Flux and Solder types for SMD?

[Breeze]

Hi!

I just got my GM5 chips and boards (Thank you, Thorsten!!), and while I'm a long time electronics DIYer, I've never done SMD. I've looked at several tutorial pages and videos on the web so I'm ok with the techniques and I have an old PC motherboard I'm going to experiment on before I touch the GM5 kit.

BUT I realize I have to get flux and very thin solder and when I went looking on sites for these I realized that there's many different kinds of each. For example Digikey has all these types of fluxes and many different types of solder (lead-free, water-soluble, rosin activated, solid wire (no flux), etc...

So what should I use for SMD? Perhaps better: what are you using?

Thanks for any tips!

Steve

Edited January 16, 2010 by Breeze

[nILS]

Thin good, rosin core good, lead free bad.

I use 0.5mm diameter Stannnol S-Sn60Pb39Cu1.

I've never used flux. I don't necessarily recommend doing that, just saying you can go without.