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Why Copper

H

haleem

Jan 1, 1970
0
i have a question, why copper is used in stripboard instead of othe
elements

thanx :
 
J

jim dorey

Jan 1, 1970
0
i have a question, why copper is used in stripboard instead of other
elements?

thanx :)

cheap, conductive, malleable, solderable. probably others will add
reasons, or change the order, heck aluminum's been used as conductors, but
it corrodes far easier than copper.
 
A

Art

Jan 1, 1970
0
Probably because it had been discovered years earlier than many of the more
expensive, possible replacements. Also Copper Conductor hard wire cables
have been used many years before Printed Circuitry was even considered,
"just use the available product and make a way of mass producing it".
 
M

mc

Jan 1, 1970
0
Well... Gold and silver might be a bit better, but too expensive. You will
occasionally see copper with gold, silver, or tin plating on it. Tin
enhances solderability but by itself melts at too low a temperature.

Aluminum is a good conductor but not solderable. More importantly, aluminum
forms an *invisible* nonconductive coating as it oxidizes in air. With
copper, you can see the tarnishing happen, which is much better; you know
whether it's clean or not.

Iron and steel are harder to solder than copper.
 
R

Ross Herbert

Jan 1, 1970
0
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:07:25 -0600,
i have a question, why copper is used in stripboard instead of other
elements?

thanx :)

If you need to ask this question then I don't see a future for you in
electronics. Have you ever thought of doing some basic research on the
web, or even reading a few books from your library?
 
M

mc

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ross Herbert said:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:07:25 -0600,


If you need to ask this question then I don't see a future for you in
electronics. Have you ever thought of doing some basic research on the
web, or even reading a few books from your library?

Is this forum only for questions that cannot be answered by library
research? I've been using it sporadically for about a decade and never knew
of that restriction.

If you don't want to answer a basic question, you don't have to.
 
W

Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
mc said:
Well... Gold and silver might be a bit better, but too expensive. You will
occasionally see copper with gold, silver, or tin plating on it. Tin
enhances solderability but by itself melts at too low a temperature.

Aluminum is a good conductor but not solderable.

Change that to solderable with difficulty. There are fluxes such as
fluoride fluxes that will make soldering to aluminum easy. I soldered a
piece of aluminum by sanding it and covering it with a layer of greasy
flux to prevent it from oxidizing. Then with a soldering iron that puts
out a lot of heat, the solder wets the aluminum like other metals.
More importantly, aluminum
forms an *invisible* nonconductive coating as it oxidizes in air.

If that were true, you could not test for conductivity with a DMM for
example. The layer is so thin that it poses little barrier to
electricity. As far as invisible, well, if the aluminum has been
exposed to air then it is a given that it has the oxide layer.
With
copper, you can see the tarnishing happen, which is much better; you know
whether it's clean or not.

With aluminum, it's a given that it has the oxide layer.
Iron and steel are harder to solder than copper.

Again, it depends. On how thick the metal is, what lind of flux is
used, and of course, the solder, etc. Remember that the usual soldering
process is optimized for copper, so using it on a different metal may
not give as good a result.
 
W

Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
mc said:
Is this forum only for questions that cannot be answered by library
research? I've been using it sporadically for about a decade and never knew
of that restriction.

If you don't want to answer a basic question, you don't have to.

Yes, and if you don't like the question the luser asks, because it shows
that he did absolutely no reading up on it using the Web, then you can
rebuke the luser.

So there may not be a restriction, but you can certainly expect a rebuke
from others.
 
J

jim dorey

Jan 1, 1970
0
Again, it depends. On how thick the metal is, what lind of flux is
used, and of course, the solder, etc. Remember that the usual soldering
process is optimized for copper, so using it on a different metal may
not give as good a result.

and iron and steel are soldered all the time, in industry, in home shops,
no big problem, but it's called brazing, cause brass is used as the solder
i guess. the temps are quite high, so it's not really applicable to
electronics, but i suppose industrial cabling could use it.
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
jim said:
and iron and steel are soldered all the time, in industry, in home shops,
no big problem, but it's called brazing, cause brass is used as the solder
i guess. the temps are quite high, so it's not really applicable to
electronics, but i suppose industrial cabling could use it.


I ran into a problem where someone tried to fix a leak in t water
cooled TV transmitter by braising the brass fittings to the 2" copper
pipe. It was a real pain in the ass to salvage the brass fittings which
were long out of production. I had to cut the pipe off flush, then
carefully file away the braised areas before I could heat everything and
pry out the copper stubs. The brass parts were used to split the water
flow for different tubes and had been custom cast in the early '50s
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
Brazing is done with "hard" (silver) solder. It doesn't seem to have
anything to do directly with brass- the other meaning of "braze"
(decorate, make of, or make hard like brass) came from a different
word (OE "braes") according to AH4.
I ran into a problem where someone tried to fix a leak in t water
cooled TV transmitter by braising the brass fittings to the 2" copper
pipe. It was a real pain in the ass to salvage the brass fittings which
were long out of production. I had to cut the pipe off flush, then
carefully file away the braised areas before I could heat everything and
pry out the copper stubs. The brass parts were used to split the water
flow for different tubes and had been custom cast in the early '50s

BTW, "braising" is a cooking term- browning in fat, then simmering in
a bit of liquid. The root (OF "brese") is thought to be the same for
the two words.

Sounds like a real PITA to salvage the manifold. I imagine it would be
easy to have small leaks if you were not very careful.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
W

Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
jim dorey said:
and iron and steel are soldered all the time, in industry, in home shops,
no big problem, but it's called brazing, cause brass is used as the solder
i guess. the temps are quite high, so it's not really applicable to
electronics, but i suppose industrial cabling could use it.

Brazing isn't soldering because it doesn't use solder.

Long ago I watched a guy putting in a cathodic protection system. they
dug a 3 or 4 foot deep trench and drilled holes every so often along its
length. The holes each had a carbon cylinder with a large copper
condsuctor coming out of it. The trench had a heavy copper conductor
along its length, and at each cylinder, the copper conductors had to be
joined. So the guy had a firebrick mold that he clamped around the two
conductors. He filled it with a thermite compound that had a lot of
copper in it. When he lit it off, it burned like a very bright
sparkler, and left a casting of copper or some alloy around the two
conductors.
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Spehro said:
Brazing is done with "hard" (silver) solder. It doesn't seem to have
anything to do directly with brass- the other meaning of "braze"
(decorate, make of, or make hard like brass) came from a different
word (OE "braes") according to AH4.


BTW, "braising" is a cooking term- browning in fat, then simmering in
a bit of liquid. The root (OF "brese") is thought to be the same for
the two words.


Sorry but my eyes are bothering me today so i just used the spell
checker.
Sounds like a real PITA to salvage the manifold. I imagine it would be
easy to have small leaks if you were not very careful.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany


This was a high pressure system with 7000 volts DC on the water and
they had used brass rod in their attempts to repair the plumbing. When
I reassembled the cooling system I pre tinned the pipe and all the
fittings, removed the flux and looked for any area that wasn't tinned
before I soldered everything together with an acetylene torch and a
small tip
 
J

jim dorey

Jan 1, 1970
0
Brazing isn't soldering because it doesn't use solder.

i believe that even if it doesn't contain lead it can be called solder,
far as i know it refers to any non-fusion weld involving metal as a glue.
or are you refering to another reason it's not soldering?
 
R

Roger Hamlett

Jan 1, 1970
0
Spehro Pefhany said:
Brazing is done with "hard" (silver) solder. It doesn't seem to have
anything to do directly with brass- the other meaning of "braze"
(decorate, make of, or make hard like brass) came from a different
word (OE "braes") according to AH4.
Actually, 'brazing', did originally use brass, and still does for many
processes. However the term was first stretched to cover brass alloy rods,
that melted at lower temperatures than brass, and latter to include
'silver soldering'. Many of the so called 'silver solders', have very low
silver contents indeed, and some have none (palladium alloy solders for
example). In jewellery work, there are about five different 'grades' of
'silver solder', with the hottest (hard or 'enamel' grade - because the
melting point is high enough to allow enamelling), while the lowest
temperature versions have melting points only a little above the
conventional tin/lead solders.
The terms have 'spread', to the point where you have to be very careful.
Normally, the so called 'silver solders', used in industry, still have a
significant quantity of brass, so joints using these, are quite regularly
referred to as 'brazed', or 'low temperature brazed', and many people now
use 'brazing', generically to cover any form of hard soldering (including
things like aluminium soldering...). The dividing lines now, are normally
drawn at 450C, for 'soldering', 450 to 900C, for 'low temperature
brazing', and 900C+, for 'high temperature brazing'. Have a look at:
http://www.manufacturingtalk.com/news/cpp/cpp109.html
BTW, "braising" is a cooking term- browning in fat, then simmering in
a bit of liquid. The root (OF "brese") is thought to be the same for
the two words.

Sounds like a real PITA to salvage the manifold. I imagine it would be
easy to have small leaks if you were not very careful.

Best Wishes
 
T

Tim Shoppa

Jan 1, 1970
0
Watt said:
So the guy had a firebrick mold
that he clamped around the two
conductors. He filled it with a
thermite compound that had a lot of
copper in it.

A common brand of this (so common that it's like "xerox" in use) is
Cadweld. The company I work for buys them by the tens of thousands.
Driving around in a truck or work train filled with thermite has known
hazards... hard to put out a fire that doesn't need any oxygen to burn,
and which happens to be melting its way through the truck bed/railcar!

Tim.
 
B

Boris Mohar

Jan 1, 1970
0
i believe that even if it doesn't contain lead it can be called solder,
far as i know it refers to any non-fusion weld involving metal as a glue.
or are you refering to another reason it's not soldering?

Do not think that soldering is like gluing. Solder attaches itself to base
metal by dissolving some of it and forming an intermediate alloy layer. Ever
notice how unplanted copper soldering iron tip gets eaten away?
 
M

mike

Jan 1, 1970
0
Watson said:
Change that to solderable with difficulty. There are fluxes such as
fluoride fluxes that will make soldering to aluminum easy. I soldered a
piece of aluminum by sanding it and covering it with a layer of greasy
flux to prevent it from oxidizing. Then with a soldering iron that puts
out a lot of heat, the solder wets the aluminum like other metals.




If that were true, you could not test for conductivity with a DMM for
example. The layer is so thin that it poses little barrier to
electricity. As far as invisible, well, if the aluminum has been
exposed to air then it is a given that it has the oxide layer.

I beg to differ.
The oxide presents a VERY BIG barrier to electricity.
You can test for conductivity because the oxide is thin and
your probe is pointy to puncture the oxide.
mike

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