When Junior lived here he insisted on a NEW single edge razor blade every time he spread the top of the line compound, after he dressed the heat sink surface with extra fine emery cloth on plate glass. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
When Junior lived here he insisted on a NEW single edge razor blade every time he spread the top of the line compound, after he dressed the heat sink surface with extra fine emery cloth on plate glass. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
completely concur!
Fortunately I still have several pounds of 70/30.
(...)
Just checked the price of my fav 63/37 at ~25.00 for a
1 lb roll. Wow! Should have bought 'solder futures'.--Winston
Who knew that the valuable heavy metals would be lead, tin and copper?
jsw
The stuff is inflation proof, apparently. Huh.
--Winston
In US dollars/metric ton
Lead is $2,290/ton Tin is $16,975.00/ton
Assuming the 63/37 is by weight, the weighted average is 11,500 per tonne, or $5.23/pound. So the metal is only 20% of what you are buying.
(...)
Logically then, the solder I've been storing for years cost only 1.60/pound in raw metal. Of course, 1980 dollars are not the same as 2009 dollars.
I guess there's value added in the alloying, extrusion, drawing processes, then profit down the retail chain.
The machine that makes the stuff must be interesting. I've never seen one but I envision a couple coaxial stainless funnels that continuously extrude the solder (with its flux core). Perhaps rows of rollers follow to draw it to final size. I imagine much of the operation would be conducted under a inert gas blanket to exclude oxygen.
--Winston
Perhaps part of the cost is some kind of ROHS penalty fee.
[ ... ]I would find the machine which makes the Ersin Multicore solder even more intersting. IIRC, it is five rosin cores whose centers form a circle about half the diameter of the whole solder.
At a guess -- slitting from the sides, squeezing the rosin into the slits, then swaging the slits closed again over the solder.
Is Ersin Multicore still made?
Enjoy, DoN.
.....
I will second this, and also note that just too much goop will do it. I had a problem almost exactly like yours, got worse when it was warmer, almost no existent when it was cold in the room.
Could not find the culprit, until I took the heat sink off and scraped the interface almost dry and refit it. Tried this based on something I read online . The goop wasn't that thick, but removing most of it fixed the problem.
jk
(...)
I guess the wire *could* be extruded 'open' and then swaged over the flux, too. Envision a gear with 5 teeth.
I guess that means single-core solder *could* start out as an extruded flat ribbon and the first die actually wraps it around the flux core sort of like a hot dog bun.
Yup. Though I think they dropped the 'Ersin' name.
I bet flux smells exactly the same though. :)
--Winston
I don't know if it's still made but I have a lifetime supply. I picked up 12 500 G (1 lb) rolls (SN63) when NCR in Waterloo Ont was clearing out surplus before shutting down several years back - I think I paid $10 for the whole box. Gave a few rolls to friends.Got about 8 1/2 rolls left. I also got almost a full 5 lb roll of Kester 44 MultiCore and 4 rolls of alusol (MultiCor Aluminum solder) in a $2 box at an auction about 6 years ago.
Caps don't have to be visibly bad. I had a bad cap on the supply to the video card that caused random system crashes. Stick a scope on the cap and see if the volts sits still. If it doesn't, the cap is suspect.
or it's a CPU fit issue.
$11.95/lb for solid 63/37, so that is indeed a lot cheaper without the labor of drilling it out and stuffing flux in the middle (which I imagine to be a lot harder than stuffing toothpaste into a tube).
...
My guess is they extrude it large over flux nozzles and then draw it thin, like thermometer tubes ot millefiore glass.
I've got a '40s book on metal extrusion, the way it would have been done back then would be to cast a billet with the requisite number of holes, fill them up with flux and then extrude and draw down to the required size. I've got a couple of rolls of Ersin with a little silver added, made the cordless iron bits I used to use last longer. The flux was great stuff. I've no idea if it's still made, probably not with ROHS the order of the day. Repair of surface-mount boards takes a little more these days than the roll of solder, an iron and a schematic that repairing stuff used to. Some of that lead-free solder turns into a nasty pasty mess if reheated.
Stan
Yes. That would make sense.
:-)
Which hot-dog bun? The New England style, which is slit down the top (and baked joined with several others on the sides), or the more widespread US one which is baked as individuals, and slit on the side?
What do you use for mustard on the solder? :-)
O.K. The Multicore logo looks the same as it used to at least.
That brings back memories. :-)
Enjoy, DoN.
(...)
I can't shake the picture of a solder extrusion that has the shape of an asterisk in cross section. * Gets drawn through a pressurized funnel of flux and then swaged shut and drawn to size.
I've got a couple of rolls of Ersin with a little
Yup. But you have a misspelling in your phrase "All of that lead-free..."
--Winston
I have some - I want to say it was British / English made. Likely bought out or patent ran out. Maybe the get the lead out did it.
IIRC, I have some with copper in the alloy. It is tougher.
Mart> >
From the website of the manufacturer of Ersin solders, Multicore Solders Ltd
Multicore Solders Ltd Kelsey Hse, Wood Lane Hemel, Hempstead U.K. HP2 4RQ
Flux-cored wire is universally made by an extrusion process followed by drawing through dies progressively reducing the wire diameter from say 16mm to the required diameter which is normally in the range 3mm to 0.2mm. As solder is opaque and usually contains lead it is not possible to see and test inside the wire to check for flux presence. The extrusion process is subject to variations of pressure and temperature which can lead to occasional blockages or contractions of the flux core. The shortage of such a flux void at the extrusion stage results in a much longer length without flux in the drawn down wire. Any gap in the flux continuity will result in a 'dry' faulty joint. Solder cannot join metals without flux. Multicore Solders Ltd. has employed its own unique extrusion process for over 40 years to guarantee flux continuity. It has earned an enviable reputation for this reliability that has never been challenged.
Firstly we use machines of our own design to minimise variations of temperature variations etc. during extrusion.
Secondly we are the only company in the world, to the best of our knowledge, that extrudes 5 truly separate cores of flux inside the solder wire.
Until 1967 we had patents covering our principle of extruding more than one core of flux. Most competitors still make single core. Some have tried to imitate our technology but we have proved that the shape of their flux cores (which sometimes collapse together at the centre as in the photo above) is due to flux being injected through a single nozzle having 5 holes in it. Such a crude imitation is no more technically reliable than a single cored solder.
The probability of all 5 cores being absent from Ersin Multicore
5-Core Solder is 5x4x3x2x1 = 120 times less than competitors' cored solder, even if the single core solder process was as closely controlled as Multicore's.
(...)
Either will do for the purposes of this laboratory.
For extra credit use a 'hamburger' metaphor to explain capacitance. :)
French's errr.. Victory Flux!
(...)
Heh! That will melt a few decades away, Right Now. :)
--Winston
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.