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I have never seen this many warning signs on anything that I have ever bought. I know that I'm supposed to suck away the soldering fumes, even if I use lead free solder, which I'm going to do with a 12 volt computer fan fitted with a carbon filter. But what the heck is in the flux that will damage my nervous system... π putting my mask back on... π·
Iβm not a professional solderer or anything but I had a training course by a bunch of people who do it to a very high level, like they spend all day pulling off and examining chips on boards, etc. They said that you donβt normally need flux, you just need to apply hear properly with the iron. During the whole course the only time they used flux was when they were re-soldering a chip.
Plenty of solder wire is flux core these days. It's basically a metal tube with flux inside. Back in the day this wasn't the case so you had to add the flux yourself. Nowadays it's typically not needed so long as you size your solder gauge correctly. Super fine solder doesn't have much or any flux, and if you're trying to solder huge pads or vias you're gonna have a hard time.
Flux helps heat transfer. Think of it like oil in a frying pan. It conducts the heat from the iron to the solder joint better than just bear contact. For non-delicate components it doesn't matter too much, but if you're working on ICs you don't wanna cook them before all the joints are good. There are also some oxidation inhibiting properties. Ya don't want oxidation on your joints!
Thanks for the valuable input! I might just leave the flux pen rest until really needed.