Adventures in solder pottery

[Spksh]

Tinning 12 AWG wires with my dainty, precise, designed-for-SMD iron is an extreme sport. What's an unsupervised adult to do?

Who said dipping was only for cowboys?

Giving the tips the old snip snip shows complete penetration. This is tinning on easy mode.

Lessons:

• Only melt solid solder, not anything with a flux core.
• Use liquid flux on the wires, and really soak them. Wiping through a paste flux isn't enough.
• Hold in the solder pool and give it a long 10 count.
• Silicone is still the way to go, plastic just melts up the wire.

Next step is buying a real (well, the cheapest earthed knock-off I can find) solder pot so I'm not heating an entire hotplate every time.

 

[majin]

I've wanted to try this, it seem,s to bhe such a good way of tinning, my soldering is on a whole nother level, ( a very bad level) i can't imagine what messes i could make with a pot o solder lol, whered you get the pot from what is it?

 

[Spksh]

I've wanted to try this, it seem,s to bhe such a good way of tinning, my soldering is on a whole nother level, ( a very bad level) i can't imagine what messes i could make with a pot o solder lol, whered you get the pot from what is it?

The one in the photo is a "hand solder tinning pot" from AliExpress. I got it because it thought I'd fit my soldering iron.

I misread the sizes, so got the wrong one. Threw it on a hotplate to see if it would work, and it does, but holding a wire over that much heat isn't fun - wear gloves .

 

[OnwardGuinevere]

I like this idea!

 

[Spksh]

And here we go. 5x the price of the little brass pot, but actually earthed (I opened it to check) and feels way less dangerous than having a whole-ass hotplate on the bench near my hands. Little brass pot for scale.

Plenty of these floating around the various import sites.

 

[desmobob]

I do OK at soldering in general but often struggle with heavy gauge battery and ESC connectors. I usually end up resorting to a butane micro torch. I'm using an ancient, metal tin of "Nokorode" paste flux I've had as long as I can remember, previously used for sweating copper plumbing fittings before I started soldering electrical stuff. I have a small roll of thin solder of unknown brand and composition.

What are some preferred/recommended (and easy to obtain) fluxes and solders? I have two different sized soldering pens and a big, old-school Weller soldering gun.

 

[CreepyQuarryCrawler]

I use this one by Sequre
I still have my older 80w setup around but this one works so good!

For flux, I picked up a small container at an electronics repair shop. It's a small 30ml container, similar to this image.

I dip my raw wires in the container before tinning. I'll also use some solder to place some on connectors and what not that I am soldering.

 

[Spksh]

I do OK at soldering in general but often struggle with heavy gauge battery and ESC connectors. I usually end up resorting to a butane micro torch. I'm using an ancient, metal tin of "Nokorode" paste flux I've had as long as I can remember, previously used for sweating copper plumbing fittings before I started soldering electrical stuff. I have a small roll of thin solder of unknown brand and composition.

What are some preferred/recommended (and easy to obtain) fluxes and solders? I have two different sized soldering pens and a big, old-school Weller soldering gun.

I am no expert (some people here do this for their day job), but here's where I've ended up:

• Use 63/27 (tin/lead) solder for hand-soldering. Yes, this has lead in it, so wash your hands and use fume extraction, but it's way more forgiving than lead-free solder. I can get this at my local hobby electronics store.
• Use solder that has a flux core. That's just about every spool you can buy that's marketed for hand-soldering electronics.
• Use the biggest tip you can fit into your iron. The whole game here is how fast you can transfer heat into the thing you're soldering - bigger tip means more heat energy to transfer, and less work for your iron, and less heat transfer into surrounding components. If you're having to hold the iron against the part for a long time, that's a sign you need a bigger tip and maybe a more powerful iron.