Consider a hand rework situation.
We had a revelation from our production floor that occasionally a certain
product is cleaned using a no-clean flux pen.  We have a product that the
customer is very stringent that if we use no-clean solder on their product,
we must not clean any residue off the board with our standard board wash.
However, if a component is removed and replaced during a rework situation,
often there is a lot of excess flux residue left on the board.  It came to
light that in order to make this look better, they were applying a small
amount of no-clean flux to the area with a flux pen, and then scrubbing the
area with a brush.

There were several horrified expressions around the table when this came to
light.

What would be the dangers of doing this?  The board is not heated like a
reflow situation, or anything like that, after the 'cleaning' operation, so
does this mean the flux may not be 'inert'?  I thought that it is no-clean
flux used in the rework in the first place - why do they need to clean it
off?  They said that it looked awful, and the inspectors wouldn't let the
product thru if it wasn't cleaned up.

Thoughts, suggestions?  Should we be horrified, or just let them continue?

Genny Gibbard ( mailto:[log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> )



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