I am not great at soldering but was trying to solder 2 wires together (2core from a vacuum) which had a break (have ordered a replacement) and needed a temporary fix. For some reason I had great difficulty getting the solder to flow, I used a paste flux but ended up just taping together. Are some cores not copper wire although it was copper coloured. I have never had an issue before.
It could be some other metal, but seems unlikely if it was copper coloured. Are you sure it wasn't enamelled copper? It could be if it was part of a motor or transformer winding, but not likely for a flex.
Otherwise the usual things you need are heat, flux, and solder. If the solder was melting happily and not solidifying but not sticking, suggests the heat was OK. If the solder wasn't melting, or would only melt around the tip of the iron, suggests heat or heat transfer is the problem.
Lack of flux often means the solder sticks to the iron but doesn't flow onto the metal you're heating.
Lack of solder can be a reason for poor soldering performance because solder itself is the way heat gets to the joint - common in SMD where someone is trying to solder a tiny pin with a tiny bit, where what you need is a big blob of solder to get the heat in there, and then solder wick away the excess afterwards.
Theo
Lead free solder is the spawn of the devil and may not give a nice "clean" shiny joint unlike tin/lead 60/40 solder.
The burning process that happens where the wire broke, fouls the surfaces. Sometimes the wire is surrounded by a rubber compound, and the fouling material is burned rubber.
I do not recommend acid core flux.
The rosin core solder, is more gentle than acid core flux, long term. Even so, if you can manage it (with propanol as a cleaner), you should try to remove excess flux in any case.
Even though acid core flux would likely clean up the wire enough to make the solder joint, I would be afraid of what would happen long term.
*******You should not be soldering mains wires together, because of the risk the wire gets really hot, makes the solder melt and the wires separate. There are various weaving procedures for making stranded wire cables "hold together". You should only use procedures that insurance companies approve.
If I was repairing the Hoover cord here, I would:
1) Pull grommet where cord passes through. That is where the wire is broken. You have to compress the two-piece grommet thingy, to get it to pull out of the chassis material. It is the devil to compress.2) Pull unbroken wire through where the grommet goes. The grommet is a two piece assembly that "compresses" onto the cord, as you shove the grommet back into the chassis of the vacuum. It helps prevent the vacuum operator from yanking the cord right out of the chassis (sparks and all).
3) Now you have a foot or a foot and a half of new cord inside the vacuum. Strip the nice clean wires and consider your next option.4) If the wires are fitted with spade lugs or screw terminations, you fit similar items to the fresh cord. Primary fix-ment, is via compression or crimping of the fastener to the stranded wire. Again, it's not really recommended to be soldering the wire to the lug, but if your crimper isn't very good, you might not have any choice in terms of firming things up.
As long as the solder joint is not under stress or mechanical vibration, probably nothing bad would happen to it. It's preferably to just do a good job with your crimper.
Some of these things, have two crimp sections on them. One section holds the wire (part nearest the screw head). The section further away can help secure the wire insulation.
But suffice to say, doing this, in this way, is "not recommended". This is a good effort... but if the house burns down, this is what the insurance company will be looking for. Bodgery. And wrapping that with electric tape? NO. Use shrink wrap, as it is an alternative insulation method, and comes in a variety of diameters. You can slide the shrink wrap up the wire, do something sinful, then slide the shrink wrap over the exposed bits. Having left sufficient diameter for the bodge. Shrink wrap is better than electrical tape, but has its own set of issues with the skills needed to do a good job. For example, you can melt the 70C rated wire insulation the wrap sits on top of, if you're careless.
Sometimes, even fitting several layers of shrink wrap, incites flexure failure. Right where the shrink wrap stops.
It's definitely a topic with a lot of "learn by doing" and "smoke testing". And over the years, discovering what were bad ideas, and what were successes. I can tell you, there are *lots* of bad things you can do.
We had "soldering police" at work, who would check workmanship, and I would never pass one of their examinations. They are police, only because they were sent on course and trained at it. You can't argue with those dickheads, it's a waste of time. Just sit there and take your lumps. I do OK at soldering, because I've done thousands of joints (think HeathKit :-) ).
There are even techniques for taking care of the tip of your soldering iron. If you foul it with too much burnt crap, it'll never work right again. You can't use it for wood burning one morning and soldering the next. You have to take care of those, and the modern tips are much better fabricated than the ones fifty years ago.
Paul
You trend to get a tough oxide later on copper wires. IIRC the suggested solution is dipping in vinegar for a few minutes
Also lead free solder is crap.
Some cheap ?copper wire? is actually copper plated aluminium. The copper is so thin you can?t ( usually) solder it.
Assuming it is copper, use flux designed for electronic equipment, not plumbers flux. A rub with steel wool may help. Twist the wires together, heat, then apply solder. Don?t ?carry? solder on the iron. Let joint cool without moving for a few minutes.
a monomolecular letr is good enough to solder to.
In fact plumbers flux is a far more aggressive flux. Unfortunately it rots the copper over time unless fully removed.
. A rub with steel wool may help. Twist the wires together,
Impossible without some solder on the iron to transfer the heat.
Don?t ?carry? solder on the iron. Let joint cool
a few seconds.
Slightly OT, but only last night I got out for the first time in 10+ years my late father's Henley 'Solon' heavy duty soldering iron, and his tin of Fluxite! I learned to solder with this iron, fifty years or so ago.
I was repairing a shower where a relay solder joint had failed. The relay is of an open frame type and one of the contacts is between a terminal stamped from the frame, and the PCB. "Some bodger" (whistle...) had used an ordinary soldering iron to make a repair last time (when the relay had failed), but had not applied quite enough heat to make a fully solid and lasting joint.
So this time I cleaned and tinned the frame terminal properly with Fluxite and the heat capacity from the large iron. After that it was pretty simple to get a proper solid joint on the PCB. I reinforced it with a few bits of copper wire to be sure.
I was very pleased to find justification for keeping the iron after all this time...
J^n
My dad's heavy duty iron was a Wolf, the heating element had burnt-out so the mains cable had been chopped off, it was used on the gas hob back in the '70s which gave a nice green flame ...
Yeah, I've seen those too. The Solon has a wooden handle! Turned and heavily painted black, for quite a while I presumed it was bakelite or similar.
I've just realised that of course it was Henley as in the "Henley Block"
They are useful thing to have around (for every ten years or so...). I used to enjoy the sizzling the iron made when you dipped it in the fluxite. Dad had some other, more evil-ly corrosive, raspberry pink flux, but I don't seem to have any of that any more.
There was also some sort of solder paste or powder, which gratifyingly 'melted' into blobs of shiny solder when you applied the iron.
All this was courtesy of Leyland Motors/British Leyland, I am sure...
Dad also had a blacksmith's iron, looked like something the baby-eating bishop of bath & wells would use ...
Yeah, I always fancied getting one of those to try out with plumbing fixings...
The first workshop course I went on had one of these as a result, but ours had a channel on one side in which you could lay wires. 2nd item was a mini AJ.
Not on mains cable (at least in the UK), but pretty common on cheap low-voltage stuff
Noticed that the flex TLC sell as speaker flex is actually copper 'plated' ally. Explains the lowish cost. Although most would want a decent low resistance speaker cable.
Why? You need loads of heat on copper pipe. A blowlamp make far more sense.
Because I wanted to experiment with olde fashionede tools. I wasn't expecting to use the result. I also have a paraffin-style blowlamp...
You'd need a large and very unwieldy soldering bolt heated up to red hot to have any chance of soldering domestic copper tube. Simply no point trying.
If you want something safer than a blowlamp the Antex Pipemaster is OK for
15mm, but very slow in use, as it need pre-heating. That takes 115w
I have one of those (Antex Pipemaster), I never managed to get it to do anything remotely useful.
The one I tried had to be preheated for ages and then just about worked. But totally pointless if you have a blowlamp.
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