Solder wire is an alloy used in the electronics industry for soldering electronic components onto the printed circuit board or two pieces of metal.
Solder can be leaded (Sn/Pb) or lead-free (with no lead). Both leaded and lead-free solder can be either flux cored (with flux in the core of the wire) or solid (with no flux in the core.).
Solder Flux
Solder flux is a kind of chemical used by electronic companies to clean surfaces of PCB before soldering electronic components onto the board. The main function of using flux in any circuit board assembly or rework is to clean and remove any oxide from the board prior to soldering.
Solder flux helps to deoxidize metals (copper tracks on the PCB and leads of electronic components) and helps better soldering and wetting.
What is Cored Solder Wire?
Cored solder wire is hollow solder wire with flux in the core. Solid solder wire doesn’t have this flux in the core. They are solid. The flux in the core of the 'cored' wire can be rosin flux or water-soluble flux.
Cored solder wire is available in various combination of alloy and in various diameters ranging from 0.2 to 1.5mm. It is basically used in hand soldering and rework.
Advantages of Cored Solder Wire
Cored wire has several advantages over solid wire. As explained above, oxides, oil, grease and other such unwanted material can get deposited on the tracks of the printed circuit board and the surface of component leads.
This oxide and all unwanted impurities must be removed before soldering to get perfect solder joints. These impurities can affect the performance of the circuit board. Soldering flux does this job. Flux removes oxides and other unwanted impurities form the surface of the copper tracks of the board and from the component lead surface.
Use of cored solder wire saves both time and money.
Soldering Cored Solder Wire
With solid wire, one has to use flux separately to clean unwanted impurities. This flux is applied on the board and on the soldering tip before hand soldering with a soldering station. With flux cored solder wire, there is no need to apply flux separately. The flux present in the wire will keep cleaning the board and components leads while soldering.
Kester and Alpha are worldwide leaders and manufacture of flux cored solder wire, solder paste, solder flux, solder preforms, solder bar, lead free solder and other soldering related products for the electronics manufacturing and PCB assembly industry.
Santosh Das - Hi ! I am Santosh Das, an electronics engineer and a professional blogger. Having worked as area manager for an electronics company ...
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