George received a freebee Flux remover spray from Farnell. Flux is awesome, we cannot imagine soldering SMD components without it. The down side is that they usually leave residue on the board. This spray is one way to remove it.
Point the can on the area you want to clean and the high pressured chemicals do the rest. If you’re interested you can get them for around $17 a piece, or use a solvent bath like we do.
I was also looking for a flux remover but did not want to keep highly flammable materials at home, so I ended up buying the material below, which is non-flammable:
http://www.microcare.com/pc-22-5-flux-remover-c.aspx
A quick google search reveals it even costs slightly less (for approx. the same size)
http://www.hmcelectronics.com/product/MicroCare/MCC-FRC
(BTW, I didn’t get a chance to use it yet).
back when I ordered my hot air rework station, I picked up a syrine of flux from the same place as they claimed it was water soluble. I’ve had it for 2-3 yrs (obviously not using it much) but it works great on solder (60/40 at least) and to wash it off I just use water and dish soap. I have not used any moisture sensitive chips. I did pressure wash the motherboard of my PC about 10 yrs ago, let it dry for a bit, and it worked great afterward.
a simple break-cleaner will do wonders to pcbs and it’s cheap, but sure a bit smelly, so you need to work outside…
For thru-hole boards, I have used Windex + soft bristled toothbrush followed by rinsing off with distilled water. Just be sure to let the board dry!
I also like to use isopropyl alcohol
and the Windex does not damage anything on the board such as plastic connectors?
oops, see my comment below
You will have to experiment on your own to identify this. I don’t know the answer.
I used to only use 90+% isopropyl alcohol, but didn’t like the white residue that still occasionally would be left behind. Windex takes that right off and from my 2 years of using it for personal stuff, I found it did not affect icsp connectors, 7-segments, and other plastic-y elements.
I do not agree. Look at http://matrixsalesinc.blogspot.com/2010/02/pick-and-place-machine-pm.html
– Amparo