Here’s a weird arc-welding meets soldering hack. You can use a 12 volt car battery (or charger) and a length of graphite pencil to solder connections. The graphite is connected to one jumper cable and a length of solder to the other. Touching them both to the connection closes the circuit, heats up the connection point, and melts the solder. I’m guessing this works best if you connect the graphite and solder to either side of the component connection, which would conduct over the component lead, heating it and causing the solder to wick into the joint.
I’m not sure how well this works or how hard it is on your battery, but it looks like it might be a good way to solder small and difficult connections without overheating components.
Anyone care to chime in on the effectiveness of this or any specific precautions that should be taken?
Graphite Pencil Soldering – Link
8 thoughts on “Soldering with a graphite pencil and car battery”
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think i saw something like this once on MacGyver
You’d want to be very careful to not touch the two parts either side of a component that won’t like 12v across it, or higher whe using the charger, you could very easily blow up the thing you’re trying to solder to.
Also, I’ve seen some pencil leads explode in fire, so wear safety glasses.
I am wondering why would someone use this method? Is there a benefit that we don’t know about it?
I just wanted to come by and say Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging, It’s fun to see a new post. Good luck and hope you make a lot of new friends.