Braze or Solder Anything in HVAC/R

[Music] hey I'm Brian with HVC our school comm in the HVAC school podcast and I'm here with Sal Sal with products by pros you look kind of anxious there to say okay alright so today we're gonna go through the solder weld HVAC multi kit so this is a solder well multi kit the one that you receive may be slightly different there's a little different lanyard that's coming on this is one of the first ones out of the out of the batch but this is a brand new kit and we're gonna do a quick unboxing of this and talk about the different pieces to this kit and what they're all for so the first thing to notice is this is a really nice tube this tube is waterproof it's got a seal on the top so you can use this for everyday use you can hang it by a lanyard in your truck and it will bounce around and it's not going to damage the solder or even the flux that's on the 56-percent rod that's important that it's not jostled around too much and this kind of keeps everything nice and tight and dry whenever you're dealing with fluxes you really got to make sure you keep them dry right right and on the 56% is the flux coated rod so you get a care for that but then also there's a little tub of flux in there you just don't want moisture in with your solder or alloy I'm gonna get corrected because if it is not below that 800 and what is it 860 if it isn't below that temperature it's not technically a solder even though we often call it a solder it's what we call a brazing alloys so if you're in that higher temperature range a lot of what we're gonna show you our brazing out yeah okay alright so comes with a little brush on it which is really nice for cleaning off flux afterwards if you're dealing with the aluminum product or the 56% you need to clean it off afterwards to get any of that flux off and it's also nice just to do some quick cleaning before you braze handy thing to have now let's go ahead and open up the kit and we've got a whole bunch of different products in here we've got a 56% rod which is used for a lot of things that we'll get into we've got a alloy saw which comes attached with it's a little tub of flux which is for aluminum and we'll talk about that some more we've got the newest product in the line which is al cop braze and this stuff is like the Swiss Army knife of brazing alloys it's actually a channel flux product and then we've got our sill still saw five this is actually the kit that comes with the five percent we also have another kit that comes with the 15 percent which is my preference I like 15% a lot better but some people want the five percent because of the economy of the thing obviously silver is not cheap so let's go over each one of these and what the utility of each one of these products is likely to start with let's just go with the SIL Sol five so difference between five and fifteen percent is five percent only has five percent silver in it it will still work for most copper to copper applications it is not as ductile which means that it's not gonna flow quite as easily and it's not going to hold up to stresses like vast temperature changes pressure changes vibration quite as well as a 15 percent solder well now I know it's not recommended on the you know we recommend the five or the fifteen but when you give a low of five how does that change with like a two as your or one I get some some guys asking me in the field you know can I use a two or a zero yeah sure I mean so the answer to that is the same changes that you see from 15 to five are more extreme as you go less and less silver so the silver really helps that solder flow out and it helps it be more ductile and the ductility means that it can it can flex a little bit it has a little more ability to flex and so when you have the lower silver levels you got to make sure that that joint is super super tight like it's got to be really really tight and it's got to be in a less critical application if I'm working on a discharge line for example on a compressor temperature is high here and you have a lot more vibration in those circumstances I'm only gonna use a 15 I wouldn't consider using anything else but if I've got a really clean environment it's fitting really tight and you want to do it on the cheap well then use a lot of guys you use a lower silver we don't use a lower sole for anything we use fifteen percent across-the-board because it's cheap insurance I mean sure it's a few bucks more but 15 percent is just going to do the job better and it's gonna be easier to work with for the text in the field as well alright so that is the silver solder I'll talk quickly about silver solder just real briefly most technicians make use the fault of not using enough heat quickly enough that is the number one error that techs make because they're afraid of burning through the base material so they come in and they're moving the torch all over the place and they're never getting it to that sort of deep cherry red color that we want in copper and a lot of guys when they see that that dark red they immediately say oh you burned it up that's not the case with copper with copper in order to make these products flow the way that we want them to we want to see that slight color change we want to see it go from its normal copper color to a little bit we see just a little bit of redness in it and that's when we know we can apply it was my first mistake when I started doing brazing demonstrations and I wasn't getting a hot enough I really embarrassed myself trying to get too quickly right stuck and everything would follow yeah well you have globs I mean and that's when you see those really awful jobs with the globs all over the place that's just because they didn't get in they got scared they're moving the torch all over now moving the torch primarily should be in and out it shouldn't be all over the place you move in and out and then sometimes you got to move it around just a little bit but it's not like you got to be doing this all over the place you want to get it hot enough get the solder in get it drawn into the joint another mistake guys get make is they don't draw that solder into the joint and then for some guys they want to see that little pretty fill it weld or we call the cap weld on the outside that's fine it's it's good to do but that isn't primarily where the work is done work is mostly done in the joint when you're working with this type of solder solder well makes a great product they make both a flat rod and around Rod 5 and 15 percent covers all the bases whatever you prefer I'm gonna suggest what we use here at kalos is the 15% round that's the product that we we like to use and our installers and technicians they love it all right the next thing we talk about is the 56% rod 56% rod is a flux coated rod and this stuff has so much silver in it it is a pricey rod and it's not because of anything to do with solder weld it's because it's got 56% silver in it so of course you don't want to use this for every day in and out operation but if you're working on dissimilar metals with copper so you're going copper to steel you're gonna copper to brass brass to steel steel to steel brass - brass anything like that this is a really nice rod to use and it's got the flux right on it one thing that solder well did that I really love is they only put two rods in this case and the reason I like that is because we don't use this product very often at least most of us don't when you get into refrigeration you may do a little more of it but your average AC technician isn't going to be using this rod that often and because of that you don't want to have a whole bunch of product in there that you paid for and then it's just going to bounce around in the truck that in conjunction with the fact that it goes into this tube is going to protect it like we talked about but the flux right moisture hidden involved exactly and also not bouncing around the other thing that I like about it is that a big mistake that a lot of guys make when they're handling these things because a lot of them have these slide caps is the the other kind of hard to get off and then they end up dropping the rod and then the flux breaks off whereas with this it's a twist motion I absolutely love that yeah I hate when my rubber stoppers get lost on any of the other brands out there and they all yeah so that's a really really nice feature to these all of their tubes I really like that and and you know anytime you're gonna work with anything that's in a similar metal say you burn through the copper plating on a compressor which happens a lot of way too much in the field or you show up on a compressor that has the copper plating burned through you definitely want to go to a flux coated 56% rod like this from solder oiled so that way you can actually get a good seal on it you're gonna see that flux flow out a lot of guys ask how you use it you use it just like you would a five or a 15% rod you're gonna see the flux flow and say yeah I've tried with steel a couple times then the cherry-red part of that getting that steel chair --red or work oh it's very very important steel has different thermal properties than copper you know so it can absorb more heat it's a little different but what I tend to say to people is you got to heat up both metals I mean you definitely do but you as long as you concentrate that heat on the steel get the steel the right temperature you're gonna see that copper get to the right temperature and you want to be more concerned about not burning through that copper that's what you want to make sure the whatever material has the lower melting point is the one you got to be really careful with to make sure you don't burn through this flux coated rod is great to have on the truck a lot of Tech's don't have it on the truck right now which is one of the big benefits of this kit is that now you've got a couple of these rods so if you run into that circumstance now you've got the rod you can use you're in a commercial application it's dirty you're doing brass to copper or you want to make sure you're gonna get it right the first time on a TXV or reversing valve or whatever this is an absolutely fantastic product to use and it's great that it's in the kit alright now we're gonna talk about the two really differentiated products cuz these you know you've probably all seen these before but these are definitely different products I'm gonna refer you to my alloy solve video on how to use alloy salt to patch aluminum to see exactly how it's done the first thing when you guys see this aluminum kit they say ah it's got flux you know I would prefer yeah I want I want a rod that I don't have to use flux here's the thing this helps you work with dirtier aluminum which let's be frank when we're in the field patching a coil patching a Rob out of you men whatever it's usually not pretty and if you got to work on a microchannel condenser for example we have a video of that where we had to go in in the field it was actually a real circumstance on a refrigeration job we had a patch or micro Channel it was a mess I mean the thing was rusty corroded all that kind of stuff having this flux really helps you work on that dirty aluminum and it's gonna get in there a lot better the other thing is is that this rod is in that 600 degree range which is a much safer range for working than getting up near a thousand which is what a lot of the other products require yeah you're much closer to the melting temperature of that aluminum and a lot of guys will say hey I've used it it works great I don't know the problem is it really depends on the thickness of the aluminum right so like you're not gonna take your typical most of your flux-cored rods out there and work easily on an aluminum can it's gonna be tough to do whereas with this I can do it no problem when you're working on a coil a lot of these coils have rifled tubing and they're really soft like if you take an all and try to punch through it I mean it'll just go right through this is where this product comes in really really handy I always told you I like the flux cored rods more than anything and the only reason I never like the external flux version of the alloy saw with the straight aluminum rod is it kept dumping up on the hole mm-hmm and I watched your video a couple times after you did it and what I found was the one thing I wasn't doing was making sure that the hole cleared up after the flux is put on there right because that's how you need to put on that's how it knew that the the rod was able to disperse over there right a lot better and it floats so much better I didn't have that gulping problem anymore so do you advise everybody to just go check out that here's the thing it's easy to do once you know how to do it it's initially if you're trying to use the same technique that you would use on a typical flux cored rod or definitely under 15% silver solder it is not the same technique it is not the same technique but the great thing with this and this is what I love about it cuz I've tested it strength and I've taken the stuff used it on some aluminum plating and then hit it with a scratch awl with a punch with other things I hit it with this guy right here so this this is a this is a big boy and I hit a big old patch of this stuff with it and it did not even it did not even give me put just a little tiny dent in it this stuff is a really really hard and strong patch whereas other Sauter's often are more used to pull into a joint this is a great product were patching a rub out which is more what we run into you know when I'm wanting to patch a coil I'm not wanting to cut out a whole section of coil put in a new piece of tubing I'd be so invasive I would destroy the thing I'm wanting to just get in there fix leak get out and this is a great way of doing that so it really truly is I mean it really truly is my favorite aluminum product I've ever worked with and I'll also tell you another story I did a test where I took some aluminum plates and I tried some competitive products out there that a lot of people like that flow real nice and look real pretty and I tried to solder together two plates of aluminum using that product and then tried to pull it apart that other product just in the process of cooling it cracked all apart yeah just because it's it's really not it's more designed to draw into the joint no it's a flux core Roger flux core draw different brand I'm not going to name anything but let me test that I did and it just it just cracked all the bits just in the process of cooling it whereas this stuff I mean it really really held there's also another product that they made call called alloy braze it has a flux core it's a similar product a little higher temperature that works great for thicker aluminum I still am NOT going to recommend that product over this when it comes to day in and day out you know patching of robots and lease and coils right right exactly as far as the technique goes look check out the video that I already did on that HVAC School Channel finally the coolest product that I've messed with in ever and soldering and brazing is this Alka prays and I want you to get a good close-up view of this so this has flux right on the inside of the channel so you can actually see the flux there's a little channel cutting this rod the rod is very flexible and there's a flux put into this rod it is a non corrosive flux so you don't have to clean it off I still suggest cleaning it up in most case it just makes it look nice but but you don't have to it's not corrosive and all you do in order to use this product is you place it with the flux side down on the heated material just like you would in most other materials you start to heat it and you kind of use that to test that flux is gonna run out you're gonna see it run out and now you're ready to apply the rod it's so simple and so beautiful to use it's question ever but uh I'm not sure if you even said this but the flux should be facing towards the to flux down yeah yeah no it's common sense but it and it'll it'll work otherwise but what's gonna tend to happen is is that now the metal is gonna start to try to melt on you before the flux and you want the flux to coat whatever you're working on you know that's what you want that to happen first now the application is this works on aluminum it works on copper and it works on copper to aluminum which is the one of the main applications of it the other thing with this rod that's great is that if you're working on copper that's very near aluminum you can't use a typical 15-percent rod or a 56% rod because by the time you get that copper hot enough to melt the rod you're gonna melt the aluminum right so if you're working on copper that's very close to aluminum a couple inches away from aluminum and it's like you can't even get in to keep it cool that's where this is going to be an excellent product there's a lot of applications for it some guys are gonna find that they like it better than using the alloy saw and I'm gonna tell you be careful with that this product is not the same product as I always saw it flows really nicely it looks really nice but it's not going to have in my experience quite the strength that you're gonna see without I saw it whereas without I saw I would feel comfortable with it in almost every application where you're gonna patch aluminum with this use it when you need to use it when there's copper and aluminum together or other dissimilar metals that are nearby that you have the potential of damaging when you're heating the copper that's a that's a nice really nice solder to use and once you use this you're gonna be like blown away because it's so easy to use text in the field can grab this use it for the first time and be like wow this is easy you know okay let's say I was out in the field and I decide to use some of the alloy saw and I put some of the flux on there it just doesn't work out like I thought it would I didn't even seal up the hole but I still have some gump the flux around that hole do I have to clean that off before I go and try new use another rod will it not stick so cuz the flux is on there so what I would suggest doing it because not all fluxes are equal the flux that's in this al cop race is not the same flux that's used with how a saw so if you're gonna transition between any type of metals you want to clean it up really well before you go to the next kind I mean and what we suggest using you get the little brush here which is great you can also use one of the brushes that go on the drill we got a little cut brush we use or a wheel brush you can either use brass brushes or stainless steel get it now and cleaned up and then that makes it really easy it's also a good idea any any of these products that you're using it's good idea to have a little cup of water by you and so that way you can kind of clean it up when you're done you want to let it cool naturally though you don't want to go in with the wet rag and cool it because that does stress it these are still going to work in most cases but you don't want to do that it's gonna put little stress fractures in and it's going to be less likely to hold up with this if you're in the grass it's gonna be perfect if you're sitting on concrete it's kept a little nub here so that pepper I won't sit as well but if yeah most cases or shouldn't say most but a lot of cases working on the grass that's a great little cup that you can use for that so that's it this is the multi kit from solder weld comes with either the 5 percent or the 15 percent versions the rest of them are all the same they tried to kind of match the quantities to how often you use them you can reorder the particular tubes to go in it as you need them so if anybody wants to get these into their supply house that they buy from today just reach out to me at Sal at product by pros.com or you can go on our website www.irs.gov and there's a form to fill out on there it'll go straight to me on my email and I'll work with that particular distributor to get you guys set up thank you Hey thank you all I think Sal did great he's a little nervous but I think it worked out alright thanks for watching we'll talk to you next time [Music] [Applause]

Channel: HVAC School

Views: 56,249

Keywords: braze or solder, hvac/r, hvac school, hvac, brazing copper hvac, hvac training videos, how to, hvac training, air conditioning, how do you, brazing with nitrogen, how to braze with nitrogen, hvac tools, silver solder, solder (material), flow regulator, hvac brazing, brazing copper, brazing vs soldering, hvac troubleshooting, hvac troubleshooting not cooling, hvac troubleshooting electrical, hvac troubleshooting compressor, brazing copper to steel, hvac brazing tips, Anything

Id: 1HLpV45pyY8

Length: 17min 2sec (1022 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 16 2018