Mike, There are a number of products that will make an excellent solder bond between brass and stainless. I have in hand a product called "alpha fry silver solder and flux" that wets stainless quite well (I just tried it on windshild wiper "ribs") Don't let5 the "silver solder" title put you off, this stuff melts at only a little higher temp than regular lead tin solder. It is Tin with 2% silver and is quite a bit stronger than regular solder. But the magic sauce is the flux. With this flux, even lead tin solder will wet stailess. I wish I could tell you where I got this solder but then I would have to hunt everyone down and send them off to that island - or just kill them. :-) Or more to the point - I have no idea where I got it - perhaps OSH. I have also had good results with "stay brite silver solder" which is 5x as strong as ordinary solder. These guys have it for ~$9.00: http://www.bvmjets.com/Accessories/solder.htm In any case you need the liquid flux - I once had a large cheap bottle of "Allens flux" or such but now it's missing so I can't find the real name. Anyway, these things can be gotten at the hardware store. Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 08:52:19 -0600 From: Mike Hord Subject: [OT:] Securing a steel pin in brass Okay, this is tricky to explain, but I'll try. The important bit is the fourth paragraph, so you can skip the first bit if it's too poorly explained to make sense. Imagine two brass cylinders, 4mm in diameter, one 2mm in height and the other 10mm in height. Now stack them vertically, aligned along their central axis. Drill a hole in the center, and pass a small screw through the hole in the 2mm piece and thread it into the hole on the 10mm piece. Now drill three holes spaced equally around the screw, and put a steel drill bit with the flutes removed in two of them. The result is that when you turn the screw, it pulls the 2mm piece towards the 10mm piece a little at a time, with the drill bits sliding down into the 10mm piece and affixed to the 2mm piece. Here's the problem: how do you join the steel bits to the brass? Right now we use super glue, which is okay, but since they really need to be sterile, it would be nice to autoclave them, which means temperatures up to 150-170 degrees C, and superglue doesn't generally like that. Solder won't join to the steel. Any other ideas? Mike H. -- Looking forward, Al Shinn -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.