which solder do you recommend?
Here is Kester solder alloys and their melting points. BTW I've been trained in high reliability soldering inspection and teaching per Weapon Specs many years ago. If I recall the soldering stations were also grounded against ESD damage and the soldering irons were at 700°F. |
Great info there Rich. I saw that Kester also makes another formulation similar to the one i posted a link to above. The Sn62Pb36Ag02 that i posted is 2% silver whereas the Sn60Pb36Ag04 is 4% silver. I have to assume that this is just as "smoky" as the rest of their product line though. As to the melting points and various solder stations, the better Weller's have adjustable tip temperatures. This can be done either by changing the tip itself or by varying the amount of power fed to the heating element via a control on the station. As you mentioned, 700* F is a pretty typical setting / rating. With that in mind, my comments were based on people trying to use 18 or 20 gauge solder with a commonly purchased $10 Radio Shack 30 or 40 watt pencil. While those pencils aren't really good for much, switching to a much smaller gauge solder and following the above directions can get them a lot closer to making better connections. Sean > |
1) Arrange the multiple litz conductors into a bundle for each connection point. If each conductor is individually insulated with enamel, remove all of the enamel near the end of the wire. The use of an abrasive wire wheel or brinding wheel on a Dremel type tool works wonderfully for this. 2) Lightly plate the bundle, allowing the solder to seep between the individual conductors. This can be best achieved by anchoring the bundle via a set of "helping hands" and moving the soldering tip around the bundle as you feed solder. When done properly, you can still see all of the individual strands being held together by the plating, not a "big clump" of solder that looks like one big conductor. This approach reduces the potential for hot spots and clumping, providing a very even yet thin layer of plating. Besides holding all of the individual strands together, this unifies all of the conductors and makes for one common point of contact between them. Too much solder will make the "one larger conductor" both harder to work with / less apt to "form fit shaping" and less "sonically pure". 3) If inserting the wire bundle into a ring terminal, eyelet or around a post, lightly plate the areas of the post. Do NOT completely fill in any holes in a ring terminal or eyelet on a barrier strip, just plate the metal that's already there. 4) Take and form the wire around the individual connection as best possible. You want to achieve the best physical connection that you can. The use of needle nose pliers or sturdy hemostat's can work wonders here in terms of producing bends, hooks or wire-wrapping. If you've done this properly, the wire should be tightly bound to the connection at his point and be able to withstand a solid tug without coming apart. 5) Flow enough solder onto the joint to bond and seal the connection. As above, you should still be able to clearly see each part of the circuit and not end up with a big indistinct solder clump. 6) Before doing any of this, MAKE SURE that you know were EVERY wire and part goes. You might even want to label them prior to starting. Once you've done the above, it will be a real pain to try and remove a wire / break a connection. You not only have to break down the solder connection to remove it, but also the physical connection that you made. Think of this as a "connection that lasts a lifetime" : ) 7) Once you are done, whatever it is that you are building will sound like crapola in your system. The sound will be bright and sibilant. With that in mind, listen to it in the system and get a good idea of what it does sound like using discs that you are very familiar with. Don't get upset at how bad it sounds. Once you've got an idea of what it sounds like, put the Ayre Acoustics break in disc on repeat and play track 7 as much as possible. Play this as loudly as you can but remember that this track CAN and WILL damage your speakers and / or system if used without the proper caution in terms of setting the volume. Listen to the system in a couple of days using those same discs. Before doing so though, turn your transport / CD player off for a few seconds and then turn it back on. The differences between what you first heard and what you're hearing now will amaze you. Continue to use the "break in disc" whenever you're not listening to music and it isn't going to annoy you or others in the house / building. After about two weeks, you'll be stunned. Just remember that after an extended period of "repeat playing" on your machine, reset the power on your transport / player. My Brother and i did this with my Father's system earlier this year after rebuilding his speakers. After three days of "burn in" with this disc, my Brother insisted that i had changed all of the cabling in the system. The difference was THAT huge. Prior to the three days of burning, the initial impressions that we had formed of the speakers was that we had actually made things worse than before. That's why i made the comment that i did about things sounding like "crapola" right off the bat. After two weeks of thorough break in and my Father returning home, he commented "I don't think that my system has ever sounded this good before". He was right, but had no idea as to why. He had NO idea that we had been inside his speakers and it never had sounded that good before. The modifications that we had performed along with the break-in procedure used paid off big-time. I'm just glad that he didn't hear it right after we had completed the work as he would have wanted to kill us. Crapola : ) Sean > |
