[Gray_Wolf]

On Sun, 15 Feb 2015 22:14:35 +0100, Mike Rivers
wrote:

On 2/15/2015 10:00 PM, mcp6453 wrote:
Out of curiosity, why is the acid stuff usable on copper pipes but not on copper electronic things?

I suppose because a little corrosion isn't as harmful on a large piece
of pipe as it is on a little circuit board, where it's likely to
contaminate other parts than just what you're soldering at the moment.

Just the vapor/spatter from acid flux can cause you some serious
current leakage problems. Found this out, as a kid, while soldering a
broken mounting lug on the tuning capacitor of a tube radio. In a high
impedance circuit this stuff acts as a dead short. I worked on a solid
state guitar amp that a coca-cola had spilled and gotten the power amp
PCB wet. The results were about the same. Some Windex, a good
distilled water rinse and blow dry got things back to normal. I can't
remember if there was any component failure or not.