Soldering Litz Conductors
Q.) I'll be using a lot of your 21.5 gauge hookup wire for a project and I'm wondering about the best way to remove the litz coating before soldering. I am told that you use an acid, which would probably work best for me. If so, can you tell me what that acid is, and at what strength you use it?
A.) Do not use acid of any type! Do not try to burn off the insulation with a flame! There are several things that you can do: We have a termination kit that will work for a project or if you are going into production we can put a faster method together. If you want to try it yourself here are some of the ways you can do it.
1. Use a solder pot (best, easiest and most reliable) 2. Sand off (220-320-grit wet or dry unravel strand and lay flat on table, a couple of strokes on each side) the insulation and use a little rosin flux on the wire. With a good 900 degree tip on a 100 watt iron you can pre-tin the wire. 3. Twist a little piece of unenamled wire around the litz such as a resistor lead and solder normally using using some rosin flux (such as Kester sp88). Heat the bare copper wire you have wound around the litz and add solder and rosin flux until you see the litz suck up the solder. 4. If the wire is to be soldered to a pc board, placed through an eyelet, crimped in a spade or other connector or otherwise surrounded by solder. In a closed loop you can solder it by just putting a little rosin flux on the wire as you twist the strands after stripping. On the surrounding piece of metal heat the metal or the very tip of the Cardas litz and watch for the smoke of the coating coming off and the tinning of the wire near the surrounding metal. 5. You can pre tin the wire by applying some rosin flux during the striping operation and heating the very tip of the wire in a pool of solder on the tip (850-900deg.) of a 100w Iron. 6. You can get a large iron with a hot tip and dimple the tip so that it will hold a little solder and use it for a solder pot.
I have heard 100 other ways over the years, but basically, if you can hold some hot solder around the wire or at the tip of the conductor and use some rosin flux it will tin in a second if the tip of the Iron is hot enough. The chief downfall of this method is not using a hot enough or large enough iron. We use 100 watt Wellers with 900 degree pencil tips. Anything this hot/big or bigger will work.
We have small pots and termination kits available or you can hunt down an Essico model 20 if you want something real nice. I suggest using our 63-37 ultra pure in the pots and our Quadeutectic solder for your soldering process. - George
Tenker jeg prøver saltsyre først. For tinngryte hørtes ut som om jeg må ha en kopp med smeltet tinn - eller er det noe annet. Aceton har jeg prøvd - i noen dager, men det hjelper lite. Smergel går an, men det blir ikke helt bra. Har prøvt MEK (Methyl Ethyl Keton) - som kanskje er aceton(?). veldig sterk væske. Funker ikke.
