Desoldering Braid

Yes, all you need is Techspray desoldering braid (wick) and a soldering iron. Here are the basic instructions: 1) Place the braid over unwanted solder, preferably on the greatest solder build up so that it maximizes the contact of the braid to the surface area of the solder. 2) Next, place your iron tip over the wick at 45 degrees and allow heat to transfer to the pad. Molten solder will absorb into the braid. 3) Move the solder tip and braid as needed to remove all of the solder at one time. Careful not to drag the braid over the pads, which can scratch. 4) Once the braid is full of solder, you must trim the spent portion and move to fresh braid in order to pull more solder. Remove the iron and braid simultaneously to avoid soldering the wire to the board.

Desoldering braid is available in various flux types depending on your cleaning process and other requirements: 1) Rosin: Rosin fluxed braid has the fastest wicking action but does leave behind residues that need to be thoroughly cleaned. 2) No-Clean: No-clean fluxed braid is ideal when cleaning isn’t practical or possible. After desoldering, the only thing that remains is a clear, non-ionic residue. For field work, when a thorough cleaning is more challenging, this is the type of braid to use. 3) Unfluxed: In a production or repair environment where the flux is specified and can’t be changed, or when an aqueous flux is needed, you can add your own flux to this type of braid. Unfluxed wick will not remove solder unless flux is added. Different types of fluxes are available in pen packaging, which is ideal for fluxing braid.

Desoldering braid or “wick” is a pre-fluxed copper braid that is used to remove solder, which allows components to be replaced and excess solder (e.g. bridging) to be removed. The soldering iron is applied to the wick as it sits on the solder joint, and when both are brought up to the solder's melting point, the flux is activated and, through capillary action from the braided design, solder is drawn up the wick.

No, not if your concern is only reliability problems from ionic contamination. No-clean flux contains minimal ionic material that is fully consumed when the flux is activated, or in other words, brought to soldering temperature. If all of the flux isn’t activated, like when you apply a lot of flux but only solder a small area, you still need to clean the PCB. If you are applying conformal coating, you should remove all flux residues, regardless of the type of flux. Most people understand that when painting something, the surface must be prepared so it is absolutely clean. Otherwise, the paint will quickly lift off the surface and peel off. The same logic applies to conformal coating, even when the contamination is from no-clean flux.