If you do a lot of soldering projects, you probably have a lot of solder beads around your work area. With a few tools you can melt them down and remould them into usable solder again.
Solder isn’t the most expensive material out there, but you know the old saying: “Waste not, want not.” Every time you solder, there’s a chance droplets of excess material can drip below and, after a while, there might be a lot of it sitting around.
Instructables user zaphodd42 has a simple method for collecting it all and turning it back into usable material. Gather all the beads, melt them all down in a small crucible, and recast it all in an aluminium foil mould. Now none of that solder goes to waste. Using a torch, crucible, and being around liquid metal can be pretty dangerous, so just be careful as you go.
Reclaim Wasted Solder [Instructables]
Comments
5 responses to “Reclaim Wasted Solder By Melting It Down And Remoulding It In Foil”
Sure, if you don’t like good solder joins. You can’t put the flux back in. Enjoy your voids, dewetting, protrusions, and generally bad soldering.
As someone who used to work with the stuff I can attest to this, just like when you overwork a join and have to remove it all before starting again.
Also, a roll of solder is about $10 – even if you work with it all day long you take months to go through a roll. It’s just not worth your time to reclaim 10 cents worth of lead/tin.
Well, consumer grade solder is cheap. The stuff we use here is $50 to $80/reel, depending on flux and wire size. But if we spend that much, you know we care about quality 😛
Ummm, there’s more to solder than the metal that gets left behind after it’ been heated…. Sure you can re-melt it over and over again, but it’s hardly suitable for soldering afterwards.
Seems a little irresponsible to post on your website recommendations that are bad like this.
I used to do this in my early soldering days (not that i’m an expert now)
it tends to form blobs, and doesn’t really flow in capillary action very well.
it’s not worth it.