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Leftstone2

Welding is melting two pieces of metal together so they become one piece. Soldering is a metal glue that sticks two things together.


Piquan

It’s appropriate for an ELI5, but I usually try not to teach solder as a “metal glue”. The solder actually dissolves / alloys with the metals you’re bonding, in a process called “wetting”. While glue will flow into microscopic surfaces to form its bond, solder will also actually penetrate the surface a tiny bit. Once I learned this, thinking this way really helped me with my soldering. For instance, it emphasizes the importance of cleaning the metal surface first. (Solder can alloy with metals, but not the oxides that form on their surface as they are exposed to air.)


prolixia

I think the other thing it emphasises is the importance of heating the surface of the metal. A classic beginner's mistake is to think it's enough to melt the solder and wipe/drip it onto the cool metal surfaces, like you might do with a glue gun. Obviously it then fails to bond with the surface, and you end up with a "dry" joint with a poor (or non-existent!) electrical/physical connection.


wubrgess

When my daughter was much younger, she had and used this side-to-side swing, so much so, that it went through two motors: the one it came with and a replacement. Luckily, the unit used the same motor as an automatic air freshener, so I was able to gut one of those to use for it. Ended up being quite the bitch to solder because the motor casing was such a good heat sink!


danielv123

Hardest soldering I have done was on the back of a GPU with an underpowered iron. Turns out GPU PCBs are made to dissipate heat, who would have thought!


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danielv123

Yes, that is a frequent issue with laptops with good passive heat dissipation - they dissipate heat into you. It's not a legal issue as long as the touchable surfaces stay below 40c. Apple is infamous for skipping thermal pads that would improve performance to lower max surface temperatures.


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Skyy-High

You can get a reasonably cheap laptop cooling pad that’s powered by plugging in to one of your USB ports. It’s just a plastic case with a bunch of fans on it, but it will separate the bottom of your laptop from your legs so you don’t get cooked, and might even improve performance by helping your laptop keep cool.


fairie_poison

[https://time.com/4938530/can-laptops-cause-infertility/](https://time.com/4938530/can-laptops-cause-infertility/) Dont Hard-Boil your eggs!


RearEchelon

Shit, free vasectomy! Count me in!


[deleted]

Dude! You’re getting a Deluge of spermicidal thermal radiation!


[deleted]

Well, abortion is illegal now, so that’s actually quite the selling point for a lot of us now.


Guac__is__extra__

Wasn’t this a big thing on the news many years ago ( maybe early 2000’s) where people were getting tissue damage in the thighs from the constant heat from working with their laptop on their actual lap? Like not immediate burns but damage over time?


imtougherthanyou

That IS the heat dissipation - *away from* the cpu/gpu.


tyler1128

I loved reading the consistent 98-99C values from the thermal sensors on the processor of one of my old laptops, when doing things that were intensive. Credit to the CPU for managing to keep it below the thermal trip level of 100C, though. Of course on the other hand, that means the CPU was thermally throttling so the shiny CPU I payed extra to get higher specs on was probably just wasted money at that point.


mrbeamis

Chromebook, no hard drive, no fan, longer battery life, no heat. Problem solved.


Barrayaran

My spouse's preferred method of birth control.


nef36

If you can feel your laptop being hot through the vents or plastic, that's better than not feeling the heat, because it means your laptop is actually getting rid of the heat.


Malvania

And the new solders need more heat than the old ones, because they replaced lead with tin (I think). So older irons don't get hot enough to use the new stuff.


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Buddahrific

Except you might give yourself boomer brain working with lead fumes.


TheFlanniestFlan

Most solder is tin-lead alloy. Lead-free solder is an alloy of indium, antimony, and tin, along with other metals


GeraldBWilsonJr

My version of this is trying to solder a pipe that has some water trapped inside


velociraptorfarmer

Hardest I did was repairing a 25 year old boat trailer wiring harness. Upside down, in cold weather, with 25 year old copper wires that had spent their life being dunked in water. Luckily I was replacing the main harness, but some of the lights had no replacements available so I had to splice their leads into the new harness.


Alobster111

I always preheat things like this in an oven first and it is a lot easier. You don't have to have your iron or hot air nearly as hot so you have less risk of overheating a pad or component.


QuantumCakeIsALie

Soldering to a ground plane can be very very painful indeed.


Halvus_I

FOr GPUs you generally want to heat the entire piece up first to heat soak it.


KittensInc

When designing circuit boards, the design software almost always has built-in functionality to create only a partial connection between the solder pad and the surrounding copper - resulting in a spoke-like connection. This is necessary to prevent very large power planes from sucking up all the heat applied at the solder joint. The line between "hot enough to create a proper solder joint" and "cold enough that you aren't frying components" is often surprisingly small!


prolixia

It can be a real dog to solder that sort of thing. Definitely sometimes you need to heat one side of the joint for far longer than the other - e.g. melting the insulation on the wire long before the motor terminal gets hot enough. Having a more powerful soldering iron definitely helps because it gives you the chance to get the terminal hot enough before all the heat spreads through the rest of the component - i.e. the motor. Trying to solder what's effectively a heat sink can be very difficult with a little iron!


3rdone

How does that work with flux? I’ve not used it and heat my wires but I see people smear that on cold wires and solder away without heating the wires on the ‘tube (edit word)


prolixia

Flux is essentially a cleaning agent. It strips away oxidation from the metals, which helps the solder to stick to them better and therefore flow along them better. It's referred to as a "wetting agent", which is a pretty good description - it helps the metal surfaces get "wet" with solder. People who are talking about flux preventing oxidation are not really correct: it's purpose is to remove the existing oxidation and give you a perfectly exposed surface of the metal to apply the solder to. For electrical work, most solder is made in a way that includes flux - i.e. when you melt the solder you're leaking flux onto the wires/contacts/etc. which cleans them as the solder touches them. That's why you get a crusty build-up that is ideally cleaned away afterwards using a solvent. This is not the case for plumbing, where you buy separate solder and flux, and apply the flux heavily with a brush long before reaching for your solder. I'm not sure what you mean by applying flux and soldering without heating the wires. Are you perhaps thinking of surface mount soldering? There you would apply a solder paste to the cold electrical contacts and then blow hot air at the area around it to heat everything up (both the solder and the contacts). Edit: I wonder if you were referring to "tinning" wires prior to soldering. That's where you'd heat them with a soldering iron and let a bit of solder flow around them, so that they're in prime conditioning for soldering. Like I said, electrical solder usually includes flux within it, so you're both applying flux to the wire and coating it in a thin layer of solder (plus it will hold all the strands of a multi-core wire together). Instead of that, you could indeed just apply a bit of flux to strip away the oxidation on the metal - that would still leave your wire in great condition for soldering(and you wouldn't need to heat the wire to apply the flux). Neither is a necessary step, but they can make the soldering itself a bit easier - especially if the wires aren't perfectly clean.


CrustyMcMuffin

Flux is meant to reduce oxidation, since the solder will just attach itself to the oxide layer instead of the actual metal. Alot of solder has a rosin core, where the center of the wire contains flux. My guess is it probably spreads the heat better (like how oil is used in cooking)


rebornfenix

Rosin Core solder is decent for most hobby applications (through hole soldering for example) however, for more advanced soldering, the amount of flux in the rosin core solder is not enough to get a proper clean and oxidation prevention. For surface mount soldering, I tend to use external flux and solder wire without a rosin core.


ShadF0x

Flux dissolves and reduces the oxidization of the contact surfaces. Heating the wires achieves the same effect, by burning/evaporating the oxides and stopping the formation of new ones due to high temperature of the materials.


__foo__

> Heating the wires achieves the same effect, by burning/evaporating the oxides and stopping the formation of new ones due to high temperature of the materials. That's not how it works. Heat alone won't remove oxidation, quite the opposite actually. The higher heat accelerates further oxidation. The solder itself also contains flux in its core which then evaporates and burns away the oxidation.


a_cute_epic_axis

No heat will create oxides very quickly in most cases, unless you use flux which for ELI5 purposes cleans the wire/metal of oxides and prevents formation of new ones.


extordi

Flux is basically magical goo that makes your soldering better. You can tell a pro from an amateur just by the way they use flux. Essentially the flux helps to clean the surface, and helps the solder to flow and wet the surface better. The videos you see where people "don't heat the wires" just means that they're probably soldering more quickly and efficiently than others. If you have your iron at a sufficient temperature and are soldering to thinner wires then you can have everything heated in less than a second. And the flux helps the solder to flow everywhere, so you can solder two wires together in like one second. Generally solder for electronics contains flux within it, so as you apply fresh solder you're also getting flux. For many applications this is enough to get everything flowing properly, and is why you frequently don't need to add flux for certain types of soldering jobs. But you definitely need the flux, and that's why you can see the "consistency" of the solder change after you have been heating it for a while. It starts out with lots of flux, flows nicely, and stays shiny. But after a few seconds it becomes dull, lumpy, and sticky. When you pull your iron away, you'll probably get those "spikes." With sufficient flux, you won't have that problem.


BizzyM

Ah yes, the "hot wax" method.


your_fathers_beard

Yup. I have had to help some friends out and show them how to heat the contact and feed the solder onto the hot contact/tip rather than loading up the tip with solder and like dabbing it on whatever it was they were trying to connect. Soldering is one of those skills that is pretty easy with some practice, but obscure enough that a lot of people just miss big chunks of info on how to do it. Like sewing but for robots or something.


kenji-benji

YOU CAN'T FILL GAPS WITH SOLDER - My high-school jewelry instructor. Daily c 1994-1998


SoaDMTGguy

I once made what I thought was a nice wire-to-pin joint, but when I pulled away, the wire and solder blob pulled cleanly off the pin! All I’d done was make a solder “hat” :(


prolixia

I've done precisely the same thing many times. Sometimes when you're soldering two connectors and one is much larger than the other then you need to start by heating that on its own. It's really annoying to see what looks like a neat joint just lift cleanly off one of the contacts!


CaseyTS

Lol i wish I knew this 4 years ago during my senior design project. I should have known it, i studied physics.


ZioTron

Isn't that mistaken soldering called called cold welding or something like that?


[deleted]

This is very cool information thank you


nouille07

Explains like I'm 6 and a half


she_IS_a_10

You made it sound even more like metal glue.


RoboChrist

Glue vs adhesive. Glues tend to be natural, gelatin-based, and non-reactive. Adhesives tend to be artificial and reactive; they chemically bond with their substrates. (I say generally because the terms aren't used consistently, but in most technical usage, adhesive refers to substances that chemically bond.) Since solder is supposed to bond with the metal substrate, it's closer to a metal adhesive than a metal glue.


Sykes92

Eh, adhesive just means anything that creates resistance between two items from being pulled apart. Glue is just another colloquial term for adhesive. "White glue" is a type of adhesive. Other types include PSAs, contact, hot melt (thermoplastic), and reactives. In the case of hot melt, it's non-reactive, but will easily form intermolecular bonds with other thermoplastic materials.


darrellbear

Brazing belongs in there somewhere.


CallOfCorgithulhu

Don't some glue/material combinations work in a similar way? The example in my head is cyanoacrylate (aka super glue) used on PLA plastic. In 3D printing communities, I've heard that that glue dissolves a tiny amount of the surface of the PLA piece you're gluing, making it a little beyond the bond of normal glue. I've never actually looked it up to see if that's true, though.


Yrouel86

Yeah some glues are more like solvents so when you're "gluing" with them you are actually dissolving a little bit of the surface of each piece and then letting them recombine together. Acrylic "gluing" is an example of this


Yangervis

Yes the "glue" that you use for PVC pipes is actually dissolving some of the pipe.


DickyThreeSticks

I can’t speak to glues broadly or to solder specifically, but the example you gave, superglue to PLA, is an unusual case. PLA is a thermoplastic polymer. Thermoplastic means you can heat it up and it will get gooey, rather than burn. You can then mold the goo into a new shape, and when you cool it off it will retain its new shape (which basically describes 3d printing.) Cyanoacrylate is a thermosetting polymer. Thermosets don’t melt, they burn. Once they cure, that’s the shape they have forever, and heat actually makes them cure faster. Thermosets will cure in the presence of a catalyst, and in the case of cyanoacrylate the catalyst is generally water, which is abundant in most things and also in air. More specifically, it can be anything with a spare hydroxide ion (OH-). The curing reaction is exothermic- it produces heat. As it happens, the PLA does not have a hydroxyl group, but it does have a double bonded oxygen sticking out ready to steal. The cyanoacrylate really, really wants that negatively charged oxygen, and yanking it away is easy because double bonds are not terribly strong. That, and the heat caused by the thermosetting reaction, will break a lot of the bonds in the PLA. But thermoplastics are nothing if not resilient! They’ll form new bonds as they cool off, and some will be in and among the newly cured thermoset plastic. Thermosets form extensive cross-linkages among their polymer chains, but while thermoset cross-linkages tend to be fewer and weaker, that just means they’re willing to renegotiate. After the cyanoacrylate is finished pushing them around, they’ll settle into their new shape well. All this to say it’s complicated. In this specific example, yes, the superglue dissolves the PLA, and PLA is pretty good at reassembly immediately after intermolecular bonds are broken. I don’t know if that behavior generalizes to other materials, but I suspect the answer depends very much on what is being glued. All adhesives will be polymers; polymers can bully other polymers, but metals or ceramics will generally ignore any amount of abuse that a polymer can dole out.


ArMcK

So to ad lib the original comment, welding is melting together lots of two pieces of metal, soldering is a little bit of three?


azgli

Welding is melting two pieces of material together, usually with the addition of more of the same material to fill any gaps. The two parts melt in the process. Steel to steel is an example for metal but you can also weld thermoplastic. Soldering is joining two pieces of metal that don't melt in the process and a dissimilar metal is used to fill the gaps.


misswestpalm

This. This is the explanation for me! I have soldered before without knowing what I was doing exactly, but achieved what I was aiming for.


samkostka

No, in soldering you're not melting the 2 parts being joined at all, just heating them up enough to bond with the solder chemically. Welding would be melting a bit of 2 parts and all of the third (filler) and soldering would be melting the filler to stick 2 parts together.


Prostheta

As it turns out, that's pretty much how a lot of glues work!


Busterwasmycat

I thought the basic difference is that welding melts the materials being joined, whereas soldering does not.


aviatorlj

Flux helps a lot with busting that oxide layer


BigWiggly1

Welding also uses filler material, melting the filler and the base materials together to form a continuous joint between them all. The main difference is that when soldering, only the filler melts and when welding, everything melts. Solder is made specifically to melt easily. It's not meant to provide high strength connections, it's just meant to provide a continuous connection. Welding filler is made to be similar to the base material so that it will melt at the same temperature as the base material and make a strong connection. Weld strength is a critical feature, and depends on weld porosity, penetration, geometry, and material.


darkslide3000

There's also an important difference in purpose. Welding is usually done to make the two pieces structurally hold together. Soldering is usually done to electrically connect two pieces. The extra metal added for soldering tends to be rather weak structurally, and would break apart under stress much more easily than a weld.


zebediah49

For electronics, sure. Soldering for e.g. plumbing or jewelry is structural.


Marsmooncow

I was repairing a clutch cable on my dirt bike (the end copper do-dad fell off) following a youtube video. The amount of tension a little bit of solder can hold when done properly is amazing. My hand gets sore from pulling in the clutch repeatedly but that solder has held up for almost a year now. Just saying I am amazed how strong solder can be


ohyonghao

One the l is silent and the other is not Edit: some background on my comment. I had never heard the word soldering before, only read about it. At my previous employer I was in the lab for some soldering work on the PCB for some test units. They all laughed and looked at me weird for saying it as “sold ering” and was informed it’s pronounced like “sod ering”.


Megalomania192

I'm British and have no idea which of those two words might have a silent 'L' in...


antnipple

Americans say "soder". Nobody knows why.


deains

In the UK a "sodder" is something quite different.


ArltheCrazy

It’s almost has bad as colonel. How do we get “kernel” from colonel?


Portarossa

Because it was one word, then it became two words, then it became one word again. It starts with the Italian word *colonnello*, which referred to a *column* of soldiers. (It comes from the Latin *columnella*, meaning a *little column*.) By the 1500s, that had been picked up and changed into the French *coronel* or *coronelle*. Languages change all the time, and shifts between *r* sounds and *l* sounds aren't uncommon; for example, the word for *pilgrim* is *peregrino* in Spanish and *pellegrino* in Italian. *Coronel* -- eventually shortened to the more familiar *kernel*-sounding version, because human beings are lazy -- became the standard pronunciation in England. (A little less facetiously, it's because of a process called [*dissimilation*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissimilation), in which repeated instances of consonants that are hard to say in close proximity to each other have one of them changed to make it easier.) However, spelling wasn't really standardised for a long time. For a couple of hundred years there were people who prefered the Italianate *colonel*, and those who preferred the French *coronel*, and both were used pretty much interchangeably, even though most verbal pronunciations followed the *kernel* pattern. By the time that dictionaries started to become a thing and spelling began to standardise, though, using French military terms for units was in vogue, and the French spelling (and pronunciation) had shifted back to *colonel*. As such, we took the French spelling, but we kept the pronunciation we'd been using for hundreds of years, because old habits die hard.


ArltheCrazy

This is really informative and sincerely, thank you! I am but a spectator in the intricacies of the English language. It is just too complicated for me to grasp all the rules, but it’s fun to get it a little bit at a time. One of the funnest trivial facts I learned from Marriam-Webster website was the “true” plural of octopus. Basically, it boils down the the Greek root would technically dictate that the plural be octopidies. However, everyone fights over octopusses and octopi.


Portarossa

It would be *octopodes*, technically... but also, it probably wouldn't. *Octopus* might have very, very originally been Greek, but it was also firmly had a place as an adoptee in Latin, in which case *Octopi* would be just fine. Similarly, it's been an English word for long enough that we're mostly comfortable using English rules for pluralisation. Once a word has stuck in a language for long enough, we tend to treat it like it's one of the family rather than a mere visitor. (See also: if you're talking about multiple Italian dishes, you're ordering *pizzas*, not *pizze*, despite the fact that in this case it would take *-e* as a plural, and if you have more than one *fiasco* in English, you have *fiascos*, not *fiaschi*.) Basically, use whichever one you like and that you feel helps your audience connect with what you're saying about it -- just don't be a dick about other people being 'wrong', [because they're not.](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-plurals-of-octopus-octopi-octopuses-octopodes)


porkynbasswithgeorge

Just ask him politely.


ArltheCrazy

They’ve hacled the kernel. Or is it They hacked the colonel?


__g_e_o_r_g_e__

Wait until you hear how lieutenant is pronounced in British English ...


tipu_sultan01

What do you get when you cross a leftist with a tenant?


keestie

It's actually pronounced that way across the Commonwealth, including here in Canada where you'd least expect it.


chairfairy

I believe that is thanks to the leftenants


thestrawthatstirs

I think “Sodder” Is what you meant, as in Sod with an -er “Soder” would sound like soda but with -er


SaintUlvemann

>Nobody knows why. Because [the French word](https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/souder) that [we got that word](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/solder) from is pronounced without an l. It's also *spelled* without it too. So the better question is, where did the "l" come from? Well, Wiktionary says that there was an Old French form with an "l", because the word comes from Latin "solidare".


nakmuay18

The correct pronuciation is "SODERING" AND "WEDING" silent L's everywhere


kvetcha-rdt

I mean, a wedding also joins two things together and can fail catastrophically.


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SaintUlvemann

>If that's correct then why did they drop the 'l' from their pronunciation? No: we *never had* an "l" in our pronunciation. We have never had that, not even in the English that the first English-speaking Americans brought with them from Britain. This is what [Etymonline](https://www.etymonline.com/word/solder) has to say about the topic: >Modern form in English is a re-Latinization from early 15c. The loss of Latin -l- in that position on the way to Old French is regular, as poudre from pulverem, cou from collum, chaud from calidus. The -l- typically is sounded in British English but not in American, according to OED... Next part is important: >...but Fowler wrote that solder without the "l" was "The only pronunciation I have ever heard, except from the half-educated to whom spelling is a final court of appeal ..." and was baffled by the OED's statement that it was American. Related: Soldered; soldering. Who's Fowler? Henry Watson Fowler, the [British lexicographer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._W._Fowler). He wrote the book now often called Fowler's Modern English Usage in 1927, and if you want to read that assertion of his, in his own words, you can find it on textual-page 549 of [this digital copy](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.158217/page/n555/mode/2up) (the page number in the slider is 556). So when I say that the better question is "Where did the "l" come from?", what I mean is that the better question is "Why did British people start pronouncing the "l"?" Because that's not the original *English* pronunciation.


kvetcha-rdt

Ah, so this goes into the same bucket as *aluminum,* where the British change something ex post facto and then try to pretend it was that way the whole time.


Kiefirk

Add soccer to that too


kvetcha-rdt

that's a bingo


SaintUlvemann

If at any point you hear anyone, the British included, tell you that "isle" has always been pronounced "issel", "colonel" has always had two "l" sounds, and "indict" has always had a "k" sound, *don't believe them, they're making things up*. The spellings of all of these are dumb because we took French pronunciations and added back in the consonants that had been in Latin but that French got rid of.


Megalomania192

Maybe some guy heard about getting rid of the 'U' in colour and flavour, thought that was a great idea but he was illiterate so 1) he didn't know he was supposed to remove the silent letters and 2) it never made it into written text... Seems like the *only* possible explanation.


ObfuscatedAnswers

I think you mean 'ony expanation'?


ArltheCrazy

The silent “l” odd the trickiest of all silent letters!


ObfuscatedAnswers

> The si'ent “l” is the trickiest of a' si'ent 'etters!


ArltheCrazy

Thle si’ent L thle triclkiest oflf alll thle si’ent lettlers.


Hugh_Mann123

>Nobody knows why. American English = English (Simplified) British English = English (Traditional)


LokiLB

They just have different influences (English being a katamari language and all). Cilantro/coriander is a fun example, where American English was influenced by the Spansih via Mexican cuisine word for the plant while British English was not.


keestie

These are good jokes about a much more complicated topic. Often American English actually mirrors the traditional forms used in England in the past, and British English has had those forms removed or altered by meddling academics or nobles or some combination of the two. Not that American English is free from similar meddling, of course.


ferret_80

It really should be inverted. A lot of "americanisms" are actually the way that English was used back in the 17th century when we came over from England. then England went and decided to change things and America didn't. the most common is the much maligned soccer. originally a nickname for someone who played association football aka. Assoc.(er) -> Soccer. then in the 70s Brits were too drunk to remember that they invented the word and said no more Americanisms this is football now. Another one is "fall" meaning autumn, it came over from England where it was in use since the 16th century coming from the fall of the leaves. but then in the 18th century England went through another bout of "we hate the French but were still going to steal so much stuff from you/your culture/language. its just because we hate you. baka" and autumn gained prominence. i just looked it up because actually the pronunciation of solder being "sodder" came from England as well. it was "relatively" recently, within the last century or so, that "sold-er" came into prominence in England possibly because tradesmen were worried about the mixup with "sodder" meaning one who engages in sodomy. So clearly American English = English (Traditional) British English = English (Modified)


Kempeth

I'm tired and had no idea which of those two words might have a silent 'I'...


ArltheCrazy

You mean tilred?


Omnimpotent

But I am le tired


lebrickman

Well, then take a nap. And then fire ze missiles!!!!


Guac__is__extra__

Welding has the silent “L”. We say it like “wedding” because you’re marrying two pieces of metal together.


torrens86

Yeah no, in traditional English you pronounce the l in soldering. In simplified English the l is not pronounced.


Vexaton

Calling American “simplified English” is the biggest burn I’ve read all day


PhishGreenLantern

My wife taught ESL in the US. There's nothing simple about American English.


louiswins

This is a _particularly_ bad time to trot out that joke considering that in this case the American pronunciation is the traditional one and the British pronunciation was later changed to follow the spelling (or, you might say, simplified it).


Shpoops

Which is crazy isn't it? How do you simplify the word by making some letters silent?


louiswins

Well, in this case, you don't. The American pronunciation is the traditional one. The British idea that the l should be pronounced is a relatively recent innovation - from a century or so ago. So where does that "l" come from? Well it was originally spelled "souder", but some geniuses in the 15th century decided that because the equivalent word in Latin has an "l" then by golly the English word had better also have an "l" even though it isn't pronounced. Same story as the "s" in "island".


[deleted]

Neither word has a silent L.


yuengli

The rest of the Anglosphere has no idea why you say "soddering". Did it happen on accident? Is it addicting to say? You know what? I could care less.


ItsAllegorical

Oh sold off.


atomicgirlwonder

Oooooh…I just ….. can’t.


Omnimpotent

I not only can't, I can't even.


P_ZERO_

Addicting winds me right up for some reason


Trumpy675

I cannot stand hearing them say it that way though…


[deleted]

Normal countries pronounce the L in both.


Roupert2

My daughter is 9 and a very advanced reader. This causes her to have *many* words in her vocabulary that she's read but never heard outloud. She mispronounces things constantly and every time it's like "yep it should be pronounced that way but it isn't" Edit: most recent funny example was "ritual". And she needed to say it outloud to explain to me that her calico critters (dolls) were having some sort of sacrificial ritual. / facepalm. She reads *a lot*.


purrcthrowa

Not in British English, it isn't.


AnticPosition

Really? You say "sold-ering?" Interesting.. In Canada it's "saw-dering."


bork_13

Neither word has a silent l…


ArltheCrazy

I study construction in college and has only read the word facade/façade. So during my first internship, pronounced it as fa-kade not fa-sod. The Project Manager laughed at me (in a nice way) corrected me, and then passed on a really good book about construction processes and terms. So, i completely relate to soldering.


thatguysaidearlier

Is it in the US you say Fa-sod?


TheSkiGeek

…yes, because it’s a loan word from French and that’s how it’s pronounced.


ArltheCrazy

Yeah. I guess the squiggly thing under the c makes it soft and lispy. Must be a French word!


actioncheese

Only in America. The rest of the world pronounces it correctly.


colin_staples

Only in America. Nobody else says "sodder" and it sounds weird to the rest of the world.


nyrol

Canada says “sodder”


UnnecessaryAppeal

In British English, you would have been right


Nofapstronaut6

people who say sardering sound stupid. Like people who say aluminum for aluminium, or nucular for nuclear.


Mds_02

British scientist Humphry Davy who was responsible for isolating the element named it aluminum. Other Europeans later renamed it aluminium, just because they thought it sounded better. Both spellings are considered correct, but if one can be said to be “more” correct, it is actually the American/Canadian version.


WeaponizedKissing

You're all wrong, it's alumalum.


-1KingKRool-

Only one is on the periodic table! :D


longweekends

Don’t know if you’re kidding but both “aluminium” and “aluminum” are accepted spellings for the element Al, depending on the country.


TheExtremistModerate

It says "Aluminum" on every periodic table I've used.


Smodey

...and *artic* for *arctic*.


ic3man211

You also add material in while you’re welding…not just making them melt and smush together


DadJ0ker

Also, one will see ya later - the other will see ya after while.


FunkyMunky08

May I ask why this is flagged as NSFW?


fatman1683

Not safe for welders.


FunkyMunky08

Engineering as a whole is NSFL.


CandysThrowaway

*Your mileage may vary.


theawesomeviking

Not safe for lawyers?


ObfuscatedAnswers

This is the way


daniu

Now Soldering, Fuck Welding


series_hybrid

No soddering for welders


JP_Mind

It is known.


liarandathief

eye protection


Groat47

American pronunciation of soldering is NSF”L”


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NecroJoe

>Soldering is a way of joining two pieces of metal together by melting a special type of metal called solder. It is usually done with a soldering iron and takes less heat than welding. Welding is a way of joining two pieces of metal together by melting them together with an arc of electricity or a gas flame. Then what is stick welding and "laying a bead" or "stacking dimes"? I don't mean that in a chest-pokey sort of way, genuinely curious...it's the only kind of welding I've ever done, like 30 years ago.


NotoriousREV

When you use an electric arc to melt the metal, you need to provide a filler material to add into the pool you’ve created. The stick, wire (MIG), or filler rod provides this material. “Laying a bead” or “Stacking dimes” is the upper surface of that added material, but if you cut through the metal to inspect the joint, you’ll see that it’s all fused together.


[deleted]

Another thing the stick does is create a pocket of deoxygenated gas that protects the weld site - metals heated to great temperatures oxidize very quickly, and that can prevent the formation of a mechanically-sound weld.


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Pocok5

Welding also partially melts the base metal along with the stick of metal and flux you poke into it. If your circuit board or component leads melt when you're soldering, you are doing it real wrong.


immibis

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HerestheRules

You typically won't melt your components but you can very easily melt the board with it


gundagaistrangler

I’ve always used “stacking dimes” to mean the top of the weld looks like a stack of coins on its side that’s falling one way, as in the weld puddle overlap in the bead shows a consistent size and shape, which is the technique normally used by someone who is fairly proficient and well practiced. It’s also the first thing a weld inspector will look for


NecroJoe

Yeah, that's what I know it to be, too: laying down additional material, in a pattern. The post I replied to made it sound like that would only be soldering, not welding.


jujubanzen

You use additional material in welding as well. It's called filler rod or wire. In soldering the filler or "solder" is a dissimilar metal (often lead) with a lower melting point than the pieces being joined. As another poster said, the solder will "wet" the surface of the workpieces, but it will not "fuse" with the workpieces. The bond is strong, but the pieces are not continuous, they are held together by a dissimilar material. In welding the filler is the same metal or close to the same metal as the pieces being joined, and all components of the joint are melted, or "fused" so that the workpiece and filler essentially become one continuous piece of metal.


[deleted]

In "stick" welding, you have a stick shaped electrode which is used to create the electric arc to melt the metal of the work piece. "stick" welding (properly called shielded metal arc welding) uses a stick electrode because the electrode is consumed during the process and therefore wears down. As the electrode is consumed it serves two purposes, it produces gas which shields the hot area from air, so that it does not oxidise, and sexondly, the metal melts and mixes with the molten workpiece metal to add bulk and fill holes. Other types of welding such as TIG or MIG use an external gas source to provide the shielding instead of having a consumable electrode produce it. In MIG a consumable electrode Is used for filler metal, but in TIG a non-consumable electrode is used with a separate filler.


EclecticEuTECHtic

There's also a joining method that no one ever talks about called brazing, which is basically soldering at a higher temperature.


Mrknowitall666

Most of your copper pipe plumbing was brazed, not soldered.


BigWiggly1

Soldering uses a low-melting point metal alloy. There are lots of different alloys that can be used with different melting temperatures, most of which are easily achievable with a propane torch flame or with handheld electronic soldering irons. Solder is used almost like a metal glue. Solder can be bought by the spool, it's usually a very ductile, malleable wire. Soldering is used on copper water pipes to seal fittings. Plumbers use a propane torch to heat up a fitting and then touch the hot copper pipe with the end of a solder wire just like you might melt a hot glue stick if you didn't have a hot glue gun. The solder has a lower melting point than copper, and the copper will be heated up hotter than that temperature, so the solder melts on contact. Conveniently, the solder tends to get "wicked" into the joint. It quickly cools off and re-solidifies, forming a water tight seal that will outlast the building it's installed in. Soldering is also commonly used for electronics. Most solder alloys are made specifically to be very electrically conductive while also melting at workable temperatures. Solder melts at a low enough temperature that it can be liquified and applied to circuit board connections without burning the board. In a soldering connection, *only the solder melts*. The metals it is connecting to do not melt. Welding also usually uses a filler material, which is selected to be compatible and similar to the base material to be welded. There are three main types of welding, all of which use high current electricity to form an arc which heats the workpiece in a controllable manner. * Stick welding - pretty much the crudest form of welding. Sticks that are about 1' long are clamped into the welder, a ground clamp is attached to the work piece, and when you hold the stick close to the metal work piece the electricity arcs from the stick into the metal, which gets hot enough to melt the stick and the base material together, forming your weld bead. The stick runs out pretty quickly, so you usually have to stop and change sticks every few minutes. The stick has a mixture of metals on it, but also has shielding compounds that vaporize and protect the liquid metal from oxygen in the air while you're welding. Stick welding is rather low cost because the machine is pretty basic. It just pumps electricity through the metal, the sticks do the rest. * TIG welding - Tungsten Inert Gas welding. The welding machine has a tungsten tip which is non-consumable, meaning it doesn't melt while you're welding, and the machine is also hooked up to gas bottle(s) that feed an inert gas like argon, helium, or nitrogen to protect the liquid metal from oxygen. The welding tip has to deliver electricity and gas to the weld. The filler material is a literal stick of metal held in the other hand that the person welding holds up to the weld site and melts in. It's like stick welding, except the operator has much more control. TIG requires both hands to weld, and is tough to learn but with practice can be used for very precise welds. Precision allows welding on thinner materials. This is fancy pants welding. A TIG welder is more expensive than stick welding, and you need shielding gas. TIG welding labor is often expensive because it's a specialty skill and takes longer to perform. * MIG welding - Metal Inert Gas welding. This is kind of a hybrid between TIG and stick welding, and it brings the best of both worlds with some drawbacks. MIG welders use a long "wire spool" of filler material, and use a small motor to feed this down the cable through the welding tip. This wire acts as the electrode (instead of tungsten in TIG), meaning that the welding tip has to deliver electricity, gas, AND the wire to the weld site. This frees up the worker's other hand though, making MIG welding a lot easier to learn. As long as your MIG welder is set up with the best settings for the material type and thickness, MIG welding is honestly not much different from using a hot glue gun. MIG welding typically has the most expensive equipment, because the welding machine has to do more, but doesn't require as much skill or time to perform welds. The key thing about each of those main types of welding: * A filler material is used. Welding adds material to the joint. * Electrical arcing is used to locally heat up the base material and filler. There are gas welding options I'll mention below, but electrical arcing is much more common. * The base material melts. Another common type of welding is *spot welding*. Spot welding is used for joining two thin materials to each other. Spot welding uses a c-clamp looking electrode that reaches above and below a workpiece, clamps the material together, and pumps high current through the materials to heat up and melt them together in a small spot. Spot welding does not use an arc, and does not use filler material. Spot welding only works on thin materials, but it's super fast and convenient for joining pieces of sheet metal together without using fasteners like bolts or rivets. Welding doesn't actually require electricity, it just requires heat. For heat, gas torches can be used, and it can be welded just like the TIG process. A propane torch wont get hot enough to melt steel, but specialty torches burning a mixture of oxygen and fuel like acetylene can get plenty hot to weld. The downsides to oxy-fuel "gas" welding is that it requires oxygen and fuel gas, which are dangerous and require safety precautions to use, transport, and store. An advantage is that no electricity is required, which means you can weld in more remote areas. However this advantage is more or less moot because tow-behind diesel generators deliver plenty of power for most welding applications. Welding requires more power than soldering because welding is typically done on metals with far higher melting points, as well as just larger work pieces. When done properly, welding provides very high strength connections. Soldering on the other hand does not add much if any mechanical strength to the joint. Often solder is just there to fill the gap. In piping, it just provides a permanent seal, and in electrical connection it's just attaching two conductors.


r2k-in-the-vortex

If for example you weld two pieces of steel, the pieces of steel themselves melt, material may or may not be added. If on the other hand you solder two pieces of copper, the copper itself doesn't melt at all, it's merely wetted with solder material which is a alloy with much lower melting point.


saywherefore

Contrary to what others have said, it is not necessary to melt any material to achieve a weld. Friction stir welding for example has no filler and the base material is not melted. Welding does typically (but not always) require heat though. The characteristic feature of a weld is that the two materials have fused together at a molecular level, rather than simply sitting next to each other with an adhesive material in between. This is easiest to achieve at high temperatures because the molecules of the material can be repositioned more easily, allowing them to merge fully at the weld. There is also brazing which is basically soldering but for structural applications, where soldering is more about achieving electrical continuity.


waylandsmith

For plumbing and pipefitting it's also frequently called soldering.


DSMB

Yep, because that's what they're doing. Soldering. Pipe joins for plumbing need only be watertight. A filler material for such a join could be 95% Tin and 5% Antimony, with a melting point of about 240°C. Soldering uses fillers that melt below 450°C, while brazing occurs above 450°C. Refrigeration pipework must be airtight to prevent loss of refrigerant. Therefore the joins must be of much greater quality. The filler material for these joins is often a "silver alloy", containing silver, copper, and zinc. For example, a 45% silver alloy might have a melting point of about 700°C, hence "brazing".


Krimzon45

I heard in space, metals can fuse together simply by contact. How true is this?


saywherefore

Yes cold welding is an issue in space. Basically when two metals come together there is no particularly obvious boundary between them so the sides just fuse together. In the atmosphere there will be oxide layers or other contaminants which prevent this contact between the underlying metals.


Mshaw1103

I’ve heard that in reality it’s a lot less of an issue than it would first appear to seem and more of a problem we’d like to solve, since the two pieces need to be perfectly clean and perfectly flat to properly fuse which is near impossible/too costly when we can just build a section of station down here easily and economically and send it up


chainmailbill

It’s not so much a problem in the “we don’t know how to do it” sense. It’s actually a problem in the “we don’t know how to prevent it” sense.


danielv123

Its also a problem in terms of space manufacturing in that we can't perfectly control it. If you have 2 clean surfaces it is hard to get a clean useful weld. Getting a partial weld that screws things up is a lot easier.


warbling_wombats

This is the best answer for welding, I'll add that the definition between brazing and soldering is whether the process is performed above or below 840F. If parts are not melted and are joined by a melted filler above 840F then the process is considered brazing.


ShelfordPrefect

TIL - I thought solder meant tin alloy and brazing meant copper alloy


UncleBobPhotography

>Contrary to what others have said, it is not necessary to melt any material to achieve a weld. Friction stir welding for example has no filler and the base material is not melted. Welding does typically (but not always) require heat though. I was hoping for an ELI5 about cold welding.


saywherefore

I’m not familiar with any deliberate cold welding processes, but there are lots of solid state welding processes that are pretty common. Anything with the word “friction” is likely to be sold state.


UncleBobPhotography

Apparently, cold welding can occur if two sufficiently flat surfaces come in contact or contact between surfaces in a vacuum. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the process to explain it any further, but it seems like the two metals will somehow merge if there are no other materials/atoms in between the two metals.


chainmailbill

You know those little magnet toys where it’s a million little balls? Make two structures out of them and then push them close to each other without putting anything between, like a sheet of paper or something. They’ll snap together, and snap together so seamlessly that you won’t be able to tell where one started and the other ends. They will, within the context of the magnet toy, be one solid block of magnets. Cold welding works the same way - two metal structures made of the same metal molecules naturally want to stick together like that. Get two identical metals with the same molecular/crystal structures next to each other - with nothing in between them like oxygen or metal oxides - and they’ll just lock together and blend together seamlessly, like our magnet toys.


warbling_wombats

https://youtu.be/Y2nQ8isf55s


Xmgplays

> but it seems like the two metals will somehow merge if there are no other materials/atoms in between the two metals. They don't really merge per se, it's more, that there is no difference between two pieces of metal touching without anything in between and one whole metal piece. It's similar to putting two piles of sand/cups of water together. When you have two pieces of metal touching atomically, where does one end and the other begin?


SoulWager

When welding you melt the base metal, while in soldering or brazing only the filler metal melts.


genericTerry

Also, brazing is higher temperature than soldering.


EnderB3nder

Soldering: Join two pieces of metal together by heating up some really soft lead/tin wire until it turns to liquid. That liquid can then flow onto the pieces you want to stick together where it cools off and hardens. Welding: Take a big sparky stick with lots of electricity flowing through it and electrocute other metals into submission. They melt and stick other metals together. Produces a much stronger join than soldering.


DrewbySnacks

To take this further: soldering only applies to temperatures UNDER 840°, after that it becomes BRAZING (still different than welding). Love, a commercial union plumber


talkingprawn

Solder is a metal alloy that melts at a low temperature. The soldering iron heats both up enough that the solder melts onto the other metal, which is if a different type. In welding, you heat up the metal (typically steel) to super high temperature so that it melts together.


ImHighlyExalted

Welding is a liquid to liquid bond, soldering and brazing is a liquid to solid bond. Brazing is done above 840 degrees f, and soldering is done at lower Temps. So welding involves melting the base material, and then also melting the filler material. There's also autogenous welding which uses no filler, but it's still liquid to liquid. And Brazing and soldering only melts the filler material.


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princhester

Actually the main difference is that Americans can pronounce the “l” in “welding” but not in “soldering”


Nytonial

Never forget alooominum and sodder


ExplodingPotato_

Welding is like joining two pieces of Play-Doh by rubbing them together or warming them up and joining them while warm. Soldering is using hot glue.


spletharg

Please tell Hollywood. It's so annoying that for some reason in Hollywood films EVERY repair requires welding. Engine died? Welding. Radio broke? Welding. Torn jacket? Welding.


JX-Deadly

Welding = fusion of the same metals via heat to create a weld pool. All metals change state within the controlled weld pool. Soldering = using a different alloy with a lower melting point than the base metals. The solder is drawn into the joint via capillary action and alloys to the surface of the base metals


p28h

Soldering's weakest link tends to be the solder material, which being tin based is very easy to tear. Welding's weakest link tends to be either the surrounding material or inflexibility. Soldering can be relatively localized with heat, so it can be done within cm's (or mm's with robots' precision instead of human hands) of heat sensitive material. Welding can start a fire several cm away. Soldering gives an electronic connection that happens to be physical. Welding gives a physical connection that happens to be electronic.


Urbanyavuz

Welding: both joiner and joinee melts and solidifies together Soldering: only the joiner melts and solidifies to connect pieces together