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In this video I want to show you the basics of soldering wire
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You want to start with some safety glasses of course because soldering involves molten lead and
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sometimes that can get places where you don't want it to be
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I've got some wire stripped here, and I'm just going to use this joint as an example
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There are many ways to connect wires but soldering is the best and I like to use soldering when I can because it's absolutely
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certain. If you have a good solder joint, it's never going to let you down
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So the first step with something like this is to twist the wires together
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Now if this is more finely braided wire, the segments were thinner, I'd be able to twist it by hand, but it's a little too coarse for that
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So I'm just going to use some pliers here. Before you solder
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you want the joint to be physically connected and soldering is a great way, or twisting is a great way to make that happen
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So I'll just twist it here, cut off the frazzled end, and I'm ready to go. Now
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technically this joint is going to conduct electricity, but it might not continue to conduct electricity if it's not soldered
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Corrosion can set in and especially with the lower voltage side, the solar generator, meaning the 12 volt side, any kind of dirt on that's going to be a problem
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To make the solder connection, I'm going to need some solder. Solder
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for this purpose is a combination of lead and tin and this is what they call acid core solder. So in the middle of this
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there's a little bit of acid which helps to clean the metal for a nice solder joint
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Now this is a soldering gun. You pull the trigger and in a few seconds the tip
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heats up hot enough to melt the solder and to heat the wire so the solder is going to melt and flow into the pores
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So that's the process. I'm going to start by securing this wire joint
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in this vise here. I think it'll stay there on its own without tightening it up
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And the thing about soldering is you want everything to be as clean as possible
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The solder here looks pretty clean, but it's going to have some oxidation on the outside
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So I'm using a little bit of emery paper to clean that off
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And the same goes for the soldering gun. I'm going to heat it up a little bit
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It's the tip we're interested in. And you can see that that tip is clean enough now to do what we want
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Now when you're soldering you want the metal to be hot enough to melt the solder
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See I can... I'll show you the way not to do it right now
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I've heated up the soldering gun and I can touch it to the solder and it melts
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But you see the wire underneath isn't hot enough for that to flow. So that would be a bad soldering joint. They call that a cold
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soldering joint. It's not going to do you any good. So the first thing you want to do is to heat the wire
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so that it's hot enough that the wire actually melts the solder
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So let's just... This is fairly thick wire. So it's going to take a little bit of time
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So this is fairly thick wire. So it's going to take a little bit of time
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But it's happening. And there
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That's a good solder joint and it's never going to let you down
