Stainless steel contacts?

[jago25_98]

I was given some audio plugs purchased by a friend from maplin with which to repair an audio system here at sea.

No matter what temperature I achieved on the plug the solder wouldn't take (yes I burnt out the nylon in the wire). I had a closer look. It's stainless steel. How would standard solder ever take to such a surface?

Sorry if this is a stupid question. I'm not a fully trained sparky, but am I missing something? A different form of solder required perhaps?

As I say, the nylon is removed from the wire and the wire is correctly tinned. I even tried a little flux with and without.

 

[telectrix]

normal solder will not work with stainless steel. i do not know if there is a solder for it. try searching the web.

 

[rocker]

Probably these connections require a spade type connector rather than a direct solder.

 

[Adam W]

Could you just use gold plated plugs?

 

[telectrix]

there is an adhesive that is highly conductive. silver araldite, i think. but it's expensive.

 

[Marvo]

Depending on exactly what type of s/steel you're dealing with you can solder it with standard solder but you need an acid based flux, not a standard resin based one like is contained in pre-fluxed radio solder. You could also use silver solder but this is more like braising than soldering and it's a bit of an artform with wire. The temperatures involved in silver solder are generally too high for a normal soldering iron.

 

[mikeymoo]

can be done with normal solder with at least 50% tin content, silver tin solder is better, also use an Aggressive fluxes after first tarnishing the surface.