Need Tips for Soldering on Feeders To Rail...

[ljudice]

Except for growing a third (or fourth) hand - any good tips???

I am starting to get better results (on test samples) of twisting a bit of solder with the end of the feeder, dipping in a little
flux and then soldering this to the outside of the rail. 

Any better ideas?   Do I need flux (using resin core solder, but it does not seem to stick without flux).

Thanks, I really am bad at this stuff....

- Lou

[TiVoPrince]

Flux 
is a cleaner,it burns off oxygen to make a better joint.  Get some paste flux use a toothpick or small paint brush to apply it to joiners and/or rail.  Solder will flow easily.  Try using heatsinks on either side of your work to keep heat exactly where you want it.  Even spitballs work to keep ties unmelted while getting high heat to the solder joint...

[CSXDixieLine]

I solder feeders to the bottoms of my rails and slide away any nearby ties so they are not affected by the heat. The things that helped improve my soldering results were (1) cleaning both surfaces to be soldered, (2) using flux on the surfaces after cleaning and (3) tinning both surfaces to be soldered. For flux, I have had good results with the paste sold at Radio Shack. Jamie

[ljudice]

Thanks - that's the stuff I'm using and it seems to make a difference....

Will try these ideas...  Still need more hands.

[Zox]

I've recently been using 22-gauge solid wire for my feeders. It's stiff enough that with a couple of judicious bends between where it comes up through the ground and where it contacts the rail, it'll hold itself in place while I heat the joint.

I make sure to pre-tin the end of the wire (although I also add additional solder to the joint), and if necessary clean the contact point on the side of the rail with a file.

[TiVoPrince]

One
of the great things about drops is that you can use the hanging end to help position the work.  I like to use an alligaor clip under the benchwork to hold the wire insulated part and give some tension and hold the kinked wire against the rail.  Usually I use a bit of dry cleaner hanger between benchwork rails to hold the alligator clip vertically.  I have used this method for years but it is time consuming and I am open to suggestions...

[BCR 570]

As has been suggested, I do the following:

1. Clean the underside of the rail where the wire is to be attached with a small jewellers file.
2. Remove insulation from the end of the wire and form a 90 degree bend.  Trim to fit between the ties.
3. Apply flux to the underside of the rail and the end of the wire.
4. Apply solder to both surfaces.
5. With the rail upside down, hold the wire to the rail with left hand and apply soldering iron with right hand.
6. The heat should fuse the solder quickly with minimal damage to neighbouring ties.
7. I do not have the melting tie issue because I am handlaying, but I have to be careful not to melt existing joints to PC ties. 

Note:   When soldering feeders I use the WP-35 35 watt iron with the chisel tip for quick heat transfer.  While the smaller pointed tip is perfect for soldering rail to PC ties, I find that when soldering wires to rail it has to be held there too long for heat transfer and this is what causes the rail to heat up and start melting ties.  With the chisel tip I find I can secure the wire quickly before the rail gets too hot.

P.S.  There is no shame in asking a friend to assist if you require a second pair of fingers!  I had to do this when I was soldering leads to LEDs for my control panel work.  I was not able to rig up a system whic hheld both together in perfect alignment and a second pair of fingers helped to ensure quality joints.  You hust have to ensure you dont hit his fingers with hte iron or he might not be a friend much longer . . . 



Tim

[DKS]

As has been suggested, I do the following:

1. Clean the underside of the rail where the wire is to be attached with a small jewellers file.
2. Remove insulation from the end of the wire and form a 90 degree bend.  Trim to fit between the ties.
3. Apply flux to the underside of the rail and the end of the wire.
4. Apply solder to both surfaces.
5. With the rail upside down, hold the wire to the rail with left hand and apply soldering iron with right hand.
6. The heat should fuse the solder quickly with minimal damage to neighbouring ties.
7. I do not have the melting tie issue because I am handlaying, but I have to be careful not to melt existing joints to PC ties. 

Note:   When soldering feeders I use the WP-35 35 watt iron with the chisel tip for quick heat transfer.  While the smaller pointed tip is perfect for soldering rail to PC ties, I find that when soldering wires to rail it has to be held there too long for heat transfer and this is what causes the rail to heat up and start melting ties.  With the chisel tip I find I can secure the wire quickly before the rail gets too hot.

P.S.  There is no shame in asking a friend to assist if you require a second pair of fingers!  I had to do this when I was soldering leads to LEDs for my control panel work.  I was not able to rig up a system whic hheld both together in perfect alignment and a second pair of fingers helped to ensure quality joints.  You hust have to ensure you dont hit his fingers with hte iron or he might not be a friend much longer . . . 

+1 across the board. Only difference is I lay a mix of handland and prefab track. But I always connect feeders to the undersides of the rails. I also attach feeders to each piece of track--mostly because I don't use rail joiners. It's not as onerous as it sounds.

[GaryHinshaw]

+2.  I haven't had any issues with melting ties, and the end product is nearly invisible.

[ljudice]

Hey - again thanks for the tips - so far things are going really well...   I have to go to the sides - because the track is already laid.  But so far the feeder attachments are fairly innocuous and will be mostly hidden when the whole thing is airbrushed and then ballasted.  I am definitely planning to do one feeder to each section of track. To start I have one to each "block" - sections forced to be isolated by the Peco Electrofrog rules - or about every 4-5 feet of mainline.   I don't think I have more than 3 sections of flextrack in any "block" at this point.

Thanks again for the fast encouragement!

Hopefully video of a running train later this evening! I gained a LOT of time because I had left the drop cables from my power bus in place from the last layout and most were reusable for the new mainline and the controlled sidings.  I lost about an hour debugging a Peco turnout which was not making contact correctly, but eventually a little bit of giggering got it working reliably. 

[Bsklarski]

+3 on the bottom of the rail, its the only way to go. No unsightly feeders and solder gobs on the the rails.

[ljudice]

+3 on the bottom of the rail, its the only way to go. No unsightly feeders and solder gobs on the the rails.

Well, not the only way to go - as it's outright impossible if the track is already laid 

Of course there are numerous prototype installations, like rail greasers, etc. where there are in fact, unsightly wires and hoses sticking into the track gauge....   

I'd much prefer to fix a connection to the side of the rail than one UNDER IT  - in the event something ever goes wrong, BTW....

[JSL]

Do as Jamie CSXDixieLine said. Check out his blog for a how to on soldering.

[robert3985]

Well, not the only way to go - as it's outright impossible if the track is already laid 

Of course there are numerous prototype installations, like rail greasers, etc. where there are in fact, unsightly wires and hoses sticking into the track gauge....   

I'd much prefer to fix a connection to the side of the rail than one UNDER IT  - in the event something ever goes wrong, BTW....

Never say "impossible"!  I soldered several hundred 22ga. feeders to each and every piece of rail on my four 6' modules when I converted to DCC, and ripped out all of my rat's nest of DC wiring, and I soldered each one of them between ties and to the underside of the foot of my code 55 Micro Engineering rail and hand-laid code 40 after digging enough ballast from between the ties for access!

Luckily, I made a great purchase about 15 years ago when I bought my 250W American Beauty resistance solderer, with "tweezers" and "probe" leads.  Frankly stated, it may have been nearly impossible to do without melting ties if I had only an iron to do it.  BUT...I had the tool, and so...I used it.

I also bought a "hot knife" from Harbor Freight Tools (for about 12 bucks) and then I ground down a #11 Xacto blade to act as a hot-knife blade that would precisely cut/melt the little spacers from between ties, allowing me to remove them and gain access to the metal base of the rail.  Obviously, since the track was ballasted, I could not squint under the rails to see where there were no spacers.

This was the process. (1) I located each and every piece of rail and marked the midpoint of that section of rail with either a red or black self-adhesive paper "dot"....which indicates the color of feeder I would be soldering to it.  "Red" for the rail on the fascia side of the track, "black" for the rail on the skyboard side of the track. (2) I used a variety of pointy tools to scrape and remove the ballast from between the ties at the points I had designated with my "dots" till I got to the cork roadbed.  (3) I drilled a 1/16" hole on the outside of the rail in-between the ties at the "dot" points. (4) I took my hot knife with its custom ground and shaped blade and cut/melted the Delrin spacers from between the ties where I had drilled the holes.  (5) I cut 5" pieces of red and black 22ga. solid core wire, stripped about 3/8" insulation from the tops and stuck them into the holes enough so they stayed upright, making sure the red and black wires were next to their appropriate rails. (6) I started flattening the copper wire sticking out from the insulation I has stripped away (only about 1/8") and then bending it over at about a 65 degree angle.  (7) I tinned each and every bent feeder top with solder. ( I modified one of my resistance solderer's "tweezer" points so that I could hold the tinned top of my feeder wire against the bottom of the rail with one tweezer point while the other was on the top of the rail to complete the circuit. (9) using "Supersafe Gel Flux" I fluxed the tinned tips of the black feeders, and using my resistance solderer, both clamped and soldered them to the bottom of my code 55 rails..."bend, position, flux, clamp, step on the foot control, smoke, solder turns shiny, step off foot control, hold....release...done!"  Then, I did it for each of my red feeders.  All 278 of 'em in total. 

That's nine steps to get them soldered to the base of already installed and ballasted rail.  It went quicker than it reads.

I then tested each solder joint by pulling on the feeder from below.  I had three cold solder joints and it took me all of five minutes to correct those problems.

After I had turned the modules on their sides to continue on with my DCC wiring, I ran gap-filling CA onto each hole and wire sticking out of it, and squirted accelerator on them, and cured them quickly with a hair dryer. This was so the feeders wouldn't pull off the bottoms of the rails when I was attaching my 3M IDC's from my feeders to my secondary busses.

That's about eleven steps all in all.  Not bad. 

It's efficient enough that I do the same thing on new construction...and I never use "weathered" rail, which really complicates soldering anything to it.

So, it's not "impossible".  I think it could probably be done with a hot iron with a clean, tinned tip and titanium tweezers (so the solder doesn't stick to 'em), but it'd have to be code 55 or code 40 rail, because bigger rail means more heat, more dissipation and more time that the iron is on the rail...which would melt ties.

If you want to solder correctly, it takes a hot iron, with a clean, tinned tip, non-oxidized clean rails, pre-tinned wire and good, non-acid flux (I highly recommend Super Safe Gel Flux) and either positioning your solid wire feeder to remain in place, or using a carbon probe or sharpened wooden 6H pencil to hold your wire in place until the solder cools and solidifies.

Maybe this post will help someone out there....

Cheers!
Bob Gilmore
 

[ljudice]

That's pretty cool Bob! 

For the aggregate branch I'd do the underside connections.