Does Your Hot Solder Drool and Cover Your Copper Wires Like Hot Butter?

You guys oughtta try soldering electronics with lead free solder. THAT was an interesting "learning curve." The "H Bridge" for our wheel chair drive modules are fed with no10 wire, and the motor leads are also no10. In something like your home hot water heater, a no10 circuit is nominally 30A rated

But on these chairs they can see ONE HUNDRED AMPS per motor for a few seconds if you "hammer" the joystick, or stall it on the test hill

The test hill is so steep I almost refuse to drive up it forwards except when being VERY careful and leaning WAY forwards. It gives me the jeebies.

The 48V chairs are worse yet LOL. They will "wheelie" from a dead stop

I have to use a great big "American beauty" iron on the buss bars to get the bars soldered to the PC board!!!! And again when soldering the no 10 battery or motor wires to the buss bars. That old girl (I call her "Betsy") has a tip about 3/8 or a bit larger in dia, 4 sided point. I believe it's 150W but that is belied by the size of the tip

The two sets of transistors (MOSFETS) along the far top and sides are the H bridge, there are 6 in each leg of the bridge. The round devices are toroid cores with Hall Effect devices for current sensing. One of each of the no 10 motor wires go through them. You can see the buss bars for the motors immediately away from them at top and sides



A completed module. You can see the white motor wires, on the right side you can see the blue so the white and blue drive one motor.





You can see "Betsy" on the far right. She's a biggun!!! For the record, I no longer need the notes/ paperwork. I've built these in my SLEEP!!! ( I think )



Underside, these are the no10 incoming power wires, either 28 or 48V. The outer bars are nearly 1/2" tall and fairly thick. The require a LOT of heat!!



Detail on two of the power wires. The big black resistor is the last component installed. You can just see two of the terminals poking through from the topside, of the motor buss bars. You can just see the white ink says "BB1" There are several per bar, so the entire bar has to be heated to "flow"

Since i been doing leaded windows with reinforced zinc bracing i will put my 2 cents worth in. A few years back the EPA put a stop to 50/50 (1/2 lead and half tin)and 60/40(40 %lead and 60% tin) soldier for copper water lines.They also put a stop to flux with Zinc, So if you are going to the hardware to pick up flux and soldier ,you have to have a lot of heat on the new stuff, thats why plumbers uses torches. If there is a HOBBY LOBBY they keep the 50/50 and the 60/40 both in 1 lb rolls, and also any stain glass company that giver classes or sells to the stain glass material to the public will also have it. I use a 100 watt iron as it takes about 300 degree to melt solder, but a 60 to 80 watt iron will also met the older soldier, the new stuff at the hardware for water lines takes about 400 to 500 degree to make it flow like the 50/50,or 60/40. Dont use rosin core solder, just put the paste where you want the solder to go, if you check at some auto parts stores they have 60/40 in a real fine blister pack, its in the radio section about soldering wire and connectors, also some marinas keep it as well, but you get about 1/2 ounce at these places where with Hobby Lobby it comes in 1lb rolls.

robert flippo said:

Dont use rosin core solder, just put the paste where you want the solder to go,

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Sorry disagree. You should have dedicated "for purpose" electrical/ electronics solder in the proper ratio and with proper flux, whether you have additional flux, or not. And you should not use 50/50 on electrical. Kester used to "may still" market what they called 40/60 "radio" solder, which is just exactly what you need

I'm 70, and the first time I ever soldered anything I was about 12 or 13 years old

Soldering tips need to be oroperly cleaned and tinned in order to last and function properly.

I prefer kester 44 for soldering and always flux core.

At work I use a small "toothbrush" sized stainless bristle brush to clean "Betsy." Available at any welding store, they are used for TIG aluminum

dibbons said:

Yep, usin' rosin core solder.

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They make a flux for wiring that isn`t acidic, I `ve been using it for about 50 yrs, along with plumbers 50/50 wire solder . No problems, get the wire hot enough to let the solder flow. The 50/50 is soft and doesn`t cause brittleness !---PLUMBERS DO IT ALL-------

67Dart273 said:

Sorry disagree. You should have dedicated "for purpose" electrical/ electronics solder in the proper ratio and with proper flux, whether you have additional flux, or not. And you should not use 50/50 on electrical. Kester used to "may still" market what they called 40/60 "radio" solder, which is just exactly what you need
I'm 70, and the first time I ever soldered anything I was about 12 or 13 years old

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I posted earlier, I`m 72, a plumber all my life , except a couple yrs in a pipeline machine shop. I have used 50/50 , and kester soldering paste all my life for every car that I`ve messed with, and never had a failure of any kind with the electrics !!
A lot of good info in these posts, but a lot of B.S. TOO !!
My only problem is remembering the darn heatshrink tubing first .

I typically use barrel crimps AND solder with heat shrink.
But since solder has more resistance than copper what have I accomplished?
Does current flow through each strand or only on the surface?
All I can think of now is Dell doing wheelies in a wheel chair.

Crimp splices can corrode over time since it is only a surface to surface connection. With solder it is a permanent connection where the metals are actually bonded together. The difference in resistance between copper and solder is negligible for solder joints. I do the same thing you do if I can. The better the connection, the less voltage drop. Voltage drops in connections produce heat which makes them corrode faster.

DC Current flows through the whole wire. What you are talking about is “skin effect” where the current is concentrated on the outer surface of the wire. This happens only at high frequencies.

As evidenced by this thread, there are a lot of different techniques used to solder. If you have a technique that works for you, great! The solder joints don’t care after they are finished. The only exception to this is highly activated fluxes or other corrosive fluxes that can have long term degenerative effects. Those should be thoroughly cleaned off if you use them.

...................Or..............LMAO..........."Be a real man!! Use Sil-fos!!!............

67Dart273 said:

...................Or..............LMAO..........."Be a real man!! Use Sil-fos!!!............

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Didn`t watch the video, been there and done that, absolutely nothing to do with soldering wires------

Also for those of u that don`t know, this process turns the fitting into soft copper, too much heat.
95/5 is ''almost'' as good , and doesn`t weaken the fitting------

^^That was intended as a joke but actually some grounding systems are welded

Treblig said:

<snip>
...
I also try to heat up the older wire first to help "suck" the solder in that direction. If one wire has heavier strands it does make it more difficult though but if you put the heat on the heavier wire it will still work out. treblig

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Howard The Stoney Crusty Plumber told me years ago, "solder follows flux, and flux follows heat."

Over the decades, I found this to be true.

dibbons said:

(trimmed down)
...
I do notice the older wires are a few shades darker in color that freshly purchased copper wire.

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Well, that's because those dark wires are what you call corroded

If they get worse, they'll be green and fuzzy. But anything short of looking like a brand new shiny penny is not clean enough... Period.

And, as far as solder having greater electrical resistance than copper wiring... If you're putting enough current through that circuit for this theoretical consideration to come into play, you're putting far too damn much current through that circuit.

In practical use, you should not really see any difference. It's kind of like arguing between running 32 or 32.5 PSI in a tire...

In my remote starter days, i would crimp then solder the ring terminals used for ground connections.
I found if the grounds were as good as you could possibly get, it would improve remote range.

I do a decent amount of soldering at work. Here are some tips I can throw out.

The condition of your soldering iron tip is very important. Never clean it with anything that can scratch away the coating on the tip. I always use one of these brass type tip cleaners. If I'm in a pinch, I'll rub the iron quickly on a rag to clean it. It's not ideal but it's better than something that can remove the coating.



Always "tin" the tip by coating it in solder. This transfers heat much better and makes soldering a million times easier. Also never store your soldering iron away without tinning the tip first. If you don't, the tip will slightly corrode and the next time you fire it up to use it, you'll notice that the solder doesn't want to stick to it. It'll ball up and fall off. If it does this, you have to keep cleaning it and applying solder to it until it flows again. If you just tin the tip before storing it away, the next time you fire it up and clean it off, it'll work correctly right out of the box again.

If I am soldering a crimp style connector that doesn't have plastic on it, I normally just use a small butane torch. The cheapy $5 one at Harbor Freight works well enough for home projects.



Apply the torch to the connector as far away from the wire as possible. You'll know that you're ready to flow solder on it when the connector's color changes. You'll see it kind of glaze over from shiny to dull. As soon as you see that, apply your solder and it'll flow nicely.

What do you mean by "coating", the solder or something else? And once this coating has been worn away, then what? The tip is trash? Thank you.

I would discourage the use of a flame torch to solder most electrical. VERY easy with most torches to get things overheated, and almost impossible to use around other wiring. The butane powered irons are a different matter. I found a decent one at Lowes/ HD for around 20 bucks I used to have (two actually) of the huge Weller Butane. We used them mostly to solder big Heliax feedline connectors on towers. They are big and expensive, and the spark igniters fail a lot. Not worth the money for most home guys

This one: You can remove the tip, put the nut/ shield back together and use it for heat shrink tubing

Bernzomatic ST500T

dibbons said:

What do you mean by "coating", the solder or something else? And once this coating has been worn away, then what? The tip is trash? Thank you.

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Back in the day I used my cheap $10 iron during a carpet installation to poke holes through the carpet for the seat belt bolts. This obviously left a bunch of melted crap all over the tip. I took it over to my bench grinder and just ran the wire wheel on it until it was clean. It cleaned it alright but it took the shiny coating off the tip and it never really worked like it should again. From that point on, the solder would just ball up and fall away from the iron instead of flowing over the tip like you want it. I just saved the tip for carpet installations or whatnot and bought a new tip that I use strictly for electrical soldering.

67Dart273 said:

I would discourage the use of a flame torch to solder most electrical. VERY easy with most torches to get things overheated, and almost impossible to use around other wiring. The butane powered irons are a different matter. I found a decent one at Lowes/ HD for around 20 bucks I used to have (two actually) of the huge Weller Butane. We used them mostly to solder big Heliax feedline connectors on towers. They are big and expensive, and the spark igniters fail a lot. Not worth the money for most home guys

This one: You can remove the tip, put the nut/ shield back together and use it for heat shrink tubing

Bernzomatic ST500T

View attachment 1715284836

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You talking about these things?



They are as handy as it gets and we use them all the time at work but we go through them about once every 6 months since the igniters always seem to fail. They run somewhere around $150 a pop too.

ESP47 said:

You talking about these things?

View attachment 1715284839

They are as handy as it gets and we use them all the time at work but we go through them about once every 6 months since the igniters always seem to fail. They run somewhere around $150 a pop too.

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Had one from snap-on and one from mac.
Snap on lasted a couple years, mac is going on 10,but some yutz put solder in the exhaust port,and tip no longer supports a flame.
Freakin mac has no place to buy parts online and dealer doesent come to my town.

Yes, those. I have two from my tower climbin' days and the ignitors failed on both.

The larger feedline connectors are "mechanical" but some of the small ones require the center conductor to be soldered to the pin. You have to be very careful as the 1/2" and smaller has an ALUMINUM center conductor which is copper coated. You want enough heat, obviously to make a good connection, but you don't want to boil the copper off the aluminum. When you up a tower........ANY tower.......it's guaranteed the wind will blow