Soldering Lacquered Wire

General
1

Does anyone know by tricks for this? I have a pair of good quality headphone drivers that the cable got cut on, and was trying to salvage them, but the wire is apparently lacquered and won’t take solder. Any ideas?

Thanks!

-Kevin

2

the lacquer is acting like a resist, you have to get it off either by manually scraping it or by the use of something to dissolve it. You might try dipping the end of the wire in flux and then heat it and then dip and heat it again to see if you can use the flux to dissolve the lacquer.

Is the wire big enough to gently sandpaper?

3

You can also heat it nicely with the smd rework air gun. You’ll still need to manually remove the gunk after heating, but that’s easy.

Acetone will do it too., but please don’t heat acetone, just dip.

We have Flux pens in the tray. I’d use ‘water clean’ for this. Little bit goes a way…

Lorin



From: Kevin McLeod
Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2018 11:30 AM
To: Hive13 Hackerspace
Reply To: cincihackerspace@googlegroups.com
Subject: [CHP] Soldering Lacquered Wire

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Does anyone know by tricks for this? I have a pair of good quality headphone drivers that the cable got cut on, and was trying to salvage them, but the wire is apparently lacquered and won’t take solder. Any ideas?

Thanks!

-Kevin

4

The wires are very, very fine multistrand, and just break if you try to sand or scrape them.

I’ll try the heat and flux, the flux pen I had didn’t do anything to help, but I didn’t try with hot air. Will aggetation in acetone be enough to rinse the gunk away after?

Thanks!

5

I think some lacquers will dissolve in acetone… watch out that it doesn’t get on anything else, though… even the fumes can wilt some materials.

We use an acid based liquid Flux where I work, rosin core left stuff on the metal and screwed up the plating… there’s a very tiny bit of hydrochloric in it… works great for us but it’s not electronics soldering…

Nancyg

6

If you have enough wire for test, try this old field expedient method.
Use a butane lighter to heat the tip of the bare wire.

The insulation should burn off.
Lay the cool wire against a surface and wipe down the wire toward the end with a cotton cloth (soft sandpaper)
When you have shiny wire, use a western union spice to mechanically join the wire, then solder.
I’ve burn’t many matches In the field soldering light gauge wires where no solder iron would ever go.
Good luck.
Dave

7

Yes heat is the key. Acetone will work as well. Don’t use acid flux or solder - not compatible. The water-clean flux is more agressive than the no-clean.