Reply with Quotei have done it
but it softens the o-1
silver soldering 12L14
Is it feasable to solder 12L14 to O-1 or A-2? I am using a low temp (430 deg) silver bearing-flux cored solder. If not, what are my options, would like to keep the 12L14 if possible for machining purposes.
TIA
Les Holt
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i have done it
but it softens the o-1
Perfectly feasible but if the O-1 or A-2 has been hardened you will end up with it tempered so far back that it will not be suitable as a cutting tool or anything that needs a hard material.
If this is a production application and you need to minimize the tempering, in other words you need to control the temperature carefully so you only go as high as needed for the silver solder, you could look into doing it with foil silver solder and doing the heating in an oven or with an induction heater.
An advantage with induction heating if the part volume justifies it is that you can localise the heating in the soldering zone, heat it very fast to reduce the amount of heat soaking through the hardened material and then cool it fast with an air blast.
An open mind is a virtue...so long as all the common sense has not leaked out.
I just did this yesterday. Since I didn't need the drill rod hard I had no annealing worries. To get good wicking of the solder I washed the parts with soap, then alcohol, cleaned the parts well with 220 grit paper, fit them together and applied a very small amount of Ruby Fluid and let it wick into the joint.
I couldn't get enough heat with a small butane torch and so had to use a larger propane torch. Once the joint was hot enough I got the silver solder to wick in. After the piece air cooled I washed it again with soap. It might be necessary to use baking soda to nutralize the acid but I didn't do that yet.
I think that in your case if you don't want the steel to anneal you will have to either find a lower temp solder or perhaps rig up some way to resistance solder just at the join to localize the heating. Although expensive there are hobbiest resistance soldering systems that model railroaders use.
