Armortek

Hi all, I have been thinking about buying some Resistance soldering equipment for soldering brass etc for model making.

Does anyone have any experience with this or opinions.

Thanks

David

David

No direct experience but Fabrice put me onto the works of Gerald Wingrove who makes masterful car models. In his second book called The Complete Car Modeller he does a piece on resistance soldering. Worth a read.

Regards

Stephen

Check out :

http://www.americanbeautytools.com/site/

They work slick as all-get-out.

Lucien

Thanks Lucien,

Yes, they were the ones I was looking at.

David

Hi David,

As you are in the US, the range of American Beauty transformers and probes are an obvious choice. Get the biggest you can afford, plus tweezers for small parts and a heavy duty probe type for bigger stuff. I belive Micro Mart (?) has a good mail order service for the devices and spare parts.

Unfortunately, the considerable mark-up of the official UK importer, compounded by the exchange rate, put me off. I wrote to Eric Soderlund, the MD of American Beauty, who could not have been more helpful, but he was only able to produce a 10% reduction.

Following Wingrove's description, I have built my own from a 12volt 500watt theatrical lighting transformer. I had some help from an electrician friend to make sure it is *safe* . The transformer in a ventilated case was a freebie, the other parts from RS came to about £150, or a fraction of the £843 ($1260 at todays rates and $1600 two years ago!) I had been quoted originally .

It is worth practicing on scrap before trying it out on expensive components, especially PE or thin parts, as getting the setting wrong can almost vaporise small parts! I have not used it on whitemetal parts at all as the melting point is very low.

Good luck.

Fabrice

I ordered one of the 250w American Beauty resistance soldering systems via there ebay store which is cheaper than MicroMark.

I will let you know how I get on.

Thanks

David

Guys,
I have one of the Triton brand resistance solderers sold by MicroMark and it works great. The American Beauty are cadillacs for sure, but why spend $400 if you don't have too. It has a high and low power setting for castings and sheet soldering. I recommend it.

http://www.micromark.com/Resistance-Sol ... pment.html

http://www.micromark.com/TRITON-RESISTA ... ,7890.html
Bob

This sounds real good , is there any thing on youtube of it in action . Dale

The price has always put me off from buying a resistance solder but the Triton one looks affordable. The recommendation helps too (thanks Bob). MicroMark has a sale until Sept 12 so now is as good as time as any for me to buy one. The sale price is $189.95 US.

Rich

Robert E Morey wrote:Guys,
I have one of the Triton brand resistance solderers sold by MicroMark and it works great. The American Beauty are cadillacs for sure, but why spend $400 if you don't have too. It has a high and low power setting for castings and sheet soldering. I recommend it.

http://www.micromark.com/Resistance-Sol ... pment.html

http://www.micromark.com/TRITON-RESISTA ... ,7890.html
Bob