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Przemek Klosowski Przemek Klosowski is offline
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Default Soldering Aluminum to Steel

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:52:46 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:

I sometimes have used stainless brushes to mechanically flux aluminum or
steel, but I have little experience with tin-zinc solders. I'll have to
give it a try sometime.

Anyway, abrading the oxide (iron oxide, in the case of music wire; it's
straight high-carbon steel) makes good sense. Steel can be coaxed to wet
well, but sometimes it takes a little extra mechanical fluxing to get it
started. Just rubbing the tip of a soldering iron on it often is enough.


Amen to that: I learned to solder wires (copper) to aluminum by putting a
drop of machine oil on the aluminum and scratching the heck out of it
under the oil layer, to expose clean Al metal. The usual tin/lead solder
wets it just dandy.