9 Apr
2010
9 Apr
'10
2:14 p.m.
> > Easy -- coat them with aquadag and then
copper-plate them before tinning.
> . . . or fire up the punch, and make a batch of chips out of "tin foil"
On Fri, 9 Apr 2010, Tony Duell wrote:
Most 'tin' foil these days is aluminium.
Here it's generally made out of aluminum. But it seems to be pretty
similar. And due to the oxide coating
it's a right pain to solder to. It is posible to solder to aluminium with
normal solder and flux (I have done it) -- the trick is to put a drop of
oil on the aluminium, then scrape the surface under the oil and quickly
tin it with a hot iron and solder. Most of the time it will tin. Once
it's tinend it's easy to solder a wire (or whatever) to the aluminium.
That tip will be quite useful for some OT automotive projects! But I
wouldn't fancy trying to do that with 'tin foil'
Any
"tinning" of punched card chips and chad is going to be difficult,
even if you did make them out of "tin foil". From readoign some old books on electricity (say
1920's vintage), it
would appear that 'tin foil' was once something
other than aluminium.
Said books talk about making a waxed paper and tin foil capacitor (oops,
'condenser') and then soldering the foils together. No comment about any
problems with such soldering.
-tony