Chassis Soldering made easy

[nosaj]

Had to post this i saw this a while back on Mr Carlsons Lab on Youtube and boy does is make it easy.
I have a weller gun and replaced the element with a 2 in piece of #14 copper wire and made 6 chassis solders in about 5 minutes. The gun is ready really fast.

nosaj

[Leo_Gnardo]

What no link?

A friend of mine in college just took the tip off his Weller 140W solder gun, and pressed the posts onto the chassis metal. The chassis between the posts got smokin' hot & he could get a nickel size solder bead to stick solid onto it. He always managed to make it work like a charm, but I never could. I s'pose you could stick some solid #14 or 12 or10 copper in your Weller too. I'll stick with my 80W Weller "pencil". Maybe not so quick but still plenty quick enough, works for me!

[nosaj]

There you go. And the wire does get red hot.

nosaj
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...16636494,d.cWw

[Steve A.]

Just remember to keep a soldering gun away from guitar pickups as it can screw up the magnetism (or so I've been told.) I use an 80 watt iron intended for stained glass...

Steve Ahola

[Enzo]

I have had the same Weller 100/140 watt gun for the last 55 years or so. It has been a good one. I used to buy the official tips, but long ago decided a bent piece of #12 house wiring works just fine. My bench irons are great and all, but when I am soldering up a bunch of WIRING or indeed trying to melt solder on a chassis, nothing better than that gun. I do have a 200 watt gun as well, but I never get it out.

By the way, an old trick: On the Weller, the stock arrangement is that pulling the trigger in half way (first click) is the 100 watt position, and all the way in is the 140 watt. Savvy guys opened them up and reversed the wires to the switch. Now all the way is the 100 watt, which is enough for most work, and we let it out to the half stop only when we need a boost for some heavy joint.

Pulling the tip and pressing the ends of the two posts to the chassis is what is called "resistance soldering." The current flows through the resistance of the work, causing it to heat itself.

If you have never taken one of those apart, the two metal tubes sticking out the front are really the two ends of the same tube. Inside the body is a large coil wired to the mains - a primary, and the tube is a U-shape, with one leg through the center of the coil, and the other leg curving around from the rear to face front. That tube is a single turn secondary. The soldering gun is just a big transformer.

[Steve A.]

When pulling frets it can help if you heat them up first. I use a small Weller iron with a tip I modified to keep it from slipping off frets and burning the fretboard. (I added two grooves to keep it centered both parallel and perpendicular to the fret.)

Enough background... one guy figured out how to use his Weller gun to heat the frets instantly. He made up special tips which use the fret itself to complete the circuit so it takes just a single click to heat up the fret.

So can anyone confirm that the magnetic field created by soldering guns can potentially damage pickups? I've read about for 35+ years...

Getting back to using heat to help remove frets I just watched a Dan Erlewine video in which he would brush water heated in his glue pot onto the fret which would create steam when heated with his soldering iron (and also keep the fretboard from getting scorched a bit.) Great tip!

Steve Ahola

[Leo_Gnardo]

Inside the body is a large coil wired to the mains - a primary, and the tube is a U-shape, with one leg through the center of the coil, and the other leg curving around from the rear to face front. That tube is a single turn secondary. The soldering gun is just a big transformer.

In college I learned to bulk erase cassettes with one of those wWeller 100/140W guns. With a field like that you could definitely partially demagnetise pickup magnets.

[Enzo]

It is totally unshielded, and is a huge coil of wire across the mains. I have used one to "degauss" color TV screen shadow masks. That means demagnetize them.

You want to see it? Hold a turned on Weller gun up in front of a CRT color TV screen. Start a foot or two away and move towards it while watching. Don;t get REAL close or you might gauss a corner of the screen. But it will distort the picture and colors. Groovy.

I would not be surprised that one could demag a pickup magnet. But it also would mean the Weller was close to it, and oriented to couple to the coil around it. Just like your pickups will respond to the field around an amp power transformer, but it matters how the guitar is aimed.

[Mick Bailey]

I remember the TV repair man in the days of tube B&W TV turning up with one of those. That's all he had - a solder gun and a suitcase full of tubes. I never once saw him with a meter of any kind, though he did have a pocket neon tester. That gun came out at every visit, which was pretty frequent when banging the TV no longer fixed it.

I wonder if a brand-new Weller is built the same as the old ones, or have they become cheapened over the years?

[Steve A.]

I remember the TV repair man in the days of tube B&W TV turning up with one of those. That's all he had - a solder gun and a suitcase full of tubes. I never once saw him with a meter of any kind, though he did have a pocket neon tester. That gun came out at every visit, which was pretty frequent when banging the TV no longer fixed it.

Our TV repairman back in the day- Jake- just had a tube tester and a box of tubes... no soldering gun or hammer in sight. When he eventually couldn't fix our set he sold my parents a brand new color TV... Bingo! He probably made a nice commission on the sale.

I wonder if a brand-new Weller is built the same as the old ones, or have they become cheapened over the years?

Like practically everything else they seem to be crappier these days...

Steve A.

P.S. I've always banned soldering guns from my work area but I think I really just need to keep them away from pickups. Isn't it when you turn them on and off that they would have the strongest effect on other magnets?

[nosaj]

Our TV repairman back in the day- Jake- just had a tube tester and a box of tubes... no soldering gun or hammer in sight. When he eventually couldn't fix our set he sold my parents a brand new color TV... Bingo! He probably made a nice commission on the sale.


Like practically everything else they seem to be crappier these days...

Steve A.

P.S. I've always banned soldering guns from my work area but I think I really just need to keep them away from pickups. Isn't it when you turn them on and off that they would have the strongest effect on other magnets?

Yes when you energize the transformer and create the magnetic field. No power no field. Test it with a piece of ,magnetic material.

nosaj

[Leo_Gnardo]

I've always banned soldering guns from my work area but I think I really just need to keep them away from pickups. Isn't it when you turn them on and off that they would have the strongest effect on other magnets?

A transformer type soldering gun (Weller's the top brand) throws a strong field while it's on, and as noted, it can demagnetize things you'd rather not have demagnetized. Position of the solder gun and proximity both affect the strength of the alternating field with respect to pickups etc. If that's not enough, yes the solder gun can generate an extra strong burst of magnetism at the moment of switch-on and again at switch-off. The effects of that burst are unpredictable. You may wind up either magnetizing or de-magging nearby steel.

You may remember having to demagnetize heads & tape path on tape recorders, echoplexes & the like. They give you directions how-to with the demag wand: do not switch on or off while near the tape recorder, because that can cause a permanent magnetization of precisely the parts you want to de-magnetize.

[rjb]

Our TV repairman back in the day....

Wow, you guys had a TV repairman?
I lived in the sticks- couldn't imagine a TV repair guy schlepping all the way from the nearest town.
We did have a shopping center (AKA strip mall) about 3 miles away.
Dad would take all the tubes out of the TV, cart them to Drug Fair and test them with the tube tester in the foyer- next to the laminating machine.
The new tubes were in shelves under the tester; you brought the ones you needed inside and paid for them.
I thought everyone did it that way.
/

[loudthud]

I remember those TV guys had a mirror so they could tweek the picture while standing behind the TV where they could access everything. When a set came in the door it got an initial diagnosis like "No Picture No Sound".

[Enzo]

I used to have an actual official "TV Service Mirror". It was maybe 8x10", and in the middle of the rear was a small loop, the stand stuck into. The stand was a fold up metal thing exactly like the fold up music stands we had in music class in school. Instead of the sheet music rack mounted on the top, we had the mirror. You could set up the stand in front of the set, and see it from behind it. I fixed TVs around the neighborhood as a kid.

I did a lot of work on arcade video games, and often had to adjust the picture from the rear. I used it for that too. Then I got a little plastic "locker mirror" and held that in my hand and reached around.

Back in the day TVs were big and heavy, even the small screen ones. We had TV repair guys doing house calls when I was a kid. Big suitcase "tube caddy" the guy carried in with him.