I have a ribbon cable and want to solder a single wire to all the
conductors.

This is a flatter ribbon cable than the sort of cable found in PCs for
for IDE drives. ISTR it may have come from a printer where it was
subject to a lot of movement.

I don't have any ancy equipment. Is it possible to solder onto the metal
in the conductors? Or is that metal made of aluminum or something like
it which is difficult to solder?