Can nichrome be soldered?

Ordinary silver solder will bond to both metals. But you have to keep the soldered joint well below the softening temperature of the solder for the joint to last.

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Regards,

John Popelish

"John Popelish"

** Better define just what that is - John.

Cos folk will imagine all kind of stuff - like silver brazing and lead free solders that have a smidge of silver in them.

** Or go for silver brazing with a small flame torch.

Long as that " copper " is not tissue thin PCB track.

..... Phil

John:

Thanks for the the excellent soldering tips. I've used silver solder for putting together copper pipe. It's a little more expensive than ordinary electronics solder (lead/tin/rosin core), but I'll only need a little for the small wire job I have.

insula

C. Nick Kruzer wrote: > John Popelish wrote: (snip)

I think I may have misused the term silver solder. I should have said "silver braze", since I am not talking about a sliver bearing (i.e. 2% silver) low temperature tin lead solder (that you can use with a soldering iron), but with a silver alloy braze that you use with a flux and a torch. I think the high silver alloys that contain a little nickel are good at wetting both stainless steel and copper, and nichrome is really a form of stainless steel. However, there are a huge number of silver braze alloys available, and not all are suitable for joining copper and nichrome.

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Regards,

John Popelish

The main issue with soldering any form of stainless (including nichrome) is physically removing as much oxide as possible, and using an adequate flux for further chemical oxide removal, whether for soldering or brazing. A fast-forming resistant oxide layer is what makes stainless stainless.

You can certainly solder stainless with ordinary tin/lead solder (I've done a lot of that) but it takes a very aggressive flux (rosin won't generally do it.) These aggressive acid fluxes need to be washed off when the work is done.

When dealing with nichrome, specifically, one tends to assume that heating is intended, and that certainly would make braze the better choice - though you might want to consider a purely mechanical connection, too. Those require periodic cleaning and re-tightening, but don't generally melt and disconnect.

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Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by

Nichrome spotwelds quite nicely. Copper won't take high temperatures well (if this joint gets hot, the copper will turn to black crumbly oxide). I've done silver solder, too, you can get 'easy silver solder' and appropriate flux at any jewelry art supplies market.

Soft solder, though, will only work if you use acid fluxes on the nichrome (like, Dunton's stainless steel flux).

r y

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Once you're done brazing a silver coating on the nichrome, it will be wettable for regular solder (if you're soldering wire to a circuit board).

Cheers Chris