How to solder wires together

Soldering wires requires a few extra techniques to be successful. You still have to do all the normal things when you solder and if you are new to soldering I advise you to read my article Learn how to solder – A beginners guide, to learn the basics.

Soldering wires to wires

Soldering wires is slightly different to wiring electronic components to circuit boards because there is very little mechanical force after the components are in place but with wires this usually isn’t the case. If there is going to be a lot of excessive force on the wires some other form of strain relief should also be used such as cable clamps because a simple soldered joint won’t take a lot of mechanical force and in time it will get pulled apart.

First the cables need to be stripped back of the insulation. There are some very good tools to do this and they are well worth buying, if you try to make do with other methods that I’ve seen over the years, like people using their teeth, scissors and various knives, you will damage the cable by cutting through some of the strands of wire or you’ll damage yourself.

If you need more information about stripping wires read more here.

The ones below are excellent, check out the video.

Tools you need for soldering wires together

There are a few other things you can use to make soldering easier. Check out my guide for soldering iron accessories and tools.

If you don’t have a soldering iron check out my guide here.

If it’s a soldering station you’re looking for read my guide here.

Strip the plastic insulation back from the cable with your shiny new cable stripers (if you bought them) a couple of centimetres should be fine but if the cable is thicker you’ll need to strip more insulation to give you chance to join it.

I suggest you don’t twist the strands together at this stage.

Hold the two stripped cables together and then twist the strands of the two cables together. This is easier as the untwisted stands twist together better.

Make sure your tip is big enough and turn up the temperature of your solder station if your using one. You don’t want to be holding the tip on the joint for too long as you’ll melt the plastic insulation and a larger tip and a hotter iron will help speed up the time you have the iron in contact.

At this stage I apply flux to the bare wire. you can make do without it but the solder flows much better and quicker with it. Give it a try you’ll be surprised. It will also help to cut down the time you hold the iron in contact.

Then the normal soldering techniques apply. You simply touch the freshly tinned tip of your soldering iron onto the bare wires for a couple of seconds and then apply the solder, at which point it will smoke and flow over the wires almost immediately and you can withdraw the solder and then the iron and you should be left with a bright silver joint.

Once it’s cooled you can slip a piece of heat shrink tubing over it and give it a blast of hot air from your hot air blower.

Incidently you can have wires joined and solder in the position show above. I often join wires in this way. You don’t have to have them as one long structure.

If you do want it length ways I flatten it to the 180 position before I shrink the sleeving over the solder join.

The joint should be pretty mechanically solid and difficult to pull apart.

Soldering wires to other things

It’s probably more common that you’re going to want to soldering wires onto other things rather than to each other, especially when it comes to building projects in the real world. A circuit board will take care of the small components but there will be stuff that can’t be mounted on the printed circuit board. When it comes to electronic project construction there can be a whole host of stuff that needs to be panel mounted.

Sockets and potentiometers that are intended to be panel mounted usually have tags with holes in them the best way to solder wires to these is to strip back a couple of centimetres of insulation and twist it as before, then tin it and use a helping hand to keep everything steady as you solder it and as the joint cools down.

You will probably have to use a larger tip if the terminals are large as a smaller one may not heat up the joint sufficiently.

If you have a soldering station its better if you turn up the temperature while soldering bigger items. That’s one of the advantages of a soldering station, if you want to know more or are thinking of buying one click here for a guide.

You should try to minimise any mechanical stress and not just rely on the soldered joint, soldering in electronics is for making electrically sound joints primarily and they won’t stand up to a lot of mechanical stress.

If you want more information on soldering to things like banana plugs, sockets and terminals I have a more detailed article specifically for soldering those types of item here.