Cleaning boards?

[SteveW]

Post solder cleaning, chaps - how's best?
Does no-clean flux work?
I'm doing low enough volume that I'm probably less concerned about consumable costs than most. I just want an easy life...

[phonoplug]

Never found it necessary to do any additional cleaning after reflow. Perhaps the paste I use is particularly tidy, I dont know.

[Gopher]

No-clean all the way with us, some conventional hand soldering might get a clean for fussy customers (by hand no fancy washing machine) but for surface mount there is no need with the paste we use (LF-318) or the no-clean equivalents I have sampled from BLT etc.

We did have a prospective customer who hand soldered all their surface mount with a soldering iron, then cleaned it, then tested it, then reworked it, then cleaned it etc but I assume their application was more than usually sensitive. Or perhaps sonic cleaning is not what its cracked up to be, the hand soldering itself was very impressive however, albeit a huge bottleneck to them.

As I understand it cleaning is much more popular stateside or if you have stuff on the go for the MoD.

If you are using no-clean flux and there is flux around after reflow, I would check the actual board profile through the oven against the datasheet for your paste.