I'm brian with hvac school, when I'm here with Sal from products by pros you can't meet them so today we're gon na be doing a video on al cop rays made by solder weld it's a really innovative product and it works with aluminum to copper. You can use it to connect aluminum, copper, obviously, either whether the aluminum goes into the copper or the copper goes into the aluminum. You can also use it to patch aluminum or copper, especially pertinent when you have copper, that's near aluminum, when you have copper, that's in your aluminum. Obviously, aluminum starts to disappear on you at about 1,200 degrees and a lot of the copper rods they start to flow.

At about 1,200 degrees, so that's incompatible this out, copper. Ah, this flows around what temperature nine hundred and fifty to a thousand degrees Fahrenheit right in there, so it's in the safe zone for aluminum and obviously for copper. But one of the big things you want to know with this is that, obviously you still have to be careful not to overheat the aluminum, but the easiest way to do that is to work with your heat, primarily on the copper and I'm gon na. Show you how that's done so, let's get a close shot here of the rod itself.

So if you look closely at this rod, you can see there's a flux actually laid into the channel. So this is what we call a flux, channel, rod, and, what's nice about that, is you can lay it with the flux side down. So that way, the flux is allowed to wet the copper and aluminum absorb or eliminate any of those oxides that want to build up. That would normally prevent the solder from flowing another nice thing about this flux.

Is it's a non acidic flux, so it doesn't need to be cleaned and it's not going to corrode the copper or aluminum, although I still prefer cleaning it when I'm done. Let's show you how this is done. Alright, so I'm going to be using an air acetylene. Actually, a turbo torch with a three tip on it.

You can use ox acetylene, but again you want to use a reducing flame kind of a soft flame and hold it back a little ways. You want to make sure that you definitely don't overheat, that aluminum and you can overheat the aluminum by overheating, the copper and then you'll lose your aluminum, so you just want to be really thoughtful about it. So let me show you the technique here, so you want to apply heat back on the copper because it's in the safe zone, so here we're definitely not doing to cause too much trouble with the aluminum. And what we can do is is then just kind of brush forward just a little bit and we can apply the rod to the top of it here so that once it hits the temperature, the flux will start to run and once that happens, then it will Wet the copper and the aluminum there you go the CN trail, just wrapped right around really.

I think we're done that's really all there is to it. The flux runs out first, because the flux is on the downside and that just wraps right around so now. Let me we're gon na, let it cool a little bit, because aluminum and copper have different expansion and contraction rates. So we want to let it cool naturally, once that's done, then we'll clean it up and I'll show you what we've got another nice thing with the solder weld Multi kit is: it comes with a little brush with a lanyard on it, which is a nice little Tool to just clean up - and you can kind of see on it, especially on the copper that it that that flux float around and wetted that surface.

So you can. You can kind of see that right there that edge, where the flux made it around and that's really important that the flux makes it around the goal with any joint is to pull the solder into the joint. So while we want to have a nice little catheter on the edge that isn't the most important thing, the most important thing is that it's actually pulled in that the material makes it into the inside of the joint. So I'm going to cut it open and show you what it looks like on the inside it's hard to see in there.

But you can see a thin rim of material on the inside, which is what you're looking for, if you overdo the material or if your gap is too wide, you can actually pull solder into the joint, and that would be next to a disaster. So this is actually perfect. You just see a thin rim rim of material on the inside and it was a nice tight joint, and so you know that that's going to hold alright. So in practice you can use alcot brace for patches.

You can use it for connecting tubing between aluminum and copper. The biggest thing to know is apply flux, side down and put your heat on the copper until that flux goes and just runs around, don't over apply your material. So hopefully that was helpful. Thank You.

Sal for being here, thank you for having me Brian, with HVAC school Sal with products like Burroughs have a good one. Biscuit eater.