A variety of soldering methods and methods are always used in order to assemble any electrical circuit, to create a finished printed circuit board with radio elements so that all the parts are firmly held in place. Not only different wires, cables are soldered, but also light bulbs, resistors, transistors, diodes, microcircuits, keys, buttons, bridge circuits, etc. Not everyone knows how to solder a wire to a wire, although such a skill is sometimes very necessary.
Soldering can come in handy even at home: if you accidentally blown a wire in your favorite radio from a power surge, or you decided to assemble an amplifier with your own hands so that the music is louder at your party.
Choosing a soldering iron and other tools
Before proceeding directly to soldering, you need to choose a soldering iron and everything else that you may need for work.
First of all, a soldering iron is selected, they differ in power. Therefore, it should be borne in mind what exactly needs to be soldered. If these are radio elements that are afraid of severe overheating, or microcircuits, then the optimum power of the soldering iron will be 5-20 watts. To solder a wire to a wire or terminal, a soldering iron with a power of 40-50 watts is suitable. To connect metal elements that have a thickness of 3 mm or more, you need to choose a soldering iron with a power of 50 watts or more.
Also to work with a soldering iron you need to prepare:
- solder;
- long tweezers;
- pliers;
- rosin, flux or soldering acid.
How to prepare for soldering
Before work, the tip of the soldering iron is cleaned of soot by stripping it with a file. Then the soldering iron is connected to the network, heated and dipped in rosin.
If you have never worked with a soldering iron and don’t know how to solder a wire to a wire, you need to practice.
To do this, take a piece of unnecessary wire without insulation and divide into 12 approximately equal parts of 2.5 cm each. Using tweezers, a soldering iron, solder and flux, try to collect a cube from these pieces. This will be a good workout for soldering training. Once the structure is ready, allow it to cool and check how firmly all joints hold. If something falls off, re-solder.
Before work, all places where the soldering will be performed must be tinned.
Important soldering rules
Soldering wires with a soldering iron requires compliance with certain rules, so that as a result, the work is accurate and reliable. Soldering requires solder, the most commonly used are POS-40, POS-50, POS-61. The latter is successfully and most often used in production. To solder, you need to warm up the place where the solder will be applied to the temperature so that the solder can melt and the wires do not overheat.
All the work of soldering wires consists of successive stages:
- Wires are prepared for soldering. The oxide film should be removed by wiping with soldering acid or rosin.
- A pre-heated soldering iron is brought to the solder, it is taken quite a bit to avoid large influxes in the places of soldering.
- The soldered wire is attached to the wire and the soldering iron is brought to the place of their contact exactly for the time that it is necessary for the solder to remain at the junction of the wires.
No need to hold the soldering iron too much near the wires. Just a couple of seconds is enough for the solder to hold the wires together. After the sting is removed from the place of soldering, the solder freezes. So that the connection point does not have to be re-soldered, and it turns out to be neat, the wires must be held motionless until the solder solidifies completely. If there is an excess of flux at the place of soldering, it must be removed. This is necessary so that the soldering point does not oxidize over time.
Useful Tips
Before you can practice first hand how to solder a wire to a wire, here are some useful tips you may need.
During soldering, you do not need to use a lot of solder, it is just a little bit so that the solder can get into the material micro-gaps and fasten the wires. This will be enough for the forces of intermolecular interaction to begin to act.
To remove excess solder, you can use a shielding braid taken from any cable. And also use a soldering iron, which has a hollow on the sting, into which excess solder gets when touching the soldering place.
Too much solder can cause contact closure.
If you take too little solder on the tip of the soldering iron, you cannot solder anything.
If a lot of carbon or flux remains on the soldering iron, the soldering will turn out to be of poor quality. The same will happen if the soldering iron is not heated to the desired temperature.
Do not forget that you need to solder with a good hood or in a well-ventilated area.
Now you know how to solder the wire to the wire correctly.