Originally Posted by
malinios
I was in Target and saw a kids toy that was a bunch of rare-earth magnets in plastic rods with oversized ball bearings, Kinects or something. It was 12 bucks for what amounted to 100 or so rare-earth magnets. So I bought it.
Got home and began clipping the magnets out and doing some experimenting.
5 seconds with a 40 watt soldering iron on a button magnet will DESTROY it's magnetic field. It'll go from hard to pry off with fingers to won't hold a piece of paper to a pair of pliers.
I made a bunch of jumpers with the magnets for charging various LiIon/Lipoly batteries I have around the house. I ended up sticking the magnets to a honking big monkey wrench to heat sink it as best possible and dripping a dollop of solder on the magnet, then after pre-tinning the wire I'd melt as little of the dollop as possible to fix the wire. Then, after letting that cool down I'd hit the whole thing again till the whole solder blob spead out. I'd say I kept 90% of the original magnetic strength that way. Magnets do not like heat at all. All that chatter we hear about keeping motor temps down is some solid advice.
Small admission here. I love the smell of flux and solder. I'll solder something that really only needs a good crimp JUST to get that smell.
Yeah, heat can really kill them.
You might want to try not sniffing the flux too much.
Originally Posted by
Schlong Connery
Its most likely my novice soldering skills, but I am having problems soldering 10 gauge wires. I can't even tin them like I do smaller gauge wires. I am using a 60/40 solder with a temp of 650, the solder melts no problem, I can never seem to get enough heat in the wire to tin it though. I am using the method of applying heat on one side of the wire, solder on the other waiting for it to heat up and pull through. I feel heat going down the wire itself, but it never seems to get hot enough to draw the solder through the 10 gauge wire.
I am only using the stock tip that came with my iron, so its just the small finely pointed one. I have two chisel type blades on order. Any help would be appreciated. What's this noob doing wrong?
A bigger tip is needing for such large wire. It really does come down to tip size, you have to overpower the wires tendency to wick heat away, bigger tips can dump heat into the wire faster. With the proper tip, you can tin the wire without getting the wire more than a little warm a couple inches down.
Also try using a little solder on the tip to help carry heat into the wire as well. And flux, make sure you use enough.