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It supplies heat to melt solder so that it can flow into the joint between two workpieces. A soldering iron is composed of a heated metal tip (the bit ) and an insulated handle. Heating is often achieved electrically, by passing an electric current (supplied through an electrical cord or battery cables) through a resistive heating element .
Soldering guns are used where more heat is needed than from the lower-power soldering irons. They can be used for heavy electrical connections, stained glass assembly, and light sheet-metal work. Typical soldering guns are rated at 100 to 240 watts power. A gun may include a two-stage trigger to give two heat settings.
The solder grade used for leadworking is plumber's solder (80% lead / 20% tin). [i] Although this is thought of as a high melting point solder amongst lead-tin solders, the solidus is relatively constant for all of these solders and it is the liquidus which climbs from the eutectic point at Sn 63% / Pb 37%.
In brazing, one generally uses rods that are touched to the joint while being heated. With silver soldering, small pieces of solder wire are placed onto the metal prior to heating. A flux, often made of boric acid and denatured alcohol, is used to keep the metal and solder clean and to prevent the solder from moving before it melts.
The tip of this apparatus is split into two sections that completes an electrical circuit when a low electrical resistance is placed across the tip; e.g. metallic contacts, or solder. [1] With a current flowing, the resistance of both the solder and the tip produces enough heat to increase the temperature beyond the melting point of solder.
The most common are the models with 50-80 W power. The higher is the power the more amount of heat you may transmit for the same time. It allows reducing the temperature on the heating element to the minimal possible value for melting the solder alloy. And vice versa – the lower is the power the higher temperature you need to melt the solder.
Brazing and hard soldering use a higher temperature filler that melts at a temperature which may approach that of the base metal, and which may form a eutectic alloy with the base metal. Filler alloys have a lower melting point than the base metal, so that the joint may be made by bringing the whole assembly up to temperature without everything ...
Soldering performed using alloys with a melting point above 450 °C (840 °F; 720 K) is called "hard soldering", "silver soldering", or brazing. In specific proportions, some alloys are eutectic — that is, the alloy's melting point is the lowest possible for a mixture of those components, and coincides with the freezing point.