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Simple Soldering of S/s, Nichrome and tinning iron tips.

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Mosaic

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Well, all u need is some run of the mill phosphoric acid based 'rust eater or rust remover' found in hardware paint aisles. If it eats iron rust it's the item.

Apply a dab with a toothpick to your Iron/S/S or nichrome and tin with regular electronic solder.

Awesome for soldering to coin cells or spot welded battery tabs at low temps.

Also good for re tinning troublesome iron coated soldering iron tips after you use your tip for melting plastic or molten insulation gets onto it etc. Sand or scrape off the burnt stuff and re tin with the rust remover as flux. Clean up after with a water wipe. Clean up spills with baking soda.
 
Just as an addendum, soldering direct to aluminum wire or standoffs or screws is also possible with no flux at all. Heat the part to over soldering temp, around 290°C with your iron. Apply a big enough molten solder blob so you can scrape under the blob with a mini screwdriver or xacto blade to reveal pure aluminum under the oxide. The amount of scraping dictates the wetting/ bonding of the solder. After scraping the solder will have tinned the aluminum and you can remove the excess. Then soldering copper or brass or iron/steel as per the previous post to the tinned Alum. part is straight forward.
 
You want a pic. of my copper wire soldered to my alum standoff I just did? The solder blob itself prevents the oxidation of the aluminum and forms inter-mettallic /alloy compounds, aka tinning.
 
Hi,
I presume your method is keeping the oxygen away long enough to solder
Have you tried thermo couples? I may have some odd lengths of wire, that I may try.
Interesting!
Camerart.
 
Thermocouples, you mean to extend the wiring length?
That adds new Seebeck effects to the wiring and can disturb the specified delta V per °C rating.

I suppose if you need to do a fair amount of ' low temp' Aluminium to other metal soldering it may be worthwhile to make a CO2 filled box using dry ice and burn out any remaining O2 with a candle flame. Then work gently to as not disturb the trapped CO2 layer and mix air in when cleaning and soldering the aluminium.
A good liquid cleaner for the Aluminium oxide is some lye solution. But you'd need to have that in the CO2 box, so u dip the pre twisted wires being joined, let the oxide get chemically stripped and then solder with no O2 exposure. No scraping.
 
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