0XI0
Roadie
- Messages
- 648
i got a new chingchang soldering station yesterday from amazon, it's the first iron i've ever had with adjustable temperature. before now i only ever used the handheld 40w cheap ones to swap pickups or change out pots.
been watching a bunch of youtube videos on iron temperature and techniques and, what is this flux stuff. i guess most soldier has some flux in it that's enough to get the job done so i never knew about this yellow goop or what it's for.
i also never understood why i would destroy pots from overheating because i had to hold the iron on it until the whole thing was basically smoking to even get the little bubble of soldier to melt and hold a little wire.
well i don't know what flux is but i bought a can of it and got my new chingchang station fired up and went to clean up a pile of old 3 way toggles and pots with various stuff still attached to them. maxed out the iron to 800 something to see if it will explode, and it worked great at first. but then like the small 40w irons i always used after a while it stopped wanting to melt anything unless you hold it there and grind on it. the iron is maxed out and you can hold it right up against a blob of matte grey old soldier and it doesn't do nothing for like 40 seconds, and everything around it starts to melt.
so i tried gobbing some of this yellow goop on the blob of old soldier, and then touching it again with the hot iron. and i swear to you that flux is witchcraft. gobbed in flux, the iron punched straight through the grey-silver hex of broken permissions and the blob violently melted with a satisfying puff of smoke as if to say "ahhhhh finally" and the flux melted down like butter on a potato. and i just realized that the barrier has nothing at all to do with temperature.
i thought of vacuum tubes that have to operate in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen or they'll burn up. i thought of sunken ships preserved for hundreds of years underwater that turn into dust within hours of being brought up into the air. i thought of rocket fuel. i thought of what red blood vessels do when they touch air in the lung membranes.
my mind is blown. i'm holding a 800 degree iron against just one layer of oxidation on a blob of soldier, and it won't do jack. but remove the oxygen from around the contact area and the whole thing lets go violently. i'm thinking about a 4D type of chemical surface tension. oxygen is so powerful that a few molecules in a layer can block all this heat??? and add oxygen to a fire and it accelerates like crazy. and oxygen can disassemble steel?? and uh it's the primary aerosol fuel source for EARTH. oxygen is NUTS. but now i know why my soldering iron tip always looked like a fire poker and didn't do anything but smoke and melt things before.
been watching a bunch of youtube videos on iron temperature and techniques and, what is this flux stuff. i guess most soldier has some flux in it that's enough to get the job done so i never knew about this yellow goop or what it's for.
i also never understood why i would destroy pots from overheating because i had to hold the iron on it until the whole thing was basically smoking to even get the little bubble of soldier to melt and hold a little wire.
well i don't know what flux is but i bought a can of it and got my new chingchang station fired up and went to clean up a pile of old 3 way toggles and pots with various stuff still attached to them. maxed out the iron to 800 something to see if it will explode, and it worked great at first. but then like the small 40w irons i always used after a while it stopped wanting to melt anything unless you hold it there and grind on it. the iron is maxed out and you can hold it right up against a blob of matte grey old soldier and it doesn't do nothing for like 40 seconds, and everything around it starts to melt.
so i tried gobbing some of this yellow goop on the blob of old soldier, and then touching it again with the hot iron. and i swear to you that flux is witchcraft. gobbed in flux, the iron punched straight through the grey-silver hex of broken permissions and the blob violently melted with a satisfying puff of smoke as if to say "ahhhhh finally" and the flux melted down like butter on a potato. and i just realized that the barrier has nothing at all to do with temperature.
i thought of vacuum tubes that have to operate in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen or they'll burn up. i thought of sunken ships preserved for hundreds of years underwater that turn into dust within hours of being brought up into the air. i thought of rocket fuel. i thought of what red blood vessels do when they touch air in the lung membranes.
my mind is blown. i'm holding a 800 degree iron against just one layer of oxidation on a blob of soldier, and it won't do jack. but remove the oxygen from around the contact area and the whole thing lets go violently. i'm thinking about a 4D type of chemical surface tension. oxygen is so powerful that a few molecules in a layer can block all this heat??? and add oxygen to a fire and it accelerates like crazy. and oxygen can disassemble steel?? and uh it's the primary aerosol fuel source for EARTH. oxygen is NUTS. but now i know why my soldering iron tip always looked like a fire poker and didn't do anything but smoke and melt things before.
YOU CAN DRINK IT LIKE WATER! 
They get dirty FAST and when the iron tip is nice and shiny metallic they'll usually melt the solder quickly.
