Grounding on the back of a Pot

[kurtlives]

For some reason tonight I could just not get these two wires (braided together) to solder to the back of my pot (Alpha, linear). I have proper soldering technique. I first used the 20w setting on my iron then the 50w. This is weird as I have never had this problem before.

Any tips or advice?

Thanks...

[PerroGrande]

I've seen this happen -- sometimes the metal on the outside of the pot seems to have some sort of a coating on it that makes it unwilling to accept solder.

When this happens, I use a light grade of sandpaper to rough-up a small section on the back of the pot.  This seems to clean/remove whatever was there, and then the solder will stick.  Your mileage may vary.

[Nitefly182]

Yeah, sand the pot and see what happens then.

[cheeb]

I gave up on grounding to the back of pots because i can't ever get them to take solder.

[Nitefly182]

I just avoid using cliff jacks and that usually solves the problem.

[Mark Hammer]

You can scrape off a bit of the plating on the pot chassis with a utility knife.  On the other hand, I'm starting to see pots showing up in the store I frequently buy from that seem to have aluminum chassis.  Maybe it's some sort of RoHS thing, I don't know.

Alternatively, one of the things I have been doing due to my use of plastic boxes is to use a sheet of copper shim as shielding material.  There is certainly nothing wrong in cutting out a piece to fit in the underside of a cast aluminum box.  You can easily solder any ground lugs from pots or even toggles to it (I solder the ground side of status LEDs to it as well, sometimes), and then just run one lead from the shim material to a ground tab on the board.  Putting holes in it is as easy as buying a paper hole punch from the office supplies store.

[Electric_Death]

kurtlives I almost always use alpha linear pots and if you don't give them a good sanding, they refuse to take solder. Once in a while though, they're still stubborn so I bust out the old work knife, scar it up with some nice groves and that always does the trick.

[kurtlives]

Ya thanks...I did rough them up and they took solder better.

VJ modding project btw.