[sdiy] soldering bananas

[patchell]

    Have you tryed sand paper?  It may be that there is plating on these
that is difficult to wet.  I have had a few cases like this in the
past...my solution is to never purchase those parts from that supplier
again.  Also, if you have Kester Rosin Core 44 and it doesn't work, I
don't know what will.  Kester 44 will generally solder anything that can
be soldered.

    Worst case I ever had was my arc welder.  I purchased it mail
order.  When it arrived, it was DOA.  Shipping back something that
weighed in at about 50 pounds did not appeal to me, so I damned the
warrenty, and went full speed ahead and took it apart (arc welders are
not very complicated).  I found the problem pretty quick.  The wire nuts
they used to connect the primary winding to the line wires were not
making a good connection....so, I decided to solder the wires
together....I tried and tried....I could not get the solder to
stick....finally, I took a knife to rescrape the wire...what I took to
be copper wire turned out to be enamel (which explained quite quickly
why there was no electrical contact), and underneeth that enamel was
"ALUMINUM WIRE"....but, after scraping the wires and doing all the
things that should have been done at the factory, the arc welder
worked...the moral is...you might have to do a bit of experimenting to
determine exactly why the solder won't stick...or I should say wet...

Rude 66 wrote:

>    mornin',
>
> working on my new synth, i came across this weird problem. i'm having
> a hell of a time soldering my banana inputs. it just seems the solder
> won't stick to it, sometimes i can pull the wire right off. i'vew used
> differenmt types of solder, with and without s-39, cleaned the things
> with 96% proof alcohol first to remive any grease, etc.
> i'm a little baffled, i've soldered jacks and all kinds of other stuff
> for 20 plus years and have never had this happen. any ideas from you
> people who work a lot with bananas?
>
> thanks!
>
> r./
>
>

--
 -Jim
------------------------------------------------
* Visit:http://www.silcom.com/~patchell/
*-----------------------------------------------
* Come to the Pacific Southwest DIY Meet
* April 12, 2003 10am-5pm
* Santa Barbara, CA
* http://www.silcom.com/~patchell/synthdiymeet.html
* for details
*-----------------------------------------------