Soldering to Ribbon Cable

**royandrews** · 07-13-2006, 08:42 AM

I have some flat transparent ribbon cable with copper lines between clear plastic. I need to solder wires to the cable. How do I do this? Can I just solder through the plastic?

Thanks.

**DarquePervert** · 07-13-2006, 08:45 AM

No, you can't solder through the plastic.
You need to seperate the wires, strip the ends bare and solder each one individually.

**royandrews** · 07-13-2006, 09:04 AM

What I mean is the flat clear stuff, I think its called flex cable (The stuff used to connect lcd to controller board). Not the computer stuff used for IDE. Do I need to scrape the clear coating off?

**DarquePervert** · 07-13-2006, 09:10 AM

That clear coating is insulation. You need to clean it off to solder to the wires underneath. It doesn't matter whether it's flex cable or an IDE cable or what.

**RedGTiVR6** · 07-13-2006, 09:12 AM

hrmmm- that's just a basic piece of knowledge that you should have before ever considering a project like this.

If you don't know that virtually all wires have a protective covering, and that in order to solder to the wire you have to remove that covering, then I would suggest learning a bit more about electricity first.

**RedGTiVR6** · 07-13-2006, 09:15 AM

http://www.mediacollege.com/misc/solder/index.html

**yrean** · 07-13-2006, 11:11 AM

strip the coating off. tin the wires. hold the wires together. heat them up together and bam!!!! dont forget to use "electrical" tapeafter you do this.

practice on wires that you can throw away until you feel comfortable soldering. and get yourself an actual solder iron. that coldheat iron you see on tv is just a piece of crap.

**kevinlekiller** · 07-13-2006, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by yrean

that coldheat iron you see on tv is just a piece of crap.

amen.

**royandrews** · 07-13-2006, 06:37 PM

I do actually have several years of electrical experience. However, I've never come across wires like this before. It all been PCB work and hookup wire until now.

Yeah, I guessed I needed to scrape the insulation off first. But back in high school we had some cool spray coating that you can solder through. I was just checking to see if this clear plastic may have been similar. Otherwise I would have been wasting my time scraping.

Thanks for all the help. Will try it out today.