Silver solder or braze

[Gordon]

Electrical connection are soldered. Used to be Pb/Sn now a composition w/o Pb with some Silver

Plumber call the 5% Silver solder process Silver soldering becuse is a little better that Lead and Lead is now banned.

Refrigeration people Silver Braze, presumably because of High Pressure, Temperature and Vibration.

Using High Silver around 50% is NOT soldering Is called Silver Brazing
Any joint where the base metal does not melt but the filler melts above 450C is called Brazing.

Is that Simple

Thanks for the explanation. I have always thought of brazing as using brass rod and anything with silver content silver soldering. Silver brazing makes more sense. I have done a lot of brass brazing and some silver soldering/brazing. My first experience with silver soldering was with the 5% stuff and I soon discovered that it was very little better than electrical solder. One big advantage of brass brazing is the cost difference.

 

[tornitore45]

In this days and age is very easy to educate oneself on just about any subject. If you can post here you can do it.
Some people are lazy, some do not value accuracy whatever float your boat is good for me. But if one wants to communicate efficiently and unambiguously it is necessary to use the proper terms. This is not a difficult subject if one can distinguish the use of the word "potato" from the word "turnip" should be able to know whether he is soldering or brazing.

 

[packrat]

Quote "One way is if the silver solder is sold by the pound for the same price several ounces of something else called silver solder, one is soft and one is hard."
Quote "Refrigeration people Silver Braze, presumably because of High Pressure, Temperature and Vibration"

Yes your so right silver solder is sold by the ounce {and not cheap} When I was doing refrigeration work we always called it hard solder, that had to be used on refrigeration lines, I will tell you that we did not wast any of the expensive rod...

 

[tornitore45]

My first purchase of Silver alloy consisted of rods 4 feet long 1/16" diameter silver wire coated with a thick brittle blue flux.
The flux was not particularly useful since the parts still needed to be fluxed before applying the alloy. For the type of work I do it was also very wasteful ending up using way to much silver to flow all around the joint.
My second purchase was a 1/32" uncoated wire, used with the black flux works beautifully and I do not waste much. I still have most of it.

 

[Gordon]

In this days and age is very easy to educate oneself on just about any subject. If you can post here you can do it.
Some people are lazy, some do not value accuracy whatever float your boat is good for me. But if one wants to communicate efficiently and unambiguously it is necessary to use the proper terms. This is not a difficult subject if one can distinguish the use of the word "potato" from the word "turnip" should be able to know whether he is soldering or brazing.

That may be true but you have to realize that you have a question and what the question should be. In my case in spite of being involved in welding and fabrication for many years I had never heard the term silver brazing until it came up in this thread. The only terms I was familiar with were brazing and silver soldering. Granted brazing and silver solder/brazing were not the major focus of my welding/joining operations so I probably never actually had to look at it.

 

[TonyM]

I agree Gordon. Whilst Tornitore is absolutely correct that the high temp stuff is silver brazing we only had two types in general engineering Brazing and Silver solder. It was and still is referred to as silver solder by many suppliers. Especially this side of the pond.
Real silver solder, as in solder for joining silver, isn't used in general engineering. More in silversmithing and jewelry work.

 

[Cogsy]

It's something of a fools errand to try and standardise even the simplest of terms across large geographic areas. We can't even agree on the pronunciation of things like 'solder' let alone the finer details of soldering vs brazing.

As for the terms themselves, there is a US standard that says any soldering operation of a filler with liquidus temperature over 450 C is known as brazing, but that's a simple arbitrary limit. So if we make an alloy that has a liquidus temp of 449 C we are 'soldering' but if we tweak the alloy slightly to give a liquidus of 451 then we are 'brazing' - and this means nothing if we're performing the operation at 500 C anyway. Not to mention the US definition is only valid in the US anyway. Long story short - call it whatever you like I guess...

 

[mrputz1]

I did hvac work for 25 years 1 1/2 ton server units for computer rooms and 30 ton box car units on top of buildings . Always used oxy acetylene and it was always called SILVER SOLDER at the supply houses .

 

[tornitore45]

call it whatever you like I guess...

And that is why the Babel tower crumbled to the ground
And that is why a satellite was lost in space

 

[Cogsy]

And that is why the Babel tower crumbled to the ground
And that is why a satellite was lost in space

I'm not familiar with the tower of Babel (except that it's mythological) and I assume the satellite you mean is the Mars Climate Orbiter that was slammed into the surface of Mars because Lockheed incorrectly used archaic American standard units instead of metric as specified by NASA? If this is the one you mean then I agree, baseless American standards mess up otherwise good communication .

Seriously though, what exactly is the issue with calling an identical process by a different name? I don't hear much debate about 'soldering' vs 'soddering' but they're the same process just pronounced differently. Just as changing the liquidus temperature of the filler by 1 or two degrees makes no difference at all, yet is the basis for the name change in the American standard. Understanding the work is the real issue - If someone wants a boiler 'soldered' together then we're not going to use electrical solder just because they said 'solder' instead of 'braze'. And if someone wants to 'solder' a part with 56% silver filler rod then they're going to be performing this action well above the 450C 'brazing' temperature or the filler won't melt. The word we use here makes no difference at all in my opinion.

 

[tornitore45]

The story of Babel is that God was displease for some reason with the work and made each of the construction people start using a different language. They could no longer communicate and chaos followed.

Cogsy, you are from Australia and responded to an Italian in English with a very long message. The reason I can fully understand you is that words have a precise meaning. The fact that man has progressed from grunting to higher mathematics could not have happened without unambiguous communication.

The distinction between soldering and brazing is arbitrary, however when a specification drawing call for soldering a boiler the guy in the shop is paid to solder the boiler with a low temp alloy, not paid to second guess the drawing, use judgement and realize the part looks like a boiler therefore he better braze it.

On this board the "guy in the shop" happens to be the shop owner, designer, QA, CFO and CEO. He knows his project and precise words are not as critical, he may decide to rivet the damn boiler.

You point that one degree difference change the process word but the process is the same is a picky artificial argument. Same thing could be said for a speed limit.
At 50mph you are a law abiding citizen at 51mph you are a criminal.
0.2% carbon is Soft Iron 0.02001 is Steel really there is no difference.
Yet we all understand the difference between Iron and Steel.

My point is that although the human language has redundancy and a robust self-correcting feature encoded in the contest, word have meaning and the better we use them the better we communicate.

 

[BobsModels]

All

I do apologize for bringing this braze vs solder term up in my first post. I was not thinking. It unfortunately ended up hijacking the original posters rather simple question and has turned into well in my humble opinion - a mess. The thread should be locked.

I hope the original poster got the bottom line buried in the above 31 messages. Use the high temp filler material and you will be just fine.

Again my apologies for starting this.

Bob

 

[Gordon]

All

I do apologize for bringing this braze vs solder term up in my first post. I was not thinking. It unfortunately ended up hijacking the original posters rather simple question and has turned into well in my humble opinion - a mess. The thread should be locked.

I hope the original poster got the bottom line buried in the above 31 messages. Use the high temp filler material and you will be just fine.

Again my apologies for starting this.

Bob

Yes.I did the job with the high temp 45% silver solder/braze. The problem is the difference in terms between different cultures. In UK chips are what we in US call fries and what we call chips are crisps in UK. Neither is wrong but just a difference in terminology. In the US there is brazing done with brass rod and silver soldering done with various percentages of silver. I had never really seen the term silver braze prior to this even though though the material is frequently listed as silver solder/silver braze. The set of plans I am working from call for silver solder and I am sure that the original designer did not anticipate using 5% silver content.

Thanks for the input from everyone.

Gordon

 

[mrputz1]

Genesis Chapter 11 verses 1-9 explains exactly why God did what he did it was not for some unknown reason . Forget about the silver soldering issue .

 

[ytrose2]

Years ago, when in the exhaust manufacturing game, I was trying to find the German equivalent of terne plating. In German, this, as well as galvanising is generically called "verstinnt". It is a bit like the fact that Eskimos have about nine different words to describe snow.

 

[Cogsy]

The distinction between soldering and brazing is arbitrary, however when a specification drawing call for soldering a boiler the guy in the shop is paid to solder the boiler with a low temp alloy, not paid to second guess the drawing, use judgement and realize the part looks like a boiler therefore he better braze it.

On this board the "guy in the shop" happens to be the shop owner, designer, QA, CFO and CEO. He knows his project and precise words are not as critical, he may decide to rivet the damn boiler.

[SNIP]

My point is that although the human language has redundancy and a robust self-correcting feature encoded in the contest, word have meaning and the better we use them the better we communicate.

What you are so stoically defending is an American standard that does not exist in the rest of the world. Here in Australia, if the man in the shop is told to braze it not solder it, he will inevitably pull out a stick of bronze filler and braze it, because that's what 'braze' means to us. So we need to be clear in our instructions, we agree on that, and "silver solder it with 56% silver rod" is completely unambiguous, in my opinion. Using technical jargon which is correct or has meaning on only one location or industry is the opposite of the clear communication you're expounding in your post.

And I apologise for contributing to taking this thread off-topic.

 

[abby]

An interesting range of opinions , when I was at school , some 60 years ago , we were taught how to "silver solder" using a clipping from a silver coin , still some in circulation at that time , we were also taught how to "braze" using a piece of copper wire stripped from electrical cable.
Much heat required , borax flux resulting in a beautiful neat , strong and cheap joint for mild steel parts
The only reference to "silver brazing" is on forums with posters from the US , presumably.
Dan.