Re: Soldering Litz wire

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "D.C. Cox by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <DR.RESONANCE-at-next-wave-dot-net>


Take a very small metal cup, ie, a thimble.  Heat the thimble with a torch
and melt solder into it, creating a solder tinning cup.  Tip your bundle
into the hot cup of solder for 10 sec.  It burns away the insulation and
tins all the wires while simultaneously soldering them together.

Dr. Resonance

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 5:44 PM
Subject: Re: Soldering Litz wire


> Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>
>
> Tesla list wrote:
> >
> > Original poster: "Lau, Gary by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
> <Gary.Lau-at-hp-dot-com>
> >
> > I just tried the aspirin approach.  The aspirin melted at a very low
> > temperature, I had a boiling vat of molten aspirin, but this had no
effect
> > on the enamel insulation.
> >
> > The wire I'm attempting to tin is a bundle of 259 strands of #38 AWG,
> > equivalent to #7AWG, about 1/4" diameter.  I also tried the
> > heating-up-in-a-propane-flame approach, but it just made a mess of the
> > bundle.  I was successful in using an abrasive fiberglass(?) brush to
> > scrape away the enamel on a small number of strands at a time, just
tedious.
> >
> > Regards, Gary Lau
> > MA, USA
>
> So much for that myth!  Will bug the friend who gave it to me.  I guess
> I should ask if you put the tinned iron against the wires to make sure
> you couldn't tin them.  My guess is you did and it didn't, but just to
> make sure..........
>
> I have used a very small torch on 50-38 litz wire because I was too
> lazy to wait for the enamel stripper to work.  Takes several doses of it
> for formvar to let go, and the fine wire soaks up the stripper and it's
> generally a mess.  Anyhow, the heat plus ultra-fine steel wool did work
> and I didn't break very many strands.  I heated the wires until the
> smoke went away and about 1/2" of the end of the bundle was red hot.  I
> know that some of the recent insulation will melt and might well cause a
> mess, but if you heat it enough to vaporize copper I'm sure the enamel
> will be gone.  By the way, for those who don't have one, this little
> torch is neat.  Got it from special Frey's for about 6 bucks.  For fuel
> it uses a drop-in Scripto cigarette lighter as is.  There is an off-on
> lever and a piezoelectric starter so you can do everything
> single-handed.  Tiny but useful flame.  I suspect you may be able to
> find these things for a lot less than Fry's "special" price, but think
> it was worth at least what I paid.
>
> Ed
>
>
>
>