Looking for advice on adequate type of welding/soldering/brazing for aesthetic metalworking.
Hello!
I'm a beginner in metalworking, and I make use of several kinds of copper, silver and alloys, among those, Magnet wire (or enameled wire). This is a kind of wire that is coated in a very thin layer of insulation. So far i've been using phoscopper brazing for other pieces, but magnet wire has proven very difficult to weld (or similar).
The reason for this is that the polymer that coats the wire is not resistant to high heat (i think it withstands up to 250 C), and since copper is very conductive, heating it with an open flame quickly burns the polymer throughout the piece.
This kind of metalwork i'm is more on the aesthetic side, so keeping the material as intact as possible is rather important to it. I've been looking into TIG welding and laser welding, but there's too many variations and way too little literature on what i'm trying to do here. So what i need here is a method that 1. doesn't require to heat the piece or area, 2. doesn't have an open flame, 3. preferrably doesn't require a filler metal.
Naturally i know compromises will have to be made, so as long as the polymer burn doesn't extend too far, i think it's fine. The pieces i'm working with are rather small, say, no larger than a book, usually only copper being weld (silver and alloys are put in place using other methods) in very small points (say, the largest weld i've made is around 1 inch long), but if possible i'd want this method to weld silver eventually as well.
I understand this is a rather niche requirement; but would you guys happen to know of a method of welding that could help for this particular problem?