[Hallicrafters] Taming aluminum chassis ground points

[Mark Shaum]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Ketner" <ketner at arisbeassociates.com>
>
> But riveted joints on aluminum can be real baaad dudes. Is there a
technique, magical juice or compound, hex potion, or love spell that
anyone knows for sweetening up those dang wannabe diodes (brass, solder,
aluminum — add a little lemon juice and you got a voltiac cell!)? I’m
aware of drilling out the rivet and bolting as a technique, but that
could get teed-jus.
>

Ken,

The trick with aluminum is getting through the Al oxide which develops
faster than you can wash/scrub/rinse it off.  A snug nut, bolt and star
washer is likely to provide a good connection with the star washer
biting through any oxide (or other) coating/layer to get at the
aluminum.  And it can be re-torqued, unlike a rivet.

There are aluminum solder pastes out there, I've ordered some from
Solder-It but it isn't here yet to report on.  I'm going to try to
solder together some 1/8 inch solid aluminum rods into capacity hats, we
will see how it works out.

It's also possible to solder to aluminum using regular solder and a
large chisel tip iron.  The key is to get the area hot enough and use a
rather heavy scraping action on the iron to scratch off any oxide while
the molten solder is there waiting for something to adhere to.  This
technique also works well with cadmium plated chassis.

Mark K9TR