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Comment by atahanacar | Hacker News Reader

I used to "suck" at soldering, until one day I was recommended a Louis Rossmann video by Youtube and decided to watch it. Once I saw how much flux he used, I started to use more flux and as it turns out, that was my problem.

That is my problem with this article. Flux is only superficially in a sentence. So my tip to beginners: Cleaning flux is way easier than struggling to solder with little/no flux.

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learning that way will also have you relying on flux for through-holes, though. you can get really good without flux, just takes some tip cleaner and a brass cleaning pad, and you'll end up wasting less on the smd jobs

>learning that way will also have you relying on flux for through-holes, though

Is that really a problem, especially for a beginner? I can understand if you are soldering a lot, you will be faster without the need to constantly add flux and save resources but at that point, I think the repetition will let you get better over time anyway.

Hmm. Soldering since before I could talk, then professionally for a couple decades, and I never used flux once. It's in the solder.

You can solder carefully without adding flux. Or you add flux and it erases all mistakes before you make them. There's no need to make it more challenging when flux is available.

Do you have a link to the video by any chance?

Not really, it was around spring 2018. He was joking about how one can never have enough flux.

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