Re: The Great Strip-X Substitute Hunt, Part 2

From: Tim Wescott on Wed, Feb 22 2006 7:58 am

Scott wrote:

Why bother with the stinky stuff at all? And, who wants to wait for
15 minutes before you can make the solder connection? I just tin my
soldering iron and leave the little solder blob on the iron and apply
it to the end of the wire. In a few seconds, the enamel coating
melts off and the solder blob tins the end of the wire at the same
time.

Scott
N0EDV

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That procedure works only with certain types of coating. With the good
kind, you can let the soldering iron cook it till the cows come home
and the enamel is still there.

73, Bill W6WRT

You can buy your wire specifically to be solder-stripable.

I know that...used it first in 1968 for prototyping. There's
all kinds of suppliers out there but I'm using up some small-
gauge coil wire first made prior to 1950. :-) "Solder-Eze"
wasn't made back then.

I often
strip the temperature resistant stuff by scraping carefully with an
Exacto knife, then peeling the residue off with a soldering iron -- it
may not melt with the iron, but it'll come unstuck once it's thoroughly
scarified.

After making a few hundred coils and transformers, I've found
lots of ways to get the insulation off. And easily as many
ways to accidentally cut the wire by such scraping. [that's
why GC's Strip-X was so popular once upon a time...just dip
the end, wait a minute or so, wipe...all clean and ready for
soldering] I've used Gillette single-edge razor blades as
well as steel wool as alternates and those are inferior
methods.

I found out by accident that my 40 Watt iron with a 45-degree
bevelled tip was rough enough to do the "scarifying" if
solder-blobbed and rubbed lightly on the #32 wire (a couple
thicknesses of paper underneath to avoid heat draining).
That's not as easy to do as it sounds. That's why I went
looking for paint-remover.

The paint-remover technique is better, even with the wait.
Very little chance of damaging the end of the coil wire.
The active ingredient, methylene chloride, doesn't react
with the copper.

When winding toroids by hand without a toroid-winder or
its fancy winding bobbin, there's lots of flexure on the
ends of the fine copper wire from all the threading-through
the hole. Copper is maleable, but there are metal-fatigue
limits even with copper. Using something that scars the
surface, plus the metal-fatigue phenomenon from dozens of
threading movements, makes it easy to damage the ends.

Yes, I've tried fine steel wool in removing enamel from #32
and it is as inferior as perpendicular knife-edge scraping.
Such works okay on #26 or larger where one can afford to
lose some copper in the process.

LenAnderson@xxxxxxxx

.

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