Soldering Glass And Titanium With Ultrasonic Energy

Ultrasonic soldering is a little-known technology that allows soldering together a variety of metals and ceramics that would not normally be possible. It requires a special ultrasonic soldering iron and solder that is not cheap or easy to get hold of, so [Ben Krasnow] of [Applied Science] made his own.

Ultrasonic soldering irons heat up like standard irons, but also require an ultrasonic transducer to create bonds to certain surfaces. [Ben] built one by silver soldering a piece of stainless steel rod (as a heat break) between the element of a standard iron and a transducer from an ultrasonic cleaner. He made his special active solder by melting all the ingredients in his vacuum induction furnace. It is similar to lead-free solder, but also contains titanium and small amounts of cerium and gallium. In the video below [Ben] goes into the working details of the technology and does some practical experimentation with various materials.

Ultrasonic soldering is used mainly for electrically bonding metals where clamping is not possible or convenient. The results are also not as neat and clean as with standard solder. We covered another DIY ultrasonic soldering iron before, but it doesn’t look like that one ever did any soldering.

Ultrasonic energy has several interesting mechanical applications that we’ve covered in the past, including ultrasonic cutting and ultrasonic welding.

28 thoughts on “Soldering Glass And Titanium With Ultrasonic Energy

          1. Which is correct when you compare to the other elements, we (UK) have it wrong with the “I” in. :)

            I still do not understand why it is pronounced sardar though. How do Americans pronounce “shoulder”, shardar perhaps?

    1. I dont know, why do the British call a drive shaft a prop shaft. A car is not a boat, a car doesnt have a prop. I just think every culture does wierd things, they dont know why they do them, they just do them because thats what they always done. If it’s not hurting anyone what does it matter.

      1. I could give you an academic answer involving the etymology of names, how the pronunciation of letters changes over time, how the English language is an amalgam of other languages with different ways of sounding out words depending on there origin language but really it’s just to confuse foreigners and those that choose to learn it as a second language

    2. And by the way, what’s a capacitator? It’s especially troubling when they’re found to be baked or fried. I’ve never seen resistitators, or transistitators on the menu. Inductitators? Condensitators? Reluctitators?

    3. Probably the same reason that English speakers in many areas don’t pronounce the letter ‘r’ when it is followed by a consonant. Natural language evolved regionally.

      It will be interesting (for future generations) to see if it still does or if we all speak the same after several generations grow up with the internet.

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