All the fluxless soldering methods I have seen involve flux..... of some sort
or another. Depends what you mean by the word, - to reduce to the bare
essentials.

Meaning 1: A liquid used during soldering
Meaning 2: A process or chemical which removes oxides from surfaces to be
joined using solder.

Now as all metal surfaces become oxidised and oxide doesn't solder very well,
it has to be removed one way or the other. So if you don't have meaning 1,
then you have to have meaning 2. Meaning 2 incorporates ultrasonics, reducing
atmospheres, preparation fluids and so on.
As the poet said: A rose by any other name is still a rose..... but you can
call it fluxless soldering if you call it meaning 1. If you see what I mean.
Marketing types are usually proposing a proprietary variant of meaning 2, and
narrowly define a flux as a liquid  (meaning 1) in order to get their message
across.


Mike Fenner

-----------------


In a message dated 10/03/99  06:38:38PM,  [log in to unmask]
writes:

> Richard Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> March 10, 1999  8:46 am >>>
>  Hello fellow TechNetters,
>
>  Well, we were asked a question by the design engineering manager yesterday
>  if we had considered a fluxless soldering process. We are aware of a
process
>  called Solid Solder Deposit (SSD), but not a fluxless process by name.
>
>  After the manager read us the email he got from one of the marketing types,
>  I tend to believe that he was referring to no-clean process because of a
>  reference in his note about cleaning boards at a previous manufacturer
(TI).
>  My guess (oh how I hate to guess/assume) is that this marketing type has
>  just mixed up a couple of buzz-words together,.....kinda like 'military
>  intelligence'. I mean look at it, 'no-clean flux', I can see how a sales
>  person would want to shorten that to 'no-flux'. Now as usual, it is up to
us
>  manufacturing people to invent the process that has been sold to the
>  customer!!
>

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