When installing or repairing electrical wiring, it is important to make the soldered connection correctly. Operational safety, reliability, and durability of the power supply depend on this.

For good fixation solder, you must first tin the wires, that is, cover them with tin solder. The applied layer will remove oxide impurities formed on copper or aluminum alloys, will improve grip consumables.

Exists different methods tinning. The choice is made taking into account the composition of the metal, the nature of the cross-section, the purpose of the wiring and its operating conditions.

Confident use of a soldering iron is necessary for every novice craftsman. Without established working skills, it will not be possible to tin a wire and then carry out soldering.

Everyone can choose the soldering iron dimensions and modification independently. Soldering stations and soldering irons with the ability to regulate the heating temperature are easy to use.

It makes sense to spend money on purchasing quality tools and equipment. Then your work will be enjoyable for many years.

Required Tools

Working with wires is not difficult if you are well prepared for it. It is advisable to do everything in advance, so that later at the most inopportune moment you don’t have to fuss. The list of tools that allow you to tin wires or cables is as follows:

• well sharpened knife;
• medical or technical tweezers;
• regular pliers;
• soldering iron or soldering station;
• consumables (flux, solder).

Instead of a knife they are now selling special pliers, which allow you to tear off the insulation in one movement. But they are not that cheap, so many people make do with a knife or scalpel.

All the tools and devices are simple, but very useful. Consumables mean a certain flux composition and solder suitable for a given type of wire.

Correct procedure

Wires should be tinned using a soldering iron in accordance with an algorithm verified by many years of practice. At the very beginning of work, you need to carefully remove the outer insulating layer of the wires with a knife or pliers. It is advisable to release polymer coating minimum 10 mm, maximum 50 mm from each connected end.

After this, use the same knife to clean the surface to a shiny state. This will eliminate the presence of remnants of the insulating sheath and remove oxide deposits from the wires.

Thick wire is easier to hold and clean. If the cable includes several thin wires, it is advisable to fray them, separate them, strip them on all sides, and then twist them again.

Then you can heat up the soldering iron, first checking the cleanliness of the tip. The surface will only be well maintained if it is absolutely clean.

Using a heated soldering iron, you should heat the prepared, thoroughly stripped ends of the wires, dipping them in rosin. The rosin needs to coat the wire well.

Use the soldering iron tip to take the solder and evenly distribute the mixture along the cut of the wires, which are fixed with tweezers or ordinary pliers. To ensure complete application of the mass of molten consumables, the wires should be rotated around their own axis.

Copper wire can be treated not only with rosin, but also with acidic flux. Some people prefer to use something that is always commercially available. For tinning aluminum wires It has its own special flux.

If all previous operations were performed correctly, the molten solder material will well cover the contact area of ​​the wires. You need to carefully inspect the entire working area to make sure that the tinning was successful.

Wire processing options

Some craftsmen like the tinning method, in which the wires are pressed onto a piece of wood with a soldering iron.

This is a completely acceptable technology. Released when heated wooden backing the gases act to some extent as a flux, helping to remove oxides from the metal.

Aspirin melt removes oxidation products even better. The tablet can be placed under the wires when tinning. The gases released from heated acetylsalicylic acid well envelop the joint, removing all impurities from them. As a result, the wires will be successfully tinned.

There is a unique method for preparing multi-core wiring, in which a thin copper base is coated with enamel. In this case, craftsmen recommend using a piece of PVC material as a substrate.

As the temperature rises, polyvinyl chloride begins to release hydrogen chloride vapors, which, like hydrochloric acid, quickly destroy the oxide layer. As many video tutorials show, the PVC backing may not be very large, corresponding to the size working area tinning.

Tinning by dipping

Pre-treatment of wires large diameter carried out differently. It is not easy to achieve complete uniform coverage of a large cross-section with a soldering iron.

Pieces of tin are placed in a special crucible and heated to obtain a molten metal. The end of the cable is first dipped in rosin or other flux, and then dipped into the inside of the crucible. As a result, the cut is completely covered with a protective layer.

Fully tinned wires are made in a similar way. The immersion is on a different scale and is performed in a factory environment.

A coil with a wound wire is placed on a mechanism through which the process will be served. First, all copper surfaces are mechanically treated with brushes pre-treated with a solution of zinc chloride. A dissolved flux is obtained from zinc and technical hydrochloric acid.

Then the wire from the coil is gradually untwisted and dipped into a bath of molten tin. The uniformity of the coating and the absence of sagging is ensured by subsequent processing of the wire material with rubber brushes. The wire is cooled by dipping into cold water, brushed again, re-rolled and packaged.

Tinned copper wire products have a protective tin layer, the thickness of which varies from 1 micron to 20 micron.

The treatment increases the copper's resistance to moisture. environment, reduces to a minimum the likelihood of its damage.

How to service earphone contacts

Microphones, iPhone headphones and any other acoustic gadget are constantly exposed to mechanical stress. As a result, the wiring breaks.

Prepare them for soldering in the usual ways it won't work. The varnish on top will interfere. Before tinning, it is either scraped off with a sharp scalpel or burned. You can also tin the rosin with a very hot soldering iron, which will remove the varnish.

A thin strand of wire is placed in rosin and heated with a soldering iron. Then, using a soldering iron, a thin layer of molten tin is distributed at the site of future contact. After this, the connection is made quickly. It will serve for a long time and reliably.

You have probably noticed that when two conductors are connected to each other, they begin to heat up during long-term operation. This is especially noticeable when the power of the passing current increases. This phenomenon occurs when an oxide film forms between the conductors, which breaks contact. Insufficient contact between the wires leads to their heating. To ensure long and reliable contact, the process of tinning the wires is used.

How to tin a soldering iron: features

Tinning means covering metal products with a thin layer of tin, which in turn prevents the process of oxidation of metal surfaces. But if we take into account the tinning of the soldering iron, then the process is slightly different.

Tinning the soldering iron step by step:

• Surface preparation;
• Tinning.

Before tinning the soldering iron, you need to prepare work surface. First of all, if the soldering iron is completely new, you need to sharpen the tip of the device. In order to do this correctly, you should consider the processes in which the soldering iron will be used.

The soldering iron tip can be shaped into a wedge. To do this, the tip is removed from the device, and using a file or a power machine, the tip is sharpened on both sides at an angle of up to 40 0. If the soldering iron is used to work with small radio components, then it is given a cone shape, which provides more convenient operation.

Pay attention! The width of the wedge tip must be at least one millimeter. If the sting is in the form of a cone, then working area is about two millimeters.

If you are satisfied with the factory shape of the tip, then it is important to understand that all products at the manufacturing plant are covered with a patina - oxygen and copper oxide, which has a greenish tint. Before tinning the tip of the device, it is necessary to remove this coating using fine-grain sandpaper.

After this, the tip is installed in the device and connected to the power supply. It is necessary to wait until the surface of the tip is evenly heated, after which tinning can be carried out.

When heated to optimal temperature, the tip of the device is treated with resin or a piece of rosin. The entire surface is covered.

Wire tinning: technology

Copper and its alloys oxidize over time when exposed to oxygen. To prevent the connections of copper conductors from oxidizing during operation, it is necessary to tin them with tin.

To work you will need:

• Soldering iron;
• Solder;
• Flux or rosin.

Tin correctly copper wire, it can only be done with a well-heated soldering iron. Therefore, before starting work, turn it on and leave it to warm up.

After this, depending on the processing material, the following is performed. If copper core coated with rosin, it is placed in a container with this material and heated with a soldering iron. If flux is used, the wire is coated with liquid flux and heated with a soldering iron.

Pay attention! The better the heating of the metal, the better the tinning of the copper conductor.

Then, take the heated tip of the soldering iron required quantity tin and using this device, is distributed over the entire surface of the treated wire.

In order to tin copper cable large cross-section, use a crucible (melting container). In this case, pieces of metal are placed in a container heated to the melting temperature of tin. The cable core is treated with flux or rosin and placed in a crucible. In this way, normal heating of the core and uniform distribution of tin over its surface are achieved.

What you need and how to tin and solder headphone wires

Very often, under the influence of mechanical stress, headphones fail. This leads to breakage of low-current conductors. These conductors in the device are quite thin, so the tinning and soldering technology is slightly different.

Features:

• Thin soldering iron tip;
• Use of rosin;
• Use of solder wire.

You should start working by disassembling the old device. First of all, broken conductors are soldered off. Next, preparations are made for soldering the new wire.

Since low-current conductors for headphones are varnished to isolate them from each other, this somewhat complicates the soldering process. To make the work easier, it is necessary to remove the varnish layer from the wires, thereby preparing the metal for tinning.

This is done using a heated soldering iron using rosin. The wire core is placed in rosin and heated. Then it is placed on flat surface, on which the varnish layer is removed with light movements from the insulation to the end of the wire.

Pay attention! The varnish should be removed to such a distance that touching the conductors will not short-circuit them.

After this, using a heated soldering iron, the wires are covered with a thin layer of tin. It is worth noting that tinned headphone wires not only provide reliable contact, but the soldering process is greatly simplified.

Tinned copper: characteristics and applications

Due to its properties, copper wire has found wide application, both in household and industrial scale. Main feature copper is resistant to various mechanical stress, temperature changes and the influence of precipitation.

But to improve the stability of copper, a tinning process is used, in which it is coated with a thin layer of tin, the thickness of which varies from 1 to 20 microns.

Copper wire tinning process:

• Cleaning;
• Tinning;
• Leveling the tin layer;
• Cooling;
• Re-levelling;
• Package.

First of all, the coil of wire is installed on a special feeding mechanism, through which it goes through all the necessary processes.

First, passing through special brushes that are moistened with a solution of zinc chloride, the wire is cleaned. A solution of zinc chloride is prepared by dissolving granulated zinc in hydrochloric acid.

After the wire has been cleaned, it passes through a bath filled with molten tin. This method, allows you to achieve uniform distribution of tin over the entire surface of the metal.

Pay attention! The most important thing when tinning copper wire is to avoid tin deposits.

Then the wire is cooled. This happens when it passes through a filled bath cold water. This process serves to improve the quality of the connection between tin and the copper surface of the wire.

After this, the wire undergoes secondary treatment with brushes, during which the wire is completely freed from sag and, if necessary, its diameter is reduced.

At the receiving mechanism, the wire is wound onto a reel and packaged.

How to tin a bearing with tin (video)

It doesn't matter what design it is metal product(wire or bearing). Quite often, the correct operation of these products depends on the quality of the connection and the materials with which it is processed.

Soldering with a soldering iron- this is a physico-chemical technological operation receiving permanent connection metal parts by introducing a metal with a lower melting point into the gap between them.

Soldering with a soldering iron is much easier than it seems at first glance. The technology of soldering with a soldering iron was successfully used by the Egyptians 5 thousand years ago and little has changed since then.

Requirements for technological process soldering and installation of radioelements are set out in OST 107.460092.024-93 “Soldering of electrical connections of radio-electronic equipment. General requirements to standard technological operations."

The soldering process with a soldering iron begins with preparing the surfaces of the parts to be soldered. To do this, it is necessary to remove traces of dirt, if any, and oxide film from the surfaces. Depending on the thickness of the film and the shape of the surface, it is cleaned with a file or sandpaper. Small areas and round wires can be trimmed with a knife blade. The result should be a shiny surface without oxide stains or shells. Grease stains are removed by wiping with a rag soaked in acetone or white alcohol solvent (refined gasoline).

After preparing the surfaces, they must be covered with a layer of solder and tinned. To do this, flux is applied to the surface and a soldering iron tip with solder is applied.

For better heat transfer from the soldering iron tip to the part, you need to apply the tip so that the contact area is maximum. The cut of the soldering iron tip with solder must be parallel to the surface of the part.

The most important thing when soldering with a soldering iron is to warm the soldered surfaces to the temperature of molten solder. If the soldering is not heated sufficiently, the solder will turn out dull and have low mechanical strength. If it overheats, the solder will not spread over the surface of the parts being soldered and soldering will not work at all.

After completing the preparation described above, the parts are applied to each other, and soldering is performed with an electric soldering iron. Soldering time, depending on the thickness and weight of the parts, ranges from 1 to 10 seconds. Many electronic components allow soldering time of no more than 2 seconds. As soon as the solder spreads evenly over the surfaces of the parts, the soldering iron is moved to the side. Displacement of parts relative to each other until the solder has completely solidified is not permissible, otherwise mechanical strength and the solder tightness will be low. If this happens by chance, you need to perform the soldering procedure again.

The solder on the tip of a hot soldering iron, while waiting for soldering, becomes covered with oxides and residues of burnt flux. The tip must be cleaned before soldering. For cleaning, it is convenient to use a moistened piece of foam rubber of any density. It is enough to quickly run the sting along the foam rubber and all the dirt will remain on it.

Before soldering, surfaces or wires that are connected by soldering must be tinned. This is a guarantee of the quality of the solder joint and the pleasure of working. If you do not have experience working with a soldering iron, then before performing important work on soldering with a soldering iron, you must first practice a little. It's easier to start with a single-core copper wire, like electrical wiring. The first step is to remove the insulation from the conductor.

How to tin copper wires

When the insulation is removed, you need to assess the condition of the conductor. As a rule, in new wires, the copper conductors are not covered with oxides and can be serviced without stripping. It is enough to take a little solder on the soldering iron tip, touch the rosin with it and move the tip along the surface of the conductor. If the surface of the conductor is clean, the solder will spread in a thin layer over it.

If there is not enough solder, then an additional portion is taken with a touch of rosin. And so on until the entire conductor is completely tinned. It is more convenient to tin the wires by placing them on wooden platform, which I use as a soldering iron stand. Usually, in the place where I always puddle, rosin accumulates and the process goes faster, you can grab more solder without touching it, once again with a sting of rosin.

Sometimes, contrary to expectations, although the conductor seems to be free of oxides, it does not want to be tinned. Then I put it on an aspirin tablet and warm it up for a couple of seconds, and then puddle it on the site. It works right away without any problems. Even a copper wire with obvious oxidation, without preliminary mechanical stripping, with aspirin is immediately torn by a thin layer of solder.

If you managed to tin the conductors with a soldering iron, as in the photo, then congratulations on your first successful work by soldering.

It is difficult to get good soldering with a soldering iron the first time. There may be several reasons for this. The soldering iron is too hot for this type of solder; this can be determined by the rapidly forming dark film of oxides on the solder, which is located on the tip of the soldering iron. When the soldering iron tip is heated excessively, the working blade of the tip becomes covered with black oxide, and the solder is not retained on the tip. The temperature of the soldering iron tip is not sufficient. In this case, the soldering turns out to be loose and looks matte.

Only using a temperature controller can help here. Insufficient heating of the wire during servicing occurs when there is a small amount of solder on the working part of the tip. The contact area is small, and heat is poorly transferred to the conductor. You need to practice until you can tin the wires as in the photo above.

After tinning a wire with a soldering iron, excess solder often remains on it in the form of beads. In order to get a thin and uniform layer, you need to place the wire vertically, end down, the soldering iron vertically with the tip up, and move the tip along the wire. The solder is heavy and all of it will transfer to the soldering iron tip. Just before this operation, you need to remove all the solder from the tip by hitting it lightly on the stand. In this way, you can remove excess from the soldering area and on printed circuit boards.

The next stage of the training is to tin a stranded copper wire with a soldering iron; the task is somewhat more difficult, especially if the wire is coated with oxide. Remove oxide film mechanically It’s difficult, you need to unravel the conductors and strip each one individually. When I removed the insulation from the wires using a thermal method, I discovered that the top conductor was all riddled with oxide, and the bottom one was unraveling. This is perhaps the most difficult case for tinning. But they tin with the same ease as single-core ones.

The first thing you need to do is place the conductor on an aspirin tablet and, while heating it with a soldering iron, move it so that all the conductors of the wire are moistened with the aspirin composition (aspirin melts when heated).

Next, tin on the pad with rosin, as described above, with the only difference that you need to press the wire with the soldering iron tip to the pad and during the tinning process, rotate the wire in one direction so that the conductors are woven into a single whole.

This is what copper wires look like after tinning.

From such an end of the tinned wire, you can use pliers to form a ring, for example, for threaded connection to the contacts of a socket, switch or chandelier socket, or solder to a brass contact or printed circuit board. Try to make such soldering with a soldering iron.

The main thing when connecting parts by soldering is not to move them relative to each other until the solder has hardened.

Soldering any parts with a soldering iron is not much different from soldering wires. If you managed to tin and solder a stranded wire with high quality, then you can perform any soldering.

How to tin a very thin enameled copper conductor

Tin with a soldering iron thin wire nickname, with a diameter of less than 0.2 mm, insulated with enamel, easy if you use vinyl chloride. Insulating tubes and the insulation of many wires are made from this plastic. You need to put the wire on the insulation and lightly press it with the tip of the soldering iron, then pull the wire through, turning it each time. The heating of vinyl chloride releases chlorine, which destroys the enamel and the wire is easily tinned.

This technology is irreplaceable when soldering wires of the licendrate type with a soldering iron, which is a lot of thin wires coated with enamel and twisted into one conductor.

Using an aspirin tablet, it is also easy to tin an enameled thin wire with a soldering iron; the wire is pulled between the aspirin tablet and the soldering iron tip in the same way. There should be a sufficient amount of solder and rosin on the tip.

Soldering radio components with a soldering iron

When repairing electrical appliances, it is often necessary to desolder printed circuit board and solder back the radioelements. Although this operation is not complicated, it still requires adherence to a certain soldering technology.

Soldering resistors, diodes, capacitors with a soldering iron

In order to remove a two-terminal radio element, such as a resistor or diode, from a printed circuit board, you need to heat the soldering area with a soldering iron until the solder melts and pull the radio element output out of the board. Usually they remove the resistor terminal from the printed circuit board by prying it by the terminal with tweezers, but the tweezers often slip off, especially if the radio element terminal on the solder side is bent.

For ease of operation, the tweezer jaws need to be ground down a little; the resulting grip will prevent the tweezer jaws from slipping.

When working on dismantling radio elements, one more hand is always missing; you need to work with a soldering iron, tweezers and also hold the printed circuit board.

My third hand is a tabletop vise, with the help of which a part-free section of the printed circuit board can be clamped, and by placing the vise on any side face, the printed circuit board can be oriented in three dimensions. Soldering with a soldering iron will be convenient.

After desoldering the part from the board, the mounting holes are filled with solder. It is convenient to free the hole from solder with a toothpick, a sharpened match or a wooden stick.

The tip of the soldering iron melts the solder, the toothpick is inserted into the hole and rotates, the soldering iron is removed, after the solder has hardened, the toothpick is removed from the hole.

Before installing a new radio element for soldering, it is imperative to make sure that its terminals are solderable, especially if its release date is not known. It is best to simply tin the leads with a soldering iron and then solder the element. Then the soldering will be reliable and the work will be a pleasure, not a pain.

How to solder SMD LEDs and other leadless components with a soldering iron

Currently, leadless SMD components are widely used in the manufacture of electronic devices. SMD components do not have traditional copper lead wires. Such radioelements are connected to the tracks of the printed circuit board by soldering to them contact pads located directly on the component body. Soldering such a component is not difficult, since it is possible to solder each contact individually with a low-power soldering iron (10-12 W).

But during repairs, it becomes necessary to desolder SMD components to check or replace them, or desolder them from an unnecessary printed circuit board for use as spare parts. In this case, in order not to overheat or break the component, it is necessary to simultaneously warm up all its terminals.

If you have to solder frequently SMD components, then it makes sense for the soldering iron to make a set of special tips that branch at the end into two or three small ones. With such tips, it will be easy to desolder SMD components without damaging them, even if they are glued to the printed circuit board.

But there are situations when a low-power soldering iron is not at hand, but in the existing powerful soldering iron, the tip is stuck and it is impossible to remove it. There is also a simple way out of this situation. You can wind a copper wire with a diameter of one millimeter around the soldering iron tip, as in the photo. Make a kind of nozzle and use it to successfully desolder SMD components. The photo shows how I soldered SMD LEDs when repairing LED lamps. LED housings are very delicate and practically do not allow even small mechanical impacts.

If necessary, the nozzle can be easily removed and you can use the soldering iron for its intended purpose. The width between the ends of the nozzle can be easily changed, thereby adjusting for soldering SMD components different sizes. The attachment can be used instead of a low-power soldering iron, soldering small parts and soldering thin conductors to LED strips.

How to solder LED strip with a soldering iron

Soldering technology LED strips not much different from soldering other parts. But due to the fact that the base of the printed circuit board is a thin and flexible tape, soldering time must be kept to a minimum to avoid peeling of the printed tracks.

Repairing an iron car body by soldering

In ancient times, when I drove a Soviet car, the technology of soldering iron with a soldering iron helped in eliminating corrosion of the car body. If you simply clean the area covered with rust and apply paint coating, then after a while the rust will appear again. By covering the cleaned area with a soldering iron with a thin layer of solder, rust will never appear again.

I also had to solder through corrosion holes in the sills and the area of ​​the wheel arches of the car body with a soldering iron. To do this, you need to clean the surface around the hole with a one-centimeter strip and tin it with solder using a soldering iron. Cut out a pattern for the future patch from thick paper. Next, using the pattern from brass 0.2-0.3 mm thick, cut out a patch and tin the area that will be soldered with a soldering iron with a thick layer of solder. If necessary, the patch is given the desired shape. You can simply tap the patch, placing it on thick, dense rubber. File the edges of the outer side of the patch to nothing. All that remains is to apply the patch to the hole in the body and heat it well with a 100-watt soldering iron along the seam. Putty, primer, paint, and the body will be like new, and the repaired area will never rust again.

One of the most reliable methods of connecting wires is soldering. This is a process in which the space between two conductors is filled with molten solder. In this case, the melting temperature of the solder must be lower than the melting temperature of the metals being joined. At home, soldering with a soldering iron is most often used - small device powered by electricity. For normal operation, the power of the soldering iron must be at least 80-100 W.

What you need for soldering with a soldering iron

In addition to the soldering iron itself, you will need solders, rosin or fluxes; it is advisable to have a stand. While working, you may need a small file and small pliers.

Rosin and fluxes

To get good connection wires, they must be cleaned of contaminants, including oxide film. While mono-cores can still be cleaned manually, multi-core conductors cannot be cleaned properly. They are usually treated with rosin or flux - active substances, which dissolve contaminants, including oxide film.

Both rosin and fluxes work well, but fluxes are easier to use - you can dip a brush into the solution and quickly process the wires. You need to put a conductor in rosin, then heat it with a soldering iron so that the molten substance envelops the entire surface of the metal. The disadvantage of using fluxes is that if they remain on the wires (and they do), they gradually corrode the adjacent sheath. To prevent this from happening, all soldering areas must be treated - the remaining flux must be washed off with alcohol.

Rosin is considered universal remedy, and fluxes can be selected depending on the metal you are going to solder. In the case of wires, this is copper or aluminum. For copper and aluminum wires, use LTI-120 flux or borax. A homemade flux made from rosin and denatured alcohol (1 to 5) works very well, and it’s also easy to make with your own hands. Add rosin to the alcohol (preferably dust or very small pieces of it) and shake until dissolved. Then this composition can be used to treat conductors and strands before soldering.

Solders for soldering with a soldering iron copper wires use POS 60, POS 50 or POS 40 - tin-lead. For aluminum, zinc-based compounds are more suitable. The most common are TsO-12 and P250A (made of tin and zinc), grade A (zinc and tin with the addition of copper), TsA-15 (zinc with aluminum).

It is very convenient to use solders that contain rosin (POS 61). In this case, there is no need to pre-treat each conductor in rosin separately. But for high-quality soldering, you must have a powerful soldering iron - 80-100 W, which can quickly heat the soldering area to the required temperatures.

Auxiliary materials

In order to properly solder wires with a soldering iron, you also need:

Alcohol may be required to remove flux, and electrical tape or heat shrink tubing for insulation. various diameters. These are all the materials and tools without which soldering wires with a soldering iron is impossible.

Soldering process with an electric soldering iron

The entire technology of soldering wires with a soldering iron can be divided into several successive stages. All of them are repeated in a certain sequence:

That's all. In the same way, you can solder two or more wires, you can solder a wire to some contact pad (for example, when soldering headphones, you can solder the wire to a plug or to a pad on a headphone), etc.

After you have finished soldering the wires with a soldering iron and they have cooled down, the connection must be insulated. You can wrap electrical tape, put it on, and then heat up the heat shrink tube. If we're talking about When it comes to electrical wiring, it is usually advised to first wrap a few turns of electrical tape and put a heat-shrinkable tube on top, which is heated.

Differences in technology when using flux

If active flux is used rather than rosin, the tinning process changes. The cleaned conductor is lubricated with the compound, and then heated with a soldering iron with a small amount of solder. Further everything is as described.

Soldering twists with flux - faster and easier

There are also differences when soldering twists with flux. In this case, you can not tin each wire, but twist it, then treat it with flux and immediately start soldering. The conductors don’t even need to be cleaned - the active compounds corrode the oxide film. But instead, you will have to wipe the soldering areas with alcohol to wash away the remnants of chemically aggressive substances.

Features of soldering stranded wires

The soldering technology described above is suitable for monocores. If the wire is multi-core, there are nuances: before tinning, the wires are untwisted so that everything can be dipped in rosin. When applying solder, you need to make sure that each wire is covered with a thin layer of solder. After cooling, the wires are twisted into one bundle again, then you can solder with a soldering iron as described above - dipping the tip into solder, heating the soldering area and applying tin.

When tinning, multi-core wires must be “fluffed”

Is it possible to solder copper wire to aluminum

Compounding aluminum with other chemicals active metals You can't do it directly. Since copper is a chemically active material, copper and aluminum are not joined or soldered. The point is too different thermal conductivity and different current conductivity. When current passes, aluminum heats up more and expands more. Copper heats up and expands much less. Constant expansion/constriction in varying degrees leads to the fact that even the best contact is broken, a non-conducting film is formed, and everything stops working. That's why copper and aluminum are not soldered.

If there is such a need to connect copper and aluminum conductors, do bolted connection. Take a bolt with a suitable nut and three washers. At the ends of the connected wires, rings are formed according to the size of the bolt. Take a bolt, put on one washer, then a conductor, another washer - the next conductor, a third washer on top and secure everything with a nut.

There are several other ways to connect aluminum and copper lines, but soldering is not one of them. You can read about other methods, but bolted is the simplest and most reliable.

How to learn to solder. I decided to prepare just such a small special lesson, not directly related to the main topic, for those who not only have to solder cords, sockets, plugs, but anything else in general. So let's begin...

What do we need for soldering?

Of course, a soldering iron (ideally soldering station), tin solder, rosin, ideally - wire solder, which is a long, thin tin tube, similar to a wire, wound on a reel, in the cavity of which there is rosin. Those. when soldering, in this case, we do not need, as in the old fashioned way, to lower the tip of the soldering iron, now into the rosin, now into the solder, but all this happens simultaneously at one point. More on this below...

Buy everything necessary components You can go to your nearest radio store.

If you do not have a soldering station that is initially ready for soldering immediately after switching on, but regular soldering iron, then before work (especially if it is new), it needs to be prepared in a special way - tinned, otherwise it will not be solderable. Let’s look at what “tinning” means now.

How to tin a soldering iron?

Take a file and apply it flat to the cut of the soldering iron tip. Now we sharpen in the same plane, periodically looking at the tip, until it becomes flat, smooth and shiny.

After this, we lower the heated tip into rosin and immediately into solder (into tin). There will be almost no solder sticking to the tip, so immediately after this procedure we apply the tip to a small board, preferably of natural origin (not chipboard), preferably spruce or cedar (resinous), but in principle, any will do, you’ll just have to mess around longer.

So, we repeat this procedure (rosin → solder → board) until the cut of the tip, prepared in advance with a file, made of yellow-gray heated copper, becomes silvery and shiny from the solder evenly covering it. This is what is called “tinning”, in in this case soldering iron

This is what a tinned soldering iron tip should look like.

Now we will learn to solder wires (after tinning it) to a brass tin, also tinning it from the beginning.

We dip the soldering iron tip into rosin, then into solder, and immediately, with the plane of the tip parallel to the plane, we bring it close to our brass test subject, without allowing the rosin to evaporate, we press it, then we grind it in, we tinker, in general. If the rosin has evaporated or spread, we repeat the process, and gradually, gradually our tin is covered with high-quality solder adhering to it. If the material is clean or without strong oxides, then such tinning occurs quickly.

If solder wire is used, then we lean the tip of the soldering iron against the tin, and bring the tip of the solder wire to the point of their contact, trying to touch more of the tinned part of the soldering iron, and rub it against this part so that the tin and rosin enrich the contact point.

How to tin a wire?

Now let's tinker with the wiring. Carefully remove the insulation just enough so that we have enough space for soldering, and for the location of the heat-shrinkable tube (or other insulator) so that later no short circuits (short circuits) arise...

It is easier to tin the wire, because Usually, the metal under the insulation is clean, not oxidized. We dip it in rosin, placing the tip of a heated soldering iron on top of it and slowly pull the wire out from under the soldering iron after the rosin melts and starts smoking. This is done, as you probably understood, so that the molten rosin envelops the contact part of the wire. Now we enrich the soldering iron tip with solder, touching the tin, and bring the tip to the rosin adhering to the wiring.

If the wire is copper and clean, tinning will occur immediately.

If not, you may have to repeat the operation or use a special solder paste instead of rosin. chemical, (like soldering acid, if anyone is familiar) which allows you to tin, for example, even iron.

This is what solder paste looks like.

How to solder a wire?

We have a tinned experimental brass tin and a tinned wire, which we now have to connect, seal with heated solder and then cool in order to forever maintain their electrical connection, which we do by bringing the tinned part of the wire to the tinned part of the tin.

We bring the soldering iron tip enriched with solder to the place of their contact so that the solder covers the tinned parts of the soldered parts well. This will be facilitated by the rosin involved in the process. If something doesn’t go well, dip into it. Once the parts are in the molten solder, try not to move them anymore. You can lightly blow on the soldering area until the shine of the solder darkens slightly, which will indicate that the soldering has hardened.

That's it, congratulations! You did it.

How to unsolder the wire?

You can solder wires and various soldered joints using the reverse method - by heating the soldering area (tinned and dipped in rosin, heated) with a soldering iron tip until the solder melts.

...And probably finishing touch— you can also dip a small paint brush into the solvent and rinse off the remaining rosin in the soldering areas.

What can you solder?

More precisely, what metals are good to solder? In the first place, this is, of course, copper, brass, gold, silver, lead, and, of course, tin. It is worse to solder (tin) iron, steel, zinc. To tin the latter, you will have to use a special solder paste (see figure above). There are also metals that cannot be soldered at all, for example aluminum.