[dgersh]

Amen to the soldering paste - it's absolutely essential. I had a couple friends here who had trouble soldering, and soldering paste has transformed their lives!

Besides cleaning, it also helps heat transfer and heat transfer is the key to soldering....

While the general principle is of course to heat the parts which is turn melt the solder, I've found that charging the iron tip with a bit of solder helps the heat transfer and gets things flowing. Also, in electrical connections, like soldering to the leads on your motor, too much heat can damage the motor, so you definitely want to put a little solder on your iron beforehand and then let that flow into the joint.

As said above, practice is the key too - it becomes automatic after awhile, and soldering is fun! 5-1 you try soldering a chassis within a year!

Don

PS: Rich, guess our posts crossed... I still use paste for electrical connections, including wire and find it makes things much easier.
Also, I thought 60-40 didn't exist any more? that lead is now totally banned... I still have a roll, but it was bought a few years ago...

 

[dgersh]

Rich,

I've been doing this for 45 years too (minus a few off for good behavior...), and have always found a little external paste to make things easier. I know the rosin core should do the trick, but for me it doesn't.

In any case, the idea is for the beginner to try different methods and find one that suits.

Don

 

[dgersh]

Looks like your brass is dirty, which will prevent the solder from sticking - use a file or sandpaper to clean it off well (even if it wasn't dirty, you need to do this, since metals oxidize to various degrees, and that prevents the solder from sticking)

Put a bit of soldering paste on the clean eyelet, load a bit of solder on your HOT iron and touch it to the eyelet while holding the wire against it - oh yeah, "tin" the wire and eyelet first for best results: after cleaning the eyelet put a bit of paste on it, load the iron tip with a bit of solder and touch it to the eyelet so it's got a thin coating of solder; dip the wire in paste and ditto.

If the eyelet is close to the motor and touching the brush arm do this all very quickly no nothing melts or demagnetizes!

That should take care of it.

Don

 

[dgersh]

Rick, Joel,

I disagree: never had any problems of that type using soldering paste, and I find the solder with a flux core alone not very efficient in making joints - the paste really helps the critical heat transfer. Maybe not logical, but that's my experience.

This doesn't apply when using acid flux of course: that really needs to be cleaned off right away.

Soldering also needs to be taken in context: silver solder and acid flux is often recommended by the "pros", but they're running very high-speed machines and joints have to be very strong. I run vintage cars a few times a year, for maybe 30 minutes tops in a race, so have found regular 60/40 solder and paste flux largely adequate - I do use acid when soldering pinions or piano wire of course.

Don

 

[dgersh]

Or me...

Don

PS: I also have a long-held superstition: after all my solder joints, I take a toothbrush and lighter fluid and immediately clean them off... maybe that stops the wicking, or maybe I'm just lucky.