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Soldering Aluminum Wires vs Copper

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vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: DW1961 on July 20, 2020, 01:46:58 am ---
--- Quote from: Ian.M on July 19, 2020, 10:58:03 pm ---Grab an offcut with pliers and heat it in a gas flame.  Aluminum melts at 660 deg C (dull red heat) or a bit lower depending on the alloy, and as you approach that temperature will 'flop', sharply bending or even breaking just inside the flame.   Copper melts at 1085 deg C which is barely achievable within a natural gas flame that isn't fed with preheated air and fuel.  It will be at bright orange heat, close to yellow heat, and you'll find that to get that temperature it must be in the heart of the flame at the tip of the blue cone.  If you melt from the end of the wire, the molten copper will ball up and form droplets.

For fine or stranded wires, the luminous flame of a gas lighter offers good discrimination - its not hot enough to readily melt copper but is hot enough to cause the characteristic aluminum 'flop'.


Another approach would be chop some up into very short pieces to expose as much suspected aluminum as possible and immerse in a strong lye (sodium or potassium hydoxide) solution in a clear container.  Aluminum will react producing tiny bubbles of hydrogen gas.  Other metals commonly found in wires will not.

You can eliminate the other common 'fake copper' wire easily- copper coated steel is attracted to a magnet and is significantly stiffer than copper or CCA.

--- End quote ---

Cool.
I'm just going to make sure my damn wire are all copper beforehadn.

OK so the "tin plated copper core " wire I have is just "tinned?"

--- End quote ---

No, it is actually plated with metallic tin, not solder, as would be implied by the confusing, but common, term "tinning", used when describing the soldering process.

If you buy a reel of "tinned copper wire", sometimes just written as "TCW", you are getting single strand copper wire which ihas been tin plated.

Even in flexible multistrand wire, tinned copper strands are probably the most common type used.
Tin is far more corrosion resistant than bare copper, which is why it is used.

Cheap coaxial cable like the common "RG6" often uses copper coated steel for the inner conductor, & aluminium for the braid screen.

The proper connectors for RG6 are the very reliable "compression" type, but it can be used with crimp type BNC by cutting back the plastic outer sheath & crimping on the screen.

The centre conductor doesn't crimp reliably, but the "copper coated steel" will solder OK.
The removed section of outer sheath is then replaced with self adhesive heatshrink tubing.

donlisms:
A TIG welder would work, right?

mikerj:

--- Quote from: donlisms on July 23, 2020, 02:33:52 am ---A TIG welder would work, right?

--- End quote ---

If you were joining a sizeable bit of aluminium to another sizeable bit of aluminium than yes.  You can't weld dissimilar metals together, and you certainly wouldn't TIG a tiny hookup sized wires.

jpanhalt:

--- Quote from: mikerj on July 23, 2020, 09:24:49 am ---

If you were joining a sizeable bit of aluminium to another sizeable bit of aluminium than yes.  You can't weld dissimilar metals together, and you certainly wouldn't TIG a tiny hookup sized wires.

--- End quote ---

You can use TIG to connect small gauge thermocouple wires together quite easily.  That is the only thing I use for that purpose now.

David Hess:

--- Quote from: Ian.M on July 20, 2020, 05:48:32 am ---Personally, I find Aluminum trivial to solder with regular Sn60/Pb40 solder, provided you can get enough heat into it.   With a 100W Weller soldering gun its only a little harder than soldering to tarnished copper.
--- End quote ---

I have both that and a 100 watt Weller temperature controlled iron.  I will have to try that.

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