Butt welding ends of 1/16" stainless wire

Or one that always goes to voice mail like my 'Magic Jack' account? I only use it to make long distance calls. :)

...

Ah, yes. "Solder is not glue that you melt before using" the joint has to be hot enough to melt the solder without burning it.

So, essentially, I "brass soldered," with no flux, IIRC.

NOW ya tell me! ;-)

Thanks!

You learn something new every day; I guess I can go back to bed now! ;-D

Cheers! Rich

...also helps to bend up the ring/loop so that it wants to overlap, and then pull the ends back and butt them - they will have a bit of spring tension holding them together.

Possibly. I was using a relatively big tungsten electrode and probably too much current. I am mastering the art of wire bending (around various mandrels or round nose pliers), making things that are very useful around the household (hangers, zipper tabs etc).

Learning how to weld that stuff is easy, cheap and rewarding.

I usually use 316 or 308 stainless wire. I have 1/16, 3/32 and 1/8.

Hopefully, those welds were primarily autogenous. Coathangers are the s***ty potmetal of steels.

-- You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.? -- Ronald Reagan

Sure, but they do fill holes. :)

Please don't. That just inflicts the telemarketers on the innocent.

I have this miraculous new invention - the "Answering Machine." It says, "Hi, you've reached . Please leave your name, number, and a short message if you'd like. And please, say your name and number twice, just so there's no confusion. Thanks! "

They usually hang up - those telemarketing droids are just grunts who are trying to make a buck, and they'd rather hang up and go to the next victim than waste their time on someone who's obviously not a buyer.

When I _do_ pick up, I can recognize them by their words, usually something like "Hi, this is Joe Schmo, and I'm calling to give you this opportunity to blah blah blah" I say, "Thanks, not interested. "

Trying to "punish" them is an exercise in futility. Although, I did hear about some guy who would say, "Please tell me your name, your supervisor's name, and the name and address of your company - it is my duty to inform you that my fee for using my personal equipment in the conduct of your business is one hundred dollars per minute."

They hang up immediately if not sooner. >:->

Cheers! Rich

I've also heard that they have coathanger sex to reproduce in the darkness of the closet, which is why they're always all tangled up and there are more every time you look. ;-)

But coathanger for filler? Doesn't the enamel contaminate the weld?

Cheers! Rich

Have you ever welded? Do you know what flux is for?

Only with fluxcore, and I've "gas brazed," which was a lot closer to welding than soldering (I still don't know exactly what "brazing" is); and yes, of course I know what flux is for.

Does the enamel on coat hangers make good flux? I'd think it would just crud up the joint, but maybe it cleans off the oxides as it burns; I simply do not know.

Thanks, Rich

No. it burns off, like it's supposed to.

I've seen lots of old welders use coat hangers or other scrap wire for fill work. Heat the end, stick it into a can of Borax and weld. When you run out of fluxed wire you stick it back in the can and continue working. Not for welding requiring a lot of strength, but OK for filling rust holes in a car body, or similar jobs. I used it once for a truck bumper I made. The steel was 3/16" thick and had a narrow gap where the ends curved after I bent them. My freind was low on rods, so I used coat hangers, then ground it down with a 8" angle grinder. It looked great, and did the job.

Another place where silver-bearing solders used to be used was in Tektronix oscilloscopes. They had notched strips of ceramic used as terminal strips. Each notch was plated with a noticeable thickness of silver -- and connecting to it using normal lead/tin solder would dissolve the silver over time. Usually, you could make one or two connections to it -- but if you had a part which was needing frequent replacement for whatever reason, you would soon enough wind up with a bunch of wires in a blob of solder hanging free -- no bond to the ceramic terminal strip for that connection at least.

The Tektronix 'scopes which used these (mostly tube days, and no printed circuit cards) typically would have a small roll of the proper silver-bearing solder snapped in the storage compartment with the manual, usually on the top of the 'scope.

Later -- about the time that Tektronix went to complete printed circuit boards and mostly solid state circuitry, ALCO got the license to make the terminal strips. I used quite a few in projects at work back then. They were particularly nice for circuits involving high impedances (tubes and FETs) because, unlike the typical phenolic strip with a bunch of terminals staked in place, the glazed ceramic did not grow fungus and provide high-impedance paths for current leakage.

And -- the phenolic tended to get cooked to death as people sucked off the solder to gain access to wires wrapped around the eyelets. No problem with the first components, but after several repairs, they were a serious disaster.

Enjoy, DoN.

I used my ENDECO desoldering iron, and sometimes another iron on the other side of a terminal to quickly melt & remove old solder. That way the terminal was hotter, but for a very short time. Over all, it took a lot less heat to clean the terminal.

And, you could wash them. The Tek scope maintenance manuals of the day had a section on how to wash the scope in a bathtub. You took the covers off, put the saambly in a tub or big deep sink, and washed it with Alconox dishwasher detergent in hot water, rinsed with hot water then distilled water (to remove water hardness), and let it dry. This removed al the dust and dirt and conductive films from the ceramic terminal strips.

Joe Gwinn

Some time ago, some guy told me that if you send a 'scope to Tektronix for warranty repair, the first thing Tek does is put the 'scope in a room lined with ceramic tile, and turn the equivalent of a fire hose on it.

This is second-hand Urban Legend grade material, but it's a fairly well-known fact that water doesn't hurt electronics that aren't powered up, as long as you let it dry before you _do_ power it up. :-)

Cheers! Rich

I do know for a fact that Tek recommended washing the scopes - I read the instructions myself, back in the day, so that part is not urban legend.

I don't know about the fire hose part, but I bet that Tek did wash the scope first, if only to eliminate dirt-induced weird problems. They probably used a hot-water sprayer such as one would find in a commercial kitchen.

Joe Gwinn

After Freon was banned we switched to washing the flux off new circuit boards with isopropyl alcohol or soap and water. Only a few devices with internal contacts like switches and relays couldn't be immersed and had to be soldered on afterwards and hand-cleaned.

For the occasional hobby board, I use Sanford Expo whiteboard cleaner in a pump spray bottle as found at Office Max. A couple of squirts of that, scrub with a toothbrush, blow dry with compressed air and the board is pristinely fluxless.

Looks good, isopropyl alcohol and butyl cellosolve:

jsw