Soldering iron and 6ga wire?

[srislash]

Travis, I have found my Weller 80 to be the ticket and about the best I have around(by no means my only one as my father was an electronics junkie from the 70's). I do find I really need to be prepared and MEAN what I am going to do with it, then let it rest for a bit to reheat before hitting the next task.

[tazman]

Hey Travis. castle has 6awg silicone jacket wire and is very flexible and nice. Have track power tk 950 station. Not easy or fast but gets the job done . Not the best but only second time I have soldered wire that big.

[78MaicoRider]

When it comes to soldering irons one must consider both temp and watt rating. A 750-800 degree tip on your 60 or 80 watt weller will burn up unless you constantly keep it tinned. For soldering larger mass a higher wattage with the temp in the 600 range works best. The higher wattage 100+ gives you the grunt to heat a large mass quickly. This way you don't have solder wicking up the wires turning stranded wire solid. Most electrical solder (Sn63) melts about 425 degrees. Flows nicely at 500. So there is really no need to heat beyond 600 degrees.

[kfxguy]

Hey Travis. castle has 6awg silicone jacket wire and is very flexible and nice. Have track power tk 950 station. Not easy or fast but gets the job done . Not the best but only second time I have soldered wire that big.

Thanks for that!! Found it! Awesome!

[danielplace1962]

Just as important as temperature or wattage is what the iron was designed to do.


The problem with most you will find is that there is no mass built into the tip of regular soldering irons so the second they get up against a mass they loose all there heat then to recover they have very small contact patch to transfer heat to the work so it takes forever to get the whole part up to temperature.


You need the irons made for stained glass work. It has a tip that stores some heat and will quickly transfer to the work.

It will solder a #6 into a 10mm castle in about 60 seconds start to finish. Most of the time is feeding solder to the huge joint.

Weller 100 watt,

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=weller+100+soldering+iron

Hakko,

http://www.anythinginstainedglass.com/tools/ironsHakko.html

[kfxguy]

Just as important as temperature or wattage is what the iron was designed to do.


The problem with most you will find is that there is no mass built into the tip of regular soldering irons so the second they get up against a mass they loose all there heat then to recover they have very small contact patch to transfer heat to the work so it takes forever to get the whole part up to temperature.


You need the irons made for stained glass work. It has a tip that stores some heat and will quickly transfer to the work.

It will solder a #6 into a 10mm castle in about 60 seconds start to finish. Most of the time is feeding solder to the huge joint.

Weller 100 watt,

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=weller+100+soldering+iron

Hakko,
http://www.anythinginstainedglass.co...ronsHakko.html

I was eyeballing that weller. I found it pretty cheap at a stained glass supply store. Think I'll need a different tip tho.

[dmitry100]

I'm selling (probably the same) Weller 80 watt in my for sale thread ... Maybe you can just tie the tips together with copper plating or wire for 160 watts!!! Haha. That actually doesn't sound like that bad of an idea either.

[Ken Haines]

There is a fairly new Weller Solder Station that is a small pencil type,
but still 95 Watts. This gives incredibly stable heat and never has
temperature droops while soldering. It is pretty pricey, but you can look on
ebay for deals. This link will get you started. Definitely the best I have used
in my Electronic repair facility at the Nuke plant. I have used the higher
100 to 250 watt units but they are much larger and more difficult to use.

http://www.amazon.com/Weller-WD-95-S.../dp/B00DK856YO

Hope this info helps,
Ken

[gsbuickman]

Hiya Travis

Rather than using my 80 watt weller iron to heat up my wire leads for tinning, I find it much faster and easier to simply dip them in solder.

Depending on what I am doing I grab one of my extra bullet connectors or a spent shell like a 7.62x39 that I cut down with my angle grinder and clean out. I use my helping hands from Harbor Freight to hold it while I heat it up with a handheld butane torch, and I melt solder into it until there is enough to dip the leads in one at a time and let them cool. Its much faster and easier than using an iron and it looks nicer as well. It works great on 4-6awg power leads for car audio amplifiers so they don't fray in the amp terminals