soldering stuff together...

[r6dan]

If I were to make a wire undercarrage would the wire be soldered together with a standard electronics type iron and normal solder?

[Ultymate]

You would usually need a much bigger iron or I would use a flame(torch) I'd bind the joints with a small gauge wire and use plumbers solder and I use Bakers fluid flux.

[Bruce Richards]

You can use normal solder but an electronics soldering iron will not be powerful enough. I usually use a gas torch to solder my wire undercarriages and thick plumber solder. You can buy a torch from the local DIY shop for a reasonable price. Try something like this. You can probably find cheaper ones if you try. Don't forget to get some flux I use Laco.

Edited By Bruce Richards - Moderator on 22/11/2010 10:30:15

[r6dan]

Ah..I get it, so really it is almost like gas welding but on a much smaller scale I think i will find myself a nice gas tourch ! cheers guys

[Bruce Richards]

Well it's not like welding because it is soldering just that the heat is provided by the torch rather than an iron. With welding you melt part of the components to the joined with soldering you don't.

 

You can use an iron for soldering U/C but it would need to be a big powerful iron or even a gas iron. The main trick with torch soldering is not to get it too hot.

 

You can also do silver soldering with a gas torch this is stronger than soft soldering and can be used on components that get hot (exhausts). to do silver soldering you need to get the components red hot.

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Dan don't forget the binding wire Ulty refers to, very important. I use 5 amp fuse wire. BInd it around the joint - 10+ turns if possible. I'm a fussy devil were soldering is concerned and I wear latex gloves to do the binding so as to avoid getting any grease from my fingers on it. I clean the u/c wire itself with an abrasive before I bind on the wire.

 

Once all that is in place I then I use dilute phosphoric acid as a flux. Heat the whole joint then aim to flood the whole thing - u/c and binding wire - with solder. If everything is right (temperature and cleaniness) you should see the solder "flash" over the whole surface very quickly.

 

You can do this for average size u/c's with a iron provided its at least 75watts and themostatically controlled so you can get it really hot. The u/c wire acts as a very effective heatsink so it can be difficult getting everything hot enough - but with skill and practice it can be done. A torch is easier - but as Bruce says be careful because you don't want to get it too hot - or you might effect the temper of the steel.

 

BEB

[Plummet]

Posted by Bruce Richards - Moderator on 22/11/2010 10:27:40:
You can use normal solder but an electronics soldering iron will not be powerful enough. I usually use a gas torch to solder my wire undercarriages and thick plumber solder. You can buy a torch from the local DIY shop for a reasonable price. Try something like this. You can probably find cheaper ones if you try. Don't forget to get some flux I use Laco.

Edited By Bruce Richards - Moderator on 22/11/2010 10:30:15

 I have to add something to this.

 

If you are lucky enough to have one of the professional soldering irons designed for electronics work you are usually OK.  Mine is a 60W temperature controlled iron.  I would always recommend a temperature controlled iron if you can afford it.  A non controlled iron will get too hot, and cool down when you start doing heavy work.  My iron starts at the right temperature, and as soon as it cools the element pours in the heat.  It makes life (well soldering, anyway) a lot easier.

 

Plummet  

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Posted by Bruce Richards - Moderator on 22/11/2010 10:27:40:
. Don't forget to get some flux I use Laco.

Edited By Bruce Richards - Moderator on 22/11/2010 10:30:15

 I haven't used Laco flux but it's usually very important to clean the flux residue properly otherwise you're likely to suffer from corrosion in the future

[Bruce Richards]

What about this for under £7.50?

[Steve W-O]

Must admit, I've never had any problem soldering upto 8 swg wire with an ordinary iron.

 

All my irons from smallest to biggest are Antex now, except for one very large one used for soldering 1/2" copper cables.

 

Keep things clean, and use a decent solder (Ersin multicore, as I have plenty).

 

If the solder melts and flows when you put it on the wire on the opposite side to the iron, it's fine.  If you put the solder on the iron and try and apply it like plaster, it isn't working.

 

I use the cores from cat5 cable for binding, or the solid telephone extension cables.

 

The best way is to watch someone who can solder, it is far simpler than any instructions.

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Steve W-O]

Posted by Phil Wood on 22/11/2010 15:21:06:

Many people make the mistake of not having the parts to be joined hot enough......you can't just drop hot solder onto the joint.

Use YouTube for advice.........here's an example.

Pol.

 

 

Yes, I agree this is the biggest problem with people soldering who don't normally solder, hence my comment  "If the solder melts and flows when you put it on the wire on the opposite side to the iron, it's fine.  If you put the solder on the iron and try and apply it like plaster, it isn't working."

It is most important thathe solder can flow in from a point away from the iron, you should not need to move the iron around, it only need to heat up the work.

The only time solder should be applied to the iron is to wet it to carry the heat to the job.

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Stephen Grigg]

Funny story here,last winter my mate borrowed my Espace to collect a Motor cycle.Theheater was pretty poor,so guess what he bought to keep him warm,One of the blow torches shown here,think Ill nick it for my soldering,it didnt really keep him warm though.

[John Privett]

Supplementary question: 

 

Why it that Americans seem not to notice that the third letter in solder is "L"?  Every american video I've seen on youtube about soldering talks about "soddering."   Sounds slightly rude!

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Danny Fenton]

are you going to moderate yourself there Phil?

 

I would just ad that if you are going to solder and are going to buy equipment consider a blowlamp, if only to allow you to do some silver soldering too.

 

Cheers

Danny

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Steve W-O]

Posted by John Privett on 22/11/2010 20:32:49:

Supplementary question: 

 

Why it that Americans seem not to notice that the third letter in solder is "L"?  Every american video I've seen on youtube about soldering talks about "soddering."   Sounds slightly rude!

 Because the third letter is "L" in English

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Big Bandit]

Dan,

 

I use Fluxite from the plumbers merchant, it's acidic and helps to keep the joint clean. It's also useful to dip the end of the solder into the flux, before applying the solder to the joint.

 

I always use steel wool to clean a joint, rather than sand paper as it avoids the adhesive used to bind the abrasive to the paper from contaminating the joint.

 

Chris.

[Peter Beeney]

   Just to as an agreement to the other poster’s ideas and techniques, may I add that I, too, would certainly use a gas torch in the right circumstances; such as heavy gauge wire undercarriages. What I did many years ago, was obtain a Primus propane gas bottle, it’s about the size of an aerosol can and you hire this from a builders merchants, on a ‘for ever’ basis. I use Travis Perkins. It’s very inexpensive, and lasts a long time. Plus there is a good variety of interchangeable nozzles. It’s absolutely perfect for copper plumbing jobs, too.
   Like BB, wire wool for cleaning, something like 15A fuse wire for binding, much as a ring is whipped to a fishing rod, and I use Powerflow flux, also used by plumbers, very similar. I’ve used this for many many years, on batteries and wires etc. and I’ve never had any problems whatsoever from corrosion or similar. Just wipe the excess residue off while it’s warm, and clean off later if really necessary. There is now a lead-free version I believe.
   I’ve also got a solder station with an adjustable temperature iron. Also a selection of solder is useful, I have a very fine version, like cotton, but it still has a resin flux core, which is brilliant for very small work. This is a legacy from my working days. Radio Shack Rosin is a supplementary flux here.

   Talking of working days, also a while back now, and just for interest, occasionally we did aluminium soldering. This was fairly hefty stuff. An aluminium bus-bar, half an inch thick, one foot wide and thirteen foot long. To join this, the ends of two bars would be clamped together, in a ‘square‘ joint. 1ft × 1ft. The big problem with ali is that the surface oxidises very quickly, this is a bit of an insulator so has to be avoided. So you can coat it in solder, tinning is a good word for it… This is known as ‘abrasive solder’.
   This was the technique. Draw file the end to make sure it was nice and flat, sometimes the bar could be distorted, and this could be laborious. Then heat it up it up with a large (read, big!) burner and gas bottle. The solder came in large sticks, from memory they were about eighteen inches long, an inch wide and a quarter of an inch thick. When the bar was hot enough, you simply rubbed the solder on the bar and it flowed out perfectly, much as lead-tin solder does on copper. You never used any flux, always dry. I believe this solder was very expensive. When you had a nice molten pool completely covering the area you scraped it of with a straight edge held tight against the bar; the paxolin insulation separator for the clamp was perfect for this. This left a nice shiny, very flat surface, to mate perfectly with the one you’d just done previously. The amount you scraped off, a considerable blob, went on the next joint; one pole would be completely insulated, the other left bare.
   Testing the joint for quality might also be of interest. The impedance (resistance) of the joint had to be at least as low as the bar that it’s made from, in theory, lower, because the cross sectional area is greater. This was measured using using a galvanometer, a special kind of voltmeter that reads very low voltages. A measured current would be flowing through the joint, say 40A, a measured 1ft would be marked either side of the joint, the leads, they had sharp points, placed on the marks and a reading taken. This is the volt drop of that short length of bar. The readings from both sides would be averaged, and then the joint tested, one probe on one bar, the other probe on the other bar. And, as I said, it had be a lower reading. You are probably looking at micro volts here.
Multiple bar joints got very complicated, tinned on both sides, for a start, and there was a set procedure and sequence for testing the bars. They always had to be tailor made for each installation, shaped, bent and cut to length. Here you really did measure twice, cut once! Sometimes measured ten times, drawn out on the floor for good measure, and then checked again et al.

   So it’s quite possible that an iffy joint in an electric powered model might have quite a restrictive (sorry), effect on the performance.

   Hope this is of interest.                       PB