×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

How do steel plated soldering tips wet solder so well

How do steel plated soldering tips wet solder so well

How do steel plated soldering tips wet solder so well

(OP)
Not going to deny it, I'm not an Materials Engineer or any Engineer that deals with hardware. Well... I can be called a Software Engineer, but I have a question that is in the Material Sciences.

I want to know how modern iron plated soldering tips wet solder so easily. I know that under the temperature the soldering iron is at (~180-220°C), the iron or steel passivates and it's pretty much impossible to get solder to wet it. I've noticed that even if I don't pre-tin it, there's a bit of solder that seems to leak out of the iron surface, so all I have to do is keep wiping it. So how does it do it?

RE: How do steel plated soldering tips wet solder so well

Are you trying to solder two iron surfaces, or asking about the coated (tinned?) iron tip on a soldering iron being used to join two copper wires? (My home soldering gun is not iron-tipped, so I'm not going to address your question directly. Very, very old soldering irons were furnace or torch-heated, then moved to the solder joint.)

RE: How do steel plated soldering tips wet solder so well

The iron coating is there to prevent the tin from eating away the copper core of the Soldering tip, the iron is somewhat porous and can absorb a tiny quantity of the tin , so when you clean your iron that residual tin will come to the surface. If you clean too much you will remove all of that tin and you will have to re-tin your iron from scratch . This is done by abrading the surface on a sandpaper like surface until all of the impurities are removed, then fluxing and re -tinning the surface. see the attached PDF on the care and feeding of soldering tips.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources