Hi, i have been looking into buying a spool (say 500/1lb) of general purpose leaded solder just to have it last a good time (considering how ROHS requirements are getting more and more stringent as time passes).
So far i have been soldering with a spool of Fixpoint 51062 (60/38/2% Cu, 0.56mm 2% No clean (maybe? it says nothing on the label)) and love it so much i wanted to get something as close as possible, so i bought a spool of Kester Solder 24-6337-8807 (63/37, 0.5mm, No Clean) from Amazon US and when i tested it was good. Joints are really shiny and look beautiful, theres only a small problem... The amount of flux is way way too low (1.1%) and this makes annoying to work on anything that isnt a spotless brand new pcb, and doesnt keep the tips clean as easily. When adding a small amount of solder to the tip, the fixpoint solder smokes quite a bit for a long length of time, while the kester one emits one single puff of smoke and just stops.
Because of this i have concluded this wasnt the all purpose kind of solder i was looking for. Looking for alternatives, it seems like the only other option on amazon us is kester solder with 3.3% 44 flux, which i would say its the polar opposite of the one i returned: lots and lots of RA not no clean flux which would make lots of brown flux residues and laborious to clean, so i'm not too sure its something i want to get myself into.
Digikey also seems pretty interesting because they stock spools with 3.3% 285 RMA flux, which might be a happy medium between the RA and no clean, as well as 2.2% 245 No Clean. For 3.3% No clean i could only find it in 0.8mm, which might be too thick when doing SMD.
So i'm currently on a standstill deciding what to do. Would 2.2% No clean be enough? Would 3.3% RMA be a better balance? Is 3.3% RA actually not that bad when it comes to residues and cleaning? I'm struggling to make a decision.
Any suggestions?