We know that soldering a stainless component to a printed circuit board (PCB) is a challenge.  This is because the kind of aggressive flux you need to solder stainless steel has the mind of strong chemicals you don’t want on your PCB, chief among them Zinc Chloride.

Sure, our No. 71 stainless steel soldering flux is effective when soldering stainless steel, but you wouldn’t want this flux anywhere near a PCB.  Sure, No.71 is a water-soluble flux, so technically you can wash away the harmful residues.  Or so you think.  Flux residues have a way of wandering off where you don’t want them, and the wrong kind of flux residue will destroy a PCB.

(Stainless Steel might look “clean” to our eyes, but it actually develops a noncorrosive layer of iron oxide on its surface. This layer of oxides serves as a barrier, preventing solder from bonding to the surface of the Stainless Steel without the use of flux.)

Fortunately, we’ve worked on a number of ways for safely soldering a stainless steel component to a PCB.  We’ve written about some of these before, but sometimes words just don’t cut it.

So, for the viewing audience, we’ve added a new video to the Superior Flux YouTube Channel, creatively entitled “Three Methods for Soldering Stainless Steel to a PCB.”