[sdiy] Aluminium Solder

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow All.
         And thanks. Man! you guys are on the case.

I'm still in two minds as I'm more confused about this than ever. Well not 
confused perhaps but there are now more questions involved. I'll have to 
think about this. I've found two products and one local. I might pursue 
that shortly.

One of the ideas is that so I can flush mount 3mm screws (or threads) into 
the front panel plates of 19" racks. So you can't see them from the panel 
side but allows you to bolt a front panel board to it as a sub panel etc. I 
use to do this with aryldite. This worked but took at least 24 hours before 
it could be smoothed and worked and after a while I noticed that some 
chemical reaction happened with the front panel dial markings. Which were 
printed on paper and then powder/heat coated.

What I was thinking was this.
You'd drill a 2.5mm hole. Tap it to 3mm as per normal. Stick a piece of 3mm 
bolt thread in the hole as flush as possible and then solder it so that it 
couldn't move. Screw a stand-off on it and then the front panel. Securing 
it with a nut.

Or the oposite would be a kind of quasi-nutsert. I love nutserts but I 
neither have the air tool or the compressor to run it. So I was thinking I 
could dril a hole big enough for the nut to slip through and then solder it 
in place.

Thirdly, I could do something similar to how I join materials together with 
hotmelt. Which is, drill a hole or a pit in both mating surfaces and then 
heat and fill with solder. Almost like a rivet but totally flush.

I wasn't expecting that soldering would be an instant panacea for the 
problem of joining two structural aluminium objects together with strength 
in itself. Even with welding aluminium, you need to give it a bit of 
structural help. Not that I've ever done this but my ex-musical partner 
(May he rot in hell) was a precision tool maker by trade. He welded 
together a bunch of very nice aluminum 19" road racks. 2 of which I still 
use. I dragged that dead lug around for 6 years but he did teach me just a 
little about metal work.

I have never welded anything in my life but I concede that I need to start 
seriously thinking about saving for some kind of small precision welder of 
some kind. If for no other reason than to weld those stop signs together 
I've been accumulating. (How did you know Tom?)

Having said all that, I found this page on working with metals.
http://www.starwon.com.au/~pknife/metals.htm
It seems that the model rail way modelers seem to have a handle on this 
stuff and down to a fine art.

I'm still undecided about the aluminium solder merits and whether I'll 
check that out or not but it's plainly clear I'm going to have to start 
saving what I can to buy a small second hand welder of some kind that can 
do this stuff. Perhaps I'll find one on eBay..... Maybe not...

But I guess I'll be asking all about how to weld 2 things together in 6 or 
8 months time when I scrap the money together.

Thanks to all. Most appreciated.
Be absolutely Icebox.

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