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Fixturing SS on a surface grinder using solder

crossthread

Titanium
Joined
Aug 5, 2004
Location
Richmond,VA,USA
I took some Non Magnetic SS to my buddies house to use his surface grinder (I don't have one as I don't have much call for one). These were 1/8" sheets so I had to fixture them without using a magnetic chuck. I told my buddy I would just temporarily soft solder them down to a mild steel plate and he could grind them. He told me I couldn't solder this grade of SS and I told him I could if you use an old trick I learned when I was working in a machine shop in Hamburg. Take a Dremel or a Fordham type grinder and chuck up a medium grit stone. Preheat the stone a little ( I use a small propane "pencil" torch) and then "load" it with soft solder by grinding a piece of solder (I use 60/40). Lightly grind into the metal you are trying to solder. Just scratch the surface. You can then soft solder the plate down. This works on ceramic, tungsten, aluminum, SS, titanium and probably just about anything you can think of. Might come in handy some day for ya.
 
Would be really handy if it actually works on ceramics.
Ceramic bearing balls would be handy for some widgets but joining them to anything is tricky at best.
 
Should work fine for you. About twenty years ago I saw a guy in a lab at UVA solder platinum electrodes to glass tubing using this technique.
 
Nice..... I learned a trick from a oldtimer for TIG "welding" aluminum to anything silver braze will stick to. You tin the braze on the part then weld the aluminum to the braze with aluminum fill rod. He said its more of a seal than a weld but, the joint did hold 100psi of air so there is some strength. It was for a shop made coolant mister.
 
what grade ss was it? i have about 100 meters of ss roof rail soldered together on my house.
 
It was 316.
You can solder 316 stainless with enough aggressive flux. I have used phosphoric acid. Adding a bit of hydrochloric acid should make it even better but then you need to be really sure to wash off all the flux residue.
 
You can solder 316 stainless with enough aggressive flux. I have used phosphoric acid. Adding a bit of hydrochloric acid should make it even better but then you need to be really sure to wash off all the flux residue.

+1

Stainless like this can be soldered with killed muriatic acid (zn disolved in it) which is commercially available. Dunton's is a common brand, sold specifically as a flux for stainless.
 
Mr. Midget. The point of my original post was to try to enlighten folks that you can soft solder material that normally you could not by using this technique. The reason I chose this method on this particular part was that the parts were quite small without having enough surface area to hold with double sided tape. That was the first thing I tried. Perhaps I should not have used the term "sheets" as the part was the size of a postage stamp. Next time I will use the more technical term of "thingy".
 
how does the solder come off the chuck? (i think i asked this yesterday, but dont see it anywhere.)
 
Doesn't the heat from soldering distort the part? I would think this method would not be all that great for maintaining flatness unless the grind was only for cosmetic purposes.
 
The soldering and unsoldering were done very quickly with a Weller pistol. No flame or anything like that. Did not warp the plates. I think some folks got the wrong idea about my post and I apologize. The point was not that this is a great way to fixture something on a surface grinder. It's just what I did and it reminded me of this technique. The real point of my post was to suggest if you ever have a problem soft soldering certain material that ordinarily can't be soldered, then this could make it possible. Over the years I have used it on some pretty exotic metals and even ceramic.
 








 
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