WBT Silver Solder Soldering Temperature

[mhconley]

I am about to begin building my fist project - a pair My Ref Rev C monoblocks. I purchased a Weller DES51 soldering station and WBT-0800 Silver Solder. The literature with the solder lists the melting point as 178°/180° C (352°/356° F) and recommends a soldering tip temperature of 250° C (482° F). Google searches have turned up recommendations of 700° F (371° C) as a recommended temperature for use with this solder.

That is quite a difference. Does anyone use this solder and what temperature do you recommend?

Thanks,

Martin

[tinitus]

Seems like small difference
May just depend on how you do soldering
Slow or fast
Or how big item you need to solder

Just try it and you will soon find out what works for you

[mhconley]

I split the difference and set the soldering iron at 600° F (315° C). I just finished soldering all the resistors in place. Every solder joint looks picture perfect.

Martin

[BrianL]

I have for MANY years used temperature-regulated soldering. I generally use 700-750 degrees F for SnPb solders though the more recent Pb-free solders (mostly Sn) require 750-800 deg F. I've not seen anyone use temperatures around 500 degrees for electronics.

Note that you need to match the tip diameter to the job. I.E., soldering connectors with large-gauge wires requires a much fatter tip than soldering ICs to a PC board.

[AndrewT]

I generally use 300degC for 183degC melting point solder.
I increase to 320degC is desoldering or if soldering onto a thin plane.
I need to increase even higher if the plane is thicker, I have gone as high as 350degC.

I do wish some of my tips were much bigger for the heavy work and at least one a little bit smaller for smd.

I would use a solid copper soldering iron heated on the gas hot plate for soldering plate.

[h_a]

Generally soldering with higher temperatures gives better results than being on the cold side. It depends in practice very much on the pad and component, also how much time you need per lead.

Don't be shy with temperature, I had to solder power resistors into a heavy copper plane (pads without thermals) at comfortable 400°C. Going lower than that I had to heat the part longer (more stress) and still risked a cold solder joint.

Have fun, Hannes

PS: desoldering can be even higher than that, especially if using desoldering wick.

EDIT: just to clarify, numbers are for leaded solder.

[Lucifix]

Hello,
does anyone know from where I can purchase WBT and Cardas silver solder wires in Europe?
Thank You,
Lucian

[gain-wire]

Hello diy'ers,
I've searched the forums to find anything I can about hi temperature solder. I landed on this thread and although it doesn't really talk about the things I need to know, it was the closest thing.

OK, so at work, I have to solder together this big heatsink assembly made of nickel plated copper. it has 0.020" fins that are to be soldered onto a 0.020" thick baseplate. This baseplate has routed channels so that the fins can slide into there. Anyway, just a bit of details becuase I cannot furnish a picture at the moment. I was told to use Kester Hi temperature solder to do this job. We preheat the whole thing on a hotplate at around 230°C then tranfser it (with pliers) to another jig where we use a propane torch to heat the jig which gets the solder melting. Now here is my problem: the solder, even though flux is applied prior to heating, will not flow nicely along the edges of the channel. the solder just blobs up in small blobs and even if I re-apply flux during the soldering process, it won't help. I am using electronics-type flux, and have even tried Plumber's Acid flux(or so I was told it was acid).

Also, now that I have tried so many ways of soldering the darn thing, the flux residue has become that disgusting brown colour.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[russo]

I don't know names, but you need another type of flux, some thing related to oxi-acetylene weldings

[AndrewT]

high temperature solder will require high temperature flux.

Brazing will need brazing flux and even that comes in different temperature grades.

How hot do you need to go?
2.5% Ag gives a 579degF eutectic, or is that too high?