Re: [freeflightml] soldering.

From: art <upwind120_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:51:24 -0000

I first tried rosin core on one of the winders when I encountered a little rust problem on the shafts from acid core. It said on the internet that it was just as strong as long as the metal was cleaned properly, and the internet never lies, right? That was the winder that I decided to test to destruction, so I could see how much weight had to be applied to the crank handle to break the chain. The solder joint on the crank hub let go first. The joint (.062 wire to .062 ID square brass) is only .300" long, and rosin core solder just couldn't cut it once I applied enough twist.

Then I went to silver solder. No more problems.

The first kit to be built was assembled with rosin core, because not only was silver solder not available in Malaysia, but evidently normal acid core was hard to come by, as well. Marcus did a thorough prep job, and I felt he'd be safe because in normal use he'd never apply the kind of torque that I had on the test. Nonetheless, I decided that on all future kits, I'd do all the soldering using the right stuff. Marcus' crank eventually failed and I replaced it.

As for the .031 wire soldered into the brass tube, all the winders over the past year and a half have been made like that. The earlier ones had a soldered joint .610 long, and on the current ones this has been reduced to .300. All the joints are sound. The silver solder isn't real cheap, but it's worth every penny.

Art.

Art.
Received on Wed Sep 26 2012 - 07:51:26 CEST