Trick to soldering headphones cables

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nicksada
 
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Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 4:02 am

Trick to soldering headphones cables

Post by nicksada »

Trying to splice 2 stereo headphone cables

I burned off the enamel coating of the inner wires with a lighter, but solder absolutely refuses to stick to the stranded wire underneath. I have the soldering iron tinned with a big blob of solder, the wire sits on it like a bug that can't break the surface tension. Same issue on a couple different headphone cables from different sources.

I'm using the xytronics soldering iron that adafruit sells, normal rosin core solder.

Is there some trick to working with these wires that's eluding me?

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Trick to soldering headphones cables

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Burning the enamel off left a thin layer of carbon that's even harder to get rid of.

The best thing you can do is clip the wires back to where they still have enamel, then scrape the enamel with a sharp knife to expose a little of the copper. Collect a blob of solder on the tip of your iron, then crank the temperature up as far as it will go. Dip the wire in flux, then push the end into the blob of hot solder.

Solder will adhere to the exposed copper, giving it a toehold to heat up the wire and start melting the insulation. As the enamel pulls away from the wire, a layer of solder will replace it. It takes a while, but eventually you'll get a length of wire that's completely tinned at the end.

Then you can lower the iron's temperature to a more sensible level and do the soldering.

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