Danger: No-Clean Flux in Cables and Harnesses

Cable/Harness Testing Made Easy.

If you solder to contacts in your cable/harness assemblies, you may be introducing an invisible source of failures. Even if you use crimp contacts, the soldering of shields may create the same risk. Our newsletter this month focuses on opens and poor connections caused by flux on contact surfaces.

If you have any questions or comments, call us at 1-800-441-9910.

Best Regards,
Marlin Shelley
President

Have you ever been blindsided by invisible defects in a cable assembly? How would you make sense out of a cable that, when tested, has opens. Yet when buzzed out with an ohmmeter, the connections are there? Flux on the surface of connector contacts, where they make contact with a mating connector, can cause this kind of failure.

Are "no-clean" fluxes safer to use? No, they are worse. If no-clean flux gets on a contact surface and is allowed to cure, with heat from a heat gun or soldering of the contact, it becomes nearly impossible to remove. Normal solvents, such as alcohol, will not help. With one small error, you might turn a perfectly good cable into a permanently defective cable. To lean more, including how to recognize flux on contacts and actions you can take, see our technical note on no-clean flux in connectors:

No-Clean Flux in Cables

No-clean flux may look clean, but it's not.

Flux can coat pins and cause connections to fail. The lower photo uses a UV light source to make the flux visible.

See us next at these shows:

APEX, Los Angeles, CA February 20-21
Wire Harness Manufacturers Association Conference, San Francisco, CA April 12-14
Wire Processing Expo, Milwaukee May 23-24

For more tradeshow information see our Trade Show Schedule.

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