Soldering stainless steel wire

I have successfully 'tinned' stranded SS wire with silver braze, then soldered to it.

I'd never tried before, but it was very much easier than I expected, with flux on the wire, the braze wicks into the SS wire beautifully.

Or could you crimp?

Cheers

Plating copper onto iron from copper sulphate is a mugs game. The bond is nothing like good enough. Plating iron onto copper is doable at home.

You might get it to solder or rather braze first at high temperature if you use the right flux to get clean metal and a hot flame.

Be *extremely* careful with fluoride and HF based stainless steel fluxes they are exceptionally unforgiving and the Health & Safety film for working with HF is notorious for causing casualties in the audience.

why not do as I suggested once before get some stainless crimp ferules (for fishing traces),if you are still working on temperature sensors connection for kiln

...

A very good flux for soldering directly to stainless steel is pure phosphor ic acid. Place a drop of the acid on the stainless steel and solder with a normal (hot) soldering iron and tin/lead solder. Lead-free will probably also work fine but I haven't tried it. Eye protection would be a good idea as it may spit a little. Phosphoric acid should be handled carefully as i t can burn skin, but it is relatively non-toxic - it is added to some soft drinks.

The joints obtained are very good and the acid can easily be washed away af terwards.

Brazing also works very well with "German Silver" brazing alloy. The alloy and a suitable and relatively safe flux in powder form can be obtained fro m dental orthodontic materials suppliers. Such companies also stock a wide variety of stainless steel wires, springs etc. Don't use too hot a flame, as this chars the flux. Oxy-propane (with a fairly low oxygen flow) and a ir-propane work well. Oxy-acetylene is in my experience too hot.

John

Google seems to have forgotten about newlines, so I've added some...

A very good flux for soldering directly to stainless steel is pure phosphoric acid. Place a drop of the acid on the stainless steel and solder with a normal (hot) soldering iron and tin/lead solder. Lead-free will probably also work fine but I haven't tried it. Eye protection would be a good idea as it may spit a little. Phosphoric acid should be handled carefully as it can burn skin, but it is relatively non-toxic - it is added to some soft drinks.

The joints obtained are very good and the acid can easily be washed away afterwards.

Brazing also works very well with "German Silver" brazing alloy. The alloy and a suitable and relatively safe flux in powder form can be obtained from dental orthodontic materials suppliers. Such companies also stock a wide variety of stainless steel wires, springs etc. Don't use too hot a flame, as this chars the flux. Oxy-propane (with a fairly low oxygen flow) and air-propane work well. Oxy-acetylene is in my experience too hot.

I can confirm Martin's advice about plating copper onto SS. Adhesion is very poor and it will peel off. John

I don't know about nichrome. But you can solder stainless steel. This may not be avaialable on the other side of the world, but look for Stay brite solder and stay-clean flux from Harris. Perhaps there is an Oz equivalent? (a long link... watch the wrap.)

or this link

George H.

I think Nickel will work for you. You can both spot weld it and solder to it.

They use nickel strip in connecting batteries, so you might be able to find some defunct battery assemblies and salvage some of the nickel to experiment with.

Dan

Spot weld a solderable wire to the stainless? ...Jim Thompson

Den tirsdag den 18. februar 2014 10.26.44 UTC+1 skrev Sylvia Else:

you just need the right flus, I have some stuff made for tinning sheet metal basically some sort of flus mixed with tin balls, can't tell you more the label has fallen off.

just tried soldering a copper wire to some 316 stainless welding rod, works perfect with normal tin and weller iron

-Lasse

Yes, but so far I've not found anything that is both solderable and spot-weldable.

Sylvia

Silver solder (Braze) with a micro torch..

Jamie

Well, how about steel? SS (really, any alloy with nickel) solders with acid fluxes, nothing else will reliably go through the oxides on the surface. After the initial tinning, you can join with any kind of solder.

The usual fluxes for steel will often work on stainless at brazing temperatures, so a brazed or silver-soldered stainless item can be soft-soldered. Consider wrapping copper in a helical winding onto the stainless (like whipping the end of a rope) and applying silver solder, to build up a copper-like terminal. That's how I made my little stainless-wire keycap puller tools...

Nickel should work. You could also plate it.

Thanks for the replies people.

This was about fixing a car key-fob which was always temperamental as original designed, because the battery contacts always played up.

Having had trouble soldering the wires I could spot-weld, I went back to the idea of soldering copper wires to the battery, which I'd previously given up on, and following the advice given by someone on one of these groups (to that person, apologies for not naming you, but a search hasn't revealed the post in question). I seem to be getting a good solder joint, so that's the approach I'll use.

Sylvia.

On Tue, 18 Feb 2014 20:26:44 +1100, Sylvia Else Gave us:

cANNOT 'SOLDER' STAINLESS. iT requires A WELD JOINT, WHICH IS DEFINED BY both

Cannot 'solder' stainless. It REQUIRES a weld joint, which is defined by BOTH surface having been melted, and joined.

"Solder" melts NEITHER surface, and is 100% adhesive or cohesive attachment, but that only upon the surface molecules of the workpieces.

Welding makes fully melded bonds.

Spot welding is what you want, but deformation at the joint must be avoided.

On Tue, 18 Feb 2014 10:43:43 +0000, Martin Brown Gave us:

It would by just as easy to use conductive epoxy bonds.

Think about what you will be sinking all that heat into as well.

Masterbond make a nice, new, recently advertised conductive epoxy. Maybe they would send her a sample.

If this "wire" is going to also have physical tension on it, some fixturing beyond the electrical contact establishment may need to be considered.

On Tue, 18 Feb 2014 05:34:02 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com Gave us:

Thanks for that. Thanks for identifying the correct culprit too.

I cannot believe folks claiming to be soooo intelligent... are not all that bright. I refer to Google, of course.

And *they* chuckle, with a quick comparative glance at our net worths. (those _they_ people)

But it is so wrong to provide a client which ignores the decades established convention(s). Blatantly so!

Yet another group thinking they know what is best for us, or attempting to mold the future.

And they will not carry certain groups, all while far worse groups are carried. And by what Zimmerman Complex criterion do we measure *that* aspect?

Google is pretty immature and close minded in that respect. Worse than the friggin cops.

Many folks ask to have a group carried, and the twit behind the "google news" handle doesn't even know what is different since back when some other idiot cried and they culled it.

Aha! A new fob will only set you back ~$65... my wife lost her's on a Girl Scout camping trip... you have to stand on your head and wiggle your ears to reprogram the car :-( ...Jim Thompson

CAN SOLDER STAINLESS STEEL.

CAN