soldering

[farmboypowerstroke]

When you solder something, why can't you just melt the solder on the tip of the pencil and place it on the thing your soldering?

[Rob]

you can if you can get is to stay there...

[Clay Henry]

Soldier won't stick to a cold metal. Soldier is drawn to heat so when sweating a pipe joint you heat the pipe to draw the soldier in. copper wire is the same way.

[twhouse]

have to warm the work up with the iron so the solder will flow into the poors in the material you are joining to make a good bond. Reason some of the modern tronix fails is poor or "cold" solder joints from a flow or wave solder machine. In the world of tronix they often have a gray color when cooled rather than a bright shiney finish, make sort of a connection for a while then fail. I think the #1 failure in new stuff we tested was poor solder, first thing we'd do was grab the 10X loupe or the microscope and start looking at solder.
Gary