or any electronics, they're not even recommended for point-to-point tube wiring), but there are many modern fluxes that are based on organic acids. If you really prefer using a liquid flux and solid solder, give Alpha 850 flux a try. We use it for all of our assembly at work, even though we use Kester 63/37 "organic core" solder. It's an organic flux that remains water soluble after use, so you /must/ wash the board afterwards, but it gives really great joints. All of the XTIDE boards I assembled for Hargle were given a brushing of Alpha 850 before soldering.