SDG  

To save on solvent for small jobs you can put water in the bath, put some solvent in a plastic box large enough to take the board, put the lid on the box and then clean. I've seen people do this with a ziplock bag as well.

Crystals tend to fail when given the ultrasonic treatment, best to fit them after cleaning.

What a great video. I was very supprised to see that much corrosion with some fluxes.

Thanks Steve! I am also a firm believer in using plenty of flux. I guess that I better be careful with my Amtech flux!

I've used this brand of sonic cleaner for a couple of Years now, & never had any issues with it, good helpful video.

Good information! Thank you for your research.

Also interesting would be a long time test with a voltage potential Applied to the PCB, testing fluxes and the flux inside solder wire. Tank you again for your amazing test!

excellent research to fluxes, thank you very much!

I recall from the really old times when in one of the electronics magazines there was a reader question about how much ultrasonic cleaning was O.K. The magazine checked with some semiconductor manufacturers and got an answer: NONE! That was in the times when transistors were in metal cans and so were the very first op-amps. Probably the chips (bonding wires) have changed since, or at least I hope so.

My Caig rosin flux from the US works brilliant, the problem is the flux becomes unremovable tar. IPA, engine degreaser, and ammonia surface spray hardly budges it. Then I remembered kerosene melts wax, so I tried it and it work pretty good. Kero only softens the flux, but after that IPA removes it quite easily.

Excellent info and quite well done 👍😁 Thank you 🇺🇸

I have to agree that electrolube fluxclene is excellent. However, if you get the non-aerosol version, using it in a spray bottle with a anti-static brush you use much much less! Also it has a nice lemon smell :)

For anyone looking to buy one of these, I checked and found good options locally (netherlands) with similar price and performance to what you can buy from china. Don't have to wait for shipping and you get actual warranty.

We need the flip-side now. Given a board and/or components with graded levels of oxidation: how effective are each of the fluxes you happen to have?

Its not the board damage that is the problem. Its conductivity! Old flux loves to pull moisture onto itself. So as it sits around more and more water accumulates inside, mixing with the pretty ionic chemicals makes a conductive electrolyte that can start to leak current between near by solder joints. In some situations this can cause resistances in the range of kiloohms to appear and cause the circuit to malfunction after working just fine for months. I have fixed boards before by simply cleaning the flux off.

I’ve been using ultrasonic bath commercial cleaning product specific for PCB cleaning but I found that in order to get a clean board you come out with a very oxidate solder joints that make the board look pretty nasty. One suggestion, try using distillate water for the bath after have cleaned the board with Viakal (commercial name of a descaler )with the help of a brush. After some brushing just put the Viakal soaked board like this in the warm bath for at least 6 minutes. It will come out like a brand new shiny little board ;-) Viakal is the way. Other tested products are very “soapy” and very hard to wash again with distilled water after the bath which makes the process really tedious. You can clean the board with tap water if you finally wash it again in the distilled one.

I was always afraid those ultrasonic cleaners may crack some solder joints or damage components on the board. As long as I know, industrial manufacturing processes of PCB, even for consumer electronics, does not include ultrasonic cleaning. Cleaning is always done in a bath of flowing solvents. According to me, ultrasonic cleaning is only good for solid pieces of any hard material with no potential to resonate at ultrasonic frequency, therefore stress mechanically to the point where damage may occure. Any kind of bonds in the piece you're subjecting to ultrasonic waves are endangered. In general, the idea of ultrasonic cleaning is to make small and unwanted surface particles or layers of them to vibrate wild enough and separate from your piece. And for that, the good part of that piece has to be heavier in order to have much lower resonant frequency. The fact that people do it and in most cases have no issues doesn't mean it's a good practice. Same way, most people crossing on red light doesn't get run over but some do. The more often you cross on red light, the bigger the chance to get run over. Same with the ultrasonic cleaning of PCBs.

Hey mate! great video - thanks. what about components? can you go over how this would go if there were SMT components? what is the drying procedure for assembled boards?

I always appreciate your videos and I agree always with your opinions but this time I must disagree. I own that ultrasonic cleaner. It is dangerous. This because it has the thermocouple attached to the tank only with adhesive alluminium tape (as you can see at 13:41) and it's NOT bonded to the tank with thermal glue. Because of this, (on my unit happened) the heat generated during a cycle can easily detach the alluminium tape and the thermocouple will start flapping in the breeze. So, without thermal control, the heating goes uncontrolled: the liquid boil, evaporates, what's inside become damaged and if you don't supervise the unit, it potentially can catch or cause a fire. My unit was a bigger model with water tap to easily empty the tank, it was so low quality that rusted in just one day, contaminating the solution inside. GT Sonic it's not "professional" as they claim on the label.

The main concern of left overs of flux is that can start to conduct over time, right? The toothbrush method with alcohol (and (paper) cloth) still works a treat. Is there a machine available with a fine brush for both sides, I think that would be faster and doesn't need liters of liquid.

So, what are the recommended fluxes to avoid having to buy the ultrasonic cleaner?

Ultrasound can cause hearing damage. So wearing a hearing protection is indeed a good idea with a device that emits 100W of 'non-musical' power into a small room. (Or maybe leave the room, or design a sound dampening enclosure ...)

Not sure if I caught it, but how long did you leave the flux samples on the test boards? Some of the spots are shocking! Is there an ultrasonic cleaner that has different size pots for different size boards? Thanks & I subbed! 🤓

Goog explain , continue

In general is the tank liquid a one-time use only? Just curious; think we all used to reuse etchant for example until it was no longer capable of taking the copper off. I realize the solutions are relatively inexpensive but never having owned a cleaner I'm wondering. Thanks for sharing, I just read the warning note posted about the thermocouple and look forward to hearing what you think after you investigate.

Great review Steve 👍.. I had the 3L version of this cleaner initially, but sold it and got the 6L one as unfortunately Macbook boards were a tad long to fit in the smaller one. They're a great little unit though and I love mine. I noticed 'Anyones' comment regarding the thermocouple falling off so will check mine tomorrow and have the thermal glue ready 🙂 Cheers mate John

I have heard that IPA in an ultrasonic cleaner creates an explosion hazard, as it's agitating a heated solvent. There are also a number of components that I've had issues cleaning, including some crystals and microcontrollers that have died a few days after cleaning and drying.

Interesting test to show the importance of cleaning flux residue, nice job 👍I also have a sealed bottle of that TermoPasty water-based cleaner, I never opened it because I thought it may be intended for cleaning water based fluxes and I don't use that kind of flux, have you tried it?

Great video. Relife and fake amtech for no-clean. Surprised the real Amtech appears not as good, they specify no clean and no corrosion in the datasheet.

Usually, when I apply solder/flux I add components on a pcb... So the big question is whether or not this is applicable to a assembled pcb. Do components like the bath?

please provide link for this water based cleaner

what about flux under ICs like SO, TQFP and Bga packages?

SDG Electronics Were all of these fluxes of the same rating? RA, RMA, or R?

You should test it with solder to . I use Tickcopur TR14 and my boards are sparkling after 2 or 3 min -60°c in the ultrasonic cleaner one downside is my solder joints come from shiny silver to dull dark grey like a gunmetal color. And another thing you could test is what happens if you leave your boards to long in the cleaner ??? It happened to me ,i once left a board in the cleaner for 15 mins and after inspection under the microscope i could see in some places the solder mask was wearing off around some copper pads ,so around some surface mounted components there was copper showing after the solder. It looked like it was etching the solder mask away . This is the product i use (it is a concentrate ) : www.ultrasoniccleaner.co.uk/tickopur-tr14-2-litre.html By the way i use also a 6l 180W cleaner. www.aliexpress.com/item/32916718101.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4d30KHya

What about Senju flux?

You did not try pure rosin dissolved in IPA :(

Kids, clean your flux! ;)

just jump to 9:10 to begin actual testing....

I don't get it. Amtech no clean eats away copper but not gold ?

flux should be cleaned off by the Manufacture as they can deal with environmental issues better

Take care with the drainoff versions : they leak all over your main PCB destroying it !

won't soaking my PCB break it or fry whatever is on there?

You’ll get those 3l cleaners for 70€ on ebay.. don’t waste money on banggood:)

Only thing missing is a degaussing function

Termo Pasty is from Poland. 🇵🇱😉 Poland is everywhere 😁

NASA does not allow ultrasonic cleaning of PCBs because of the mechanical stress issues.

Wiat wait wait....at 9:05 you put 2 boards in and at 9:28 you took 1 board out ( completely different layout as well) then at 9:44 you switch back to the so called 2 boards which are now 1!!!!!! What the hk is that!!!!???????

if you have larger PCBs you can always just break them into pieces that fit and then hot glue them back together.

How dare you, there's no such thing as too much flux...or parsley.