Argon's heavier than air when it's the same temperature as the air, but you heat it up to a bajillion degrees and it'll rise right up out of that box. Looks like the gas flow couldn't make up for that, oxygen got in the box and it was game over. That's why the crucible caught fire too.
+Jason Goodman Its too bad the crucible didnt catch on fire even more. Maybe the carbon dioxide could of helped the argon out. Assuming thats a graphite crucible. Why wouldn't it be, he literally has like a ton of the stuff :P
+Jason Goodman So if the argon is heating up, what if you cooled the box with dry ice? Would it be even close to remotely enough to cool it, or would you have to go to liquid nitrogen? What is the industrial process for casting titanium?
inthefade I have heard actively leaking an inert gas works, as the gas is replenished with fresh gas. If you see fire, all your inert gas caught a flight out of there.
I'm a Military certified Tig welder. We need to retest every three months for titanium, and let me tell you right now, just because you put the torch inside that box, does not mean that the argon lies in there like water. I have a hard enough time trying to purge the inside of a 4 inch pipe, that's completely purged with only a 3 inch gap open at the area that I would be welding. It can be purged completely confined and at the beginning I could not understand why the root would have contamination. The best thing to practice with is Stainless. Stainless does 2 things. You will either have a nice looking bead, or it will look like blackened, cratery shit!! You should have just clamped the torch with the gas just feeding into the cup. The weight of it could have helped keep the cup a bit stable if clamped properly. Try it again! It can be done.
doesn't have to be Argon - Neon it better IF you can get it to stay put. Argon will displace air so the "bucket" method works - you need to weild in a fully sealed and purged vessel for neon to work - a real pain in the neck to say the least.
Videos like this are great. Most of the time I'm thinking "Chris is a professional, he's been in the industry a long time, he's got a great shop, he's got a little extra money to burn, he's not like me, I can't do stuff", and then you just try stuff and sometimes it fails and I'm like "Oh yeah, he's just a guy who tries stuff, I should just keep doing stuff too." I hear lots of times from professionals "This is the only way to do this", and "This has to be done or it won't work".. well, sometimes professionals confuse the best way with the only way. There are lots of crappy ways of doing things too and I find half the time they work just fine for me, but sometimes they don't work out and it's neat to see *why* some things need to be done a certain way. Learning the perfect method doesn't add a lot of context, it's just blindly following instruction.
This has got to be one of the funniest machinist (if I can even call it that, trolol) channel I've ever come across. I have to say I have been entertained on each vid I've come across. Keep up the good work AvE
Titanium is an interesting one to forge as well, especially drop forging. It takes a fair bit of effort to heat up in the furnace, plus we had to run it a bit rich to avoid major oxidation. When we got it into the die (we were making SBC con rods) and started hitting it, the titanium absorbed all of the energy out of the drop hammer and was fairly reluctant to fill the dies completely, we had some slight underforming at the top of the wrist pin end. The impact absorbing trait I found really intriguing, because you can "bounce and catch" the hammer off regular steel forgings, whereas the titanium just took out all the energy of the hammer and you had to yank on the handle to bring the hammer back up every time
I turned my wedding ring from titanium bar stock on the lathe, the carbide tool took 10 minutes to cool before I could remove it, the ring I put the ring straight on, it was still ice cold. The stuff does not conduct heat, it all builds up in the tool and can ruin the cutters without plenty of cooling.
Fun fact: If your walls are painted white, they most likely get that color from titanium dioxide. Titanium is nearly as common as iron in Earth's crust, it's just super hard (and therefore expensive) to get it out of the oxide form.
@@flamingmohmohawesome4953 depends. A lot of companies don't use titaniumoxide or cobaltblue anymore for foodcolouring. The customer wants natural colours.
The only thing I can think of to try which might result in pure titanium is to use two pieces of titanium as electrodes with an arc between them feeding them into one another and allowing the molten metal to flow directly into your mold below. Commercial systems use a vacuum chamber, special liquid cooled copper crucibles with induction heating and calcium fluoride. The calcium fluoride melts before the titanium insulating the titanium electrically from the copper crucible and the active cooling causes a thin layer of titanium to solidify on the walls of the crucible protecting the melt from contamination. You can use argon instead of a vacuum. Commercial titanium molds are made from zirconium or silica ceramics.
+Noah Keck Thats what happens with you heat argon up to insane heats. It becomes lighter than air. Then air replaces it and shit catches on fire, and molten titanium oxidizes :)
I spent some time deburring titanium on a belt sander, the thing that freaked me out was the part got hot where you were grinding on it, then when you dipped it in water the heat moved up the part rapidly and burned your fingers where you were holding onto it that was previously cool. Got me every time
While Carbon would otherwise be ideal for melting most metals, titanium is unlike most metals, and will combine one to one with carbon forming TiC, titanium Carbide. I think you made a crucible of Titanium Carbide, which accounts for the continued development of heat after the arc was removed. It's physically similar to Tungsten Carbide in most areas such as hardness and crystalline structure, though not nearly as dense. It too is used as a tool coating. The yellow/gold portions may have been Titanium Nitride, if nitrogen became introduced at some point: it is also very hard and used decoratively to simulate a gold finish. Of course, it may have been gold, but would that much Au gone unnoticed in the crucible?
aw, I didn't know any of this 'til you asked the magic "why didn't it work?" question... I thought you had it for sure with the tub of argon... From what I've read, they didn't even have Ti metal outside the lab until the mid-1940s, because it's such a PITA to refine and then work it... That it reacts with graphite and nitrogen when heated makes it a helluva tough substance to do much with. Graphite conducts heat 4x better than titanium; aluminum 10x, copper & silver 20x. I wonder how water jets do with Ti....
Back in the good old days when I was but a lad. I was given the task of cutting a part of a soldering fixture. The fixture had some titanium rails on it and I had been told that titanium won't burn. You know we use it as a soldering fixture, because it's non-reactive. So being the clever lad that I am I thought well if I've just got to shorten this whole thing why don't I put it in the saw and just cut it off? Well it would not fit in the saw. It was too big. The big welded piece was too big the saw wouldn't handle it. So the boss was saying hurry up hurry up we got to get this done and I thought okay I'll just cut it off with a torch, because it's titanium the torches will just cut the steel then I'll have to saw the Titanium by hand. So I lit up the torch. When I got the iron good and hot and hit the oxygen, the titanium rail blew off of the part. It seems that when you hit it with a hot iron and 25 psi of oxygen it combusts in a hell of a hurry.
The argon is denser than air, but if you heat it with liquid metal it might get hot and escape, putting some air in your inert atmosphere. Convection currents.
***** I wanna know how much things you say like amperstands or rippems (rpms) are just you fundeling elgrish or is it youre making fun of some of the stuff Canadians say (like 2 4 beer for a 24 pack)
Oh ok. More international understanding for me. Also, your videos on tool review are the best. The in depth looks on everything, including the materials you didnt know about is really what makes it great.
Ti is such a nightmare to work with as a liquid that is why it costs a fortune. 1600°C melting point and reactive enough to be classified as an explosive. Requires processing in a vacuum chamber. It's extreme reactivity is partly what makes it stick to itself (and self anodise). When we figure out how to refine the stuff and work with it cheaply... whole new set of possibilities for mechanical engineers. One of the most interesting ways of handling and forming titanium is selective laser melting. Lasers work optimally through a vacuum. Titanium is super finicky to weld, also. Needs multiple jets of shielding gas, and to be absolutely free from contamination. Not a cheap process. Ti oxide... world has loads of it. White paint. Expensive problem is turning that into metal... if that can be figured out... then it could become cheap enough that we could use it industrially and architecturally. Need more robots. And vacuum that is empty like outer space.
You do have a good point, but I feel the need to remind you that the vacuum of space is not "empty." It's the hardest vacuum that can be achieved, yes, but it is certainly not even close to being "empty." It is full of dust, gas and radio-isotopic particles of all sorts. Otherwise, the younger planets and stars out there never would have formed.
All of you have good points. When the F-14 Tomcat fighter was being developed, the engineers at Grumman, the plane's builder had to invent a special welding process to weld the plane's skin to the airframe.
The gold stuff is TiN, either from gas trapped in the graphite or from the air drawn in around it. Looks like the argon actually sat around for a little while, but after a minute or so, the intense convection away from the thing (3000 degrees, it's hot, eh?) drew in fresh air, which also explains the yellow flame on the crucible (which should actually be blue from the surface layer of carbon monoxide, but maybe there's sodium around too). Far as I know, the only way to handle titanium liquid is in a crucible (and mold!) made from an even more reactive metal's oxide (MgO?), which is extremely brittle, and doing it under full inert conditions: not just glove box, but pull a vacuum and backfill with 99.999% argon kind of inert. Or just leave the vacuum, which is the usual way (which also draws trapped gasses out of the metal).
knipex is also just a few km away from my house, in cronenberg, wuppertal, germany. a friend from school works for them, he told me the worst thing he ever had to do was help out in QC, because their standarts are so high that its downright annoying
I swear by knipex tools.. those pliers have been through some utterly unspeakable things.. and they’re still rockin. We use them on seized hydraulic fittings where you can’t fit a pipe wrench.
Burning graphite and oxidized titanium can't happen without oxygen present. You could put a cover on your aluminum box to keep the argon in. No wind in the shop, but you do have turbulence from the argon flow. With a top on the box you could slowly purge it through the top with argon, maybe 1 cfm for an hour (slow to minimize O2/argon mixing). Then lower the graphite electrode through a small hole in the cover. If you make the cover out of glass or acrylic, you could see what you're doing. It'd be a good opportunity to make that aluminum box into a glove box (like a sand blasting cabinet) so you can do stuff like this with no oxygen contamination.
Thanks to the forestry department for having a water bomber orbiting over the house while we tried this. You know in case the smoke alarm went off because of the strawberry poptarts getting stuck in the toaster. Remember tip your goal judges, them stools don't buy themselves.
I lived in Gloversville NY for a while, leather and glove capital of the world...until NAFTA put it and the rest of upstate NY out of work. I feel ya brother.
if you're a fan of military aviation you're probably familiar with Lockheed's SR-71 or the "Blackbird" as it was nicknamed...the skin of the plane was a titanium alloy and the leading edges were a radar absorbing composite.....flying at altitudes above 75,000 ft at mach 3 the plane would heat up and temper the titanium making it stronger than it was prior ...each flight....titanium is a strong and beautiful material ..i have a crap ton of folding knives in my collection ....the titanium ones are are something to behold......love this channel...truly entertaining, informative and addictive....glad i found it
The panels were made to fit extremely loose, because once it was at operating temps the titanium would expand and seal correctly. Most of the SR's would leak fuel all over the runway until they made their first warm up pass. Absolutely a fascinating plane. I also happen to have a few Chris Reeve's and a Hinderer, so I'm also a titanium knife guy haha.
SR was/is amazing for it's time, and even today..as far as jet engine aircraft are concerned.....i've seen a bunch of docs on it where the fuel leakage issue was said to be overstated...but it DID leak .....one of my favorite planes along with the F18 Falcon, F4 Phantom, and the Concorde...i'm am very sorry to hear that you are a knife collector...you know there are groups out there where people like us can get the help we truly need before we spend our last dollar on another shinny sharp flippy flicky thing.......i'm just getting into semi-custom / mid-techs myself...but the majority of my knives are production Benchmades, Spydercos, Microtechs...with a assortment of 5-6 other brands .....and as of now i'm concentrating on fixed blades.....i need help ;)
u r correct...was gonna double check before posting but obviously did not.....if i'm not mistaken the Hornet was second to the Falcon in the Air Forces Lightweight Fighter Program which was a response to the complication and expense of the F14....the Falcon was chosen over the Hornet, but the Hornet was adopted for use by the Navy ...both beautiful planes ..TY
Very interesting! I'm glad that you made this experiment. I learned a lot from it, which is great considering my purpose. I know only about jewelry casting, meaning silver and potentially gold. At school we're told to always use a different crucible for each type of metal we are casting. Because there always is some residue that could cause contamination. Plus like other people said, you needed a sealed cover to create a vacuum and then fill your chamber with argon. Obviously if the crucible caught fire, it's because there was oxygen in there for it to burn. Taking into account the temperature at which titanium melts might be a good idea too. It's pretty high: 1668°C, or over 3000°F. Maybe graphite didn't stand a chance at these temperatures, even more in presence of residual oxygen. Thanks for saving me a lot of trouble!
Ti is typically cast using an investment process. A positive wax mold is coated in ceramic slurry and then baked to drain the wax. The ceramic mold is pre-heated (about 2000°F), Ti is melted using an electrode arc heater under effectively zero atmosphere, and dumped into the mold at high speed. You might be able to do it at "home" with a relatively large tank to house the process, and automated controls. Very high energy and high temp required.
what about a closed argon filled induction heater? i remember aluminium heating up to crazy temperatures very fast even in static magnetic fields. it should be possible since titanium is also very paramagnetic. not so sure what about the oxidization. maybe such a closed chamber should be sucked free of air before filling it with an overpressure argon atmosphere.
Liquid titanium will dissolve literally anything so even under inert gas, it will dissolve the crucible it's in. Normally for melting titanium, crucibles made of titanium are used. They cool the crucible as the metal melts. Super challenging to work with and extremely expensive for this reason
Copper crucible in a water jacket. Vacuum arc furnace, 16-22Ka, melts about 26 lbs a minute. Doesn't "dissolve" anything. Carbide tipped tools, anything tungsten (go to any ti foundry, you won't find a ball point pen for a mile), pd, Ru, anything like that causes high density inclusions. They do not melt under normal Ti conditions.
Going over some of the comments, I would say that a couple are on the right track. Induction won't work as he is attempting to melt the Ti. The more energy that is in the material, the less effect magnetism will have. The Curie point (where the material becomes paramagnetic) of Ti is lower than its melting point. I would say that you need to find a way to heat your entire enclosure to about 2000 degrees F (easy right?), and carry the current from a Ti rod instead of a carbon arc rod. The Ti ingot that you did get seemed chock full of porosity (contamination) and inclusions (too low temperature), and was surely more TiO2 than Ti. If you can't increase the heat, reduce the size of the electrode and see if you can get Ti in a powder.
I wonder if you could make a float to indicate how full the tub is with argon gas. I know they've used very light aluminum foil boats to float on heavy gases, i wonder if you could make a light ball partially filled with helium to be extremely light, to be able to float on top of your argon in a perforated clear tube to indicate how much argon you have in that tank.
Use castable graphite powder with titanium powder embedded in chamber shaped like target cast. Also embed stainless steel screen on opposite sides of the graphite. Protect tub with zirconia or like refractory. Flood tub with argon thru fluffy mineral wool to reduce convection currents. Leave a little reservoir above cast for extra fill of titanium. You can also design mold mixture with less conductive castable ceramic to customize resistance, even to weld with direct 220VAC. Mineral wool makes good heat insulation around mold too. Find some castable graphite and silicon carbide. Works and is FUN, too. Thanks.
I worked at a titanium plant for 2 years and it was melted under vacuum with electron beam guns. The crucible was water jacketed copper and as the raw material came in on rollers or from a hopper, it was hit with the beams where it ran into a basin and overflowed into the crucible. The basin was a safety feature to keep inclusions out like tungsten and such as this was potential aerospace material. The bottom of the crucible was drawn down slowly until the desired length ingot was achieved. Ingots were about 3 feet by 4 feet by 20 feet, approximate. Titanium is VERY volatile in the presence of water. If you burn through the water jacket you will most likely have an explosion!
My mate works at BAE, and he gave me a Titanium bottle opener made in a 3D printer. It has BAE laser etched into the side, and it is uber cool! They were intended as corporate gifts, and there were some left over. It works as well!
the gold colour is titanium oxide, the shielding gas should be helium and use the argon to purge. suggest using a box with with a partial lid also reverse the polarity
That sulfur-looking junk is likely titanium nitride, so you probably didn't have the air purged as well as you thought. Titanium reacts with nitrogen just as well as oxygen! My guess is the heat of the arc created enough convection currents to pull air in. What you really need is an enclosure like a glove box, or at least a good ceramic pot (not that red clay flower pot junk) that you can line with refractory, put the crucible in and flood with argon from below. Having a small opening to atmosphere will really help reduce any air from getting in. Maybe use a regular torch with a slightly rich mixture? Titanium melts at a mere 1700C - only one or two hundred hotter than steel! How hard can it be? ;)
The TiC thing got spotted below, but something else you might be interested in is that you can't use High Speed Steel tools on Titanium (like your sabre saw blade) because titanium sort of absorbs the iron ions... I destroyed a HSS drill to find out how fast that happened ;) You either need to use Titanium Nitrided tools or go for carbide drill bits and endmills to make it work, otherwise it'll blunt anything you put anywhere near it just about.
I don't know if anyone has suggested it before but The King of Random on RUclips has a small arc furnace that might give you better results melting stuff. he melts all kinds of stuff in it. great videos! keep em' comin!
Loved it! Why not an induction forge? Coil around your crucible, drop in the metal, high amps..... Will that work with titanium? There are RUclips videos of guys doing it with steel anyway.
I've been working on an induction furnace too. A fairly big 6kW one, not the chintzy Royler/flyback based ones that blow mosfets after 600-1000W. The 4HV (.org) forums I've found to be the best community for that kind of stuff. Really helpful, smart, good people.
***** I have some 32g wire in titanium, maybe a few bits of 24g too, but not much. I have Niobium, Tantalum and Zirconium to play with, and some Multi-Etch I've never actually got around to using. Supposedly makes anodized titanium far less matte.
This is kinda late to the party but I might have some pointers. There's a government materials lab here in Hamilton, Ontario with an inert vacuum furnace used to melt titanium. I've spoken with one of the materials engineers there by the name of Kumar Suddayappan, a well known copper and magnesium specialst. Apparently, he says when melting the titanium, not only is the environment completely inert, but the only material that can be used for a crucible is copper. It's called a copper "skull" crucible or something along those lines and is used because it is the only material that wont react with the titanium. This is an induction furnace mind you, but what happens is the titanium apparently forms a shell on the copper so that essentially the liquid titanium is held within more titanium. Not sure how you could pull that off in a garage unless you made some sort of sealed box with sand blast cabinet type gloves and did everything within an inert booth and somehow. Then there's the issue of getting the power necessary to run an induction coil that'll be able to melt down titanium. Just my 2 cents anyways. Either way, loved the videos, this is something I've always wanted to try but never had the resources.
Titanium can be caste in a vacuum. I remember back in my youth. My Irish mother would cook potatoes in an aluminum pressure cooker pot. The problem is that titanium melts at 2000 degrees. So you can use an aluminum pressure cooker pot. So you will need a ceramic pot, or something brick lined that can go to 2000 degrees. It will also have to be in a vacuum. Although the titanium has to get to the temp. of 2000 degrees, the entire vacuum ceramic pot or brick lined chamber does not have to get to 2000 degrees. You could place the titanium in the chamber or pot, and have gas jets directed at the titanium (like you were doing in the video). At the bottom of the chamber would be a gutter, when the titanium melted it would ooze into the gutter. When the titanium started to ooze down the gutter sensors would go off, and open a door to the gutter. Once the door was open, then the titanium would go into the mold.
Wow! Lots of comments below from guys clearly experienced with working materials. But here in the shallow end I barely know how to use a drill so that was fucken mind blowing. It's like you were channelling that photonicinduction fella.
Titanium is really a PITA to melt. Industrial it would be molten in a watercooled crucible, making this process extremly dangerous, if a leak occur and the molten titanium get to the water. I guess the best take would be induction heating the metal under a cloak of argon gas? I have one time welded titanium..let me tell you..stainless is almost a joke compared to this stuff. Here is a link to a company that does molds with titanium: www.castingstechnology.com/ismtialloys.asp
Just for you, at 2:24 the reason why it is so cool is because of its rather good thermal conductivity i´d say, it was also mechanical connected to the iron thing you clambed it into ( i dont know the word for)
Build a copper clad, water jacket, vacuum chamber, with a water cooled copper strike plate, and use titanium oxide, or finely ground titanium, and you'll be in business :)
Should build a sealed enclosure and do it in a vacuum titanium requires there to be absolutely no contamination... Supposedly. Just use electronic actuators to contact the crucible. Might be worth a try. Little vacuum pump for automotive a/c work should do it given sufficient time to depressurize.
Maybe there was a pocket of normal air inside the crucible? If you get the opportunity for Round 2, try specifically pouring the argon into the crucible first, leave the spout in there for awhile?
You might have failed to cast anything but even trying made it a win in my book. I think you should consider reactions between the crucible / electrode and the titanium. The crucible appeared to be on fire, since there was no oxygen that implies there was some other reaction taking place. This paper (link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00790858#page-1) seems to indicate that you'll form titanium carbide at as little as 1873degK. That would certainly explain why it got so thoroughly stuck in the crucible. It seems commercially they use a copper crucible, lined with refractory cement and built in cooling.
You might be trying to go about this the hard way, Ave. Apparently, your acetylene rig is able to melt tungsten carbide and titanium has a lower melting point than tungsten carbide. The only problem is, once you get molten titanium you need the container to be of something that the molten titanium won't melt through. Maybe some kind of high-temperature ceramic or something like that. Just a suggestion.
very interesting video. i like the ingenuity. have you thought about powderizing the titanium and trying to use gunpowder? something like making your own titanium cadweld shot that you put in a custom made mold?
I would recommend turning your enclosure into a glove box or just get a glove box, purge it with argon, and melt the titanium with inductive heating instead of the arc.
you state the gas flow is 15 "CFM", usually gas flow is measured in CFH. if you are using only 15 CFH of argon it's probably not enough. usually tig welding titanium requires a much higher argon flow and a purge for the back side of the weld. love your channel!
If you can put a cover on that and make a stone like container for the Titanium, like a forge, you should be able to melt the metal as long as the containment can handle the temperature. That is a theory. Another possibility is doing what one blacksmith did. Take your Titanium, make a stone or powder cast and enclose everything in rocks, clay, mud, whatever, to keep the heat in and use up the oxygen inside the containment before the Titanium melts.
What if you microwaved it in an inert gas? I saw a company once that was using microwaves in argon-filled chambers to smelt and cast reactive metals. Since they were doing it on an industrial scale, they were using 10kW microwaves, but maybe it will work with smaller pieces at lower wattages.
Now you may need to use Thermite reduction over your casting mold which may fail because it's commonly know for a type of welding based from the common type of thermite mix, swap iron oxide for titanium dioxide add some extra aluminum powder...The gas shielding is still needed argon will do just fine as you mentioned... While under your graphite mold I would lay that on top of a bed calcium sulfate and aluminum powder this is just to keep things hot so the metal distributes evenly that might even get the hottest near the end the calcium could mix into the metal so make sure that's under your mold, I would pot all this inside a clay garden pot or fire brick. do this outside the flames could be over a foot tall.Remember el metal es muy caliente so Aufenthalt aus dem Krankenhaus heraus Hope this helps thanks for all the good content Love the show Thanks...
Make a glovebox and recirculate the argon with a filter and this just may work, and not only for you, but for others who want a relatively inexpensive way to melt high temp metals without having to deal with a complicated vacuum arc or induction system.
I figured the titanium wouldn't even start melting. A melting point of over 3000C is pretty intense. Really brittle, but overall tough as hell. It turns one of the most beautiful blues when you anneal it.
That was fun to watch. If you haven't anodized titanium before, maybe give it a shot. Just need a diode bridge, variac, water and borax and is fun to play with.Sands off easy so you can do it over and over. As for ideas for melting/molding the titanium, some sort of current controlled arc rod positioner and the entire process done in a vacuum chamber.
TSP (paint isle at the Despot), baking soda, and table salt work too. Water just has to be conductive. (You're doing electrolysis and forcibly bonding the oxygen to the metal, [hydrogen bubbles off] creating a thin transparent layer that prisms the colors a specific way). But don't use table salt! (Or rather, do and see why). Chlorine forcibly bonds with everything creating green swamp water and poisonous gas. There are only 3 chemicals that strip off the titanium-oxide coating letting you un-do anodizing or getting you back to lower voltage colors. Two of them are uber-nasty (mere fumes from them pass right through your skin, into your bones, give you organ damage)... but the last one "Multi-etch" is almost harmless. You used to have to smuggle it into Canada because there was only 1 supplier, but now you can get it up here from TheRingLord. Hope that helps.
Turn up your pressure or add in a surrounding container pressurized with purge gas. Use a bottomless fish tank with a top on that you can reach through. Miniature arc furnace.
OMG! WOW that was a fantastic try. Most adventure I've ever done was centrifugal platinum casting. It was not a disaster. Got some crunchy looking rings out of it, kind of cool actually.
I had 3 titanium surgical screws removed from my foot that I kept, since they apparently cost $1,200.00. I thought about melting them down in to something with my oxy/acetylene but after watching this video...nah, don't think so. Thanks for saving me a headache.
Try a closed container in a mild vaccum filled with argon. Get the titanium as sand or small grains. Put the titanium grains in your Casting mold and create an arc between two or four maybe six graphite electrodes close to the grains. The elektrodes need to be spring loaded as they will burn down faster than the titanium grain will melt. Your casting mold has to have a higher melting point then the titanium. Good Luck.
Argon's heavier than air when it's the same temperature as the air, but you heat it up to a bajillion degrees and it'll rise right up out of that box. Looks like the gas flow couldn't make up for that, oxygen got in the box and it was game over. That's why the crucible caught fire too.
+Jason Goodman simple explanations, simple solutions! Good one goodman.
+Jason Goodman Its too bad the crucible didnt catch on fire even more. Maybe the carbon dioxide could of helped the argon out. Assuming thats a graphite crucible. Why wouldn't it be, he literally has like a ton of the stuff :P
+Jason Goodman So if the argon is heating up, what if you cooled the box with dry ice? Would it be even close to remotely enough to cool it, or would you have to go to liquid nitrogen?
What is the industrial process for casting titanium?
inthefade I have heard actively leaking an inert gas works, as the gas is replenished with fresh gas. If you see fire, all your inert gas caught a flight out of there.
Richard Smith
I thought AvE was running his argon the entire time?
I'm a Military certified Tig welder. We need to retest every three months for titanium, and let me tell you right now, just because you put the torch inside that box, does not mean that the argon lies in there like water. I have a hard enough time trying to purge the inside of a 4 inch pipe, that's completely purged with only a 3 inch gap open at the area that I would be welding. It can be purged completely confined and at the beginning I could not understand why the root would have contamination. The best thing to practice with is Stainless. Stainless does 2 things. You will either have a nice looking bead, or it will look like blackened, cratery shit!! You should have just clamped the torch with the gas just feeding into the cup. The weight of it could have helped keep the cup a bit stable if clamped properly. Try it again! It can be done.
Could he test for oxygen (air) with just a lit match?
+jack suquett good points. People dont realise Titanium is as reactive as Aluminium and a damn sight harder to weild.
+Gordon Lawrence Titanium is actually *more* reactive than aluminum - I've heard some old metallurgists / chemists call it "the nymphomaniac metal".
doesn't have to be Argon - Neon it better IF you can get it to stay put. Argon will displace air so the "bucket" method works - you need to weild in a fully sealed and purged vessel for neon to work - a real pain in the neck to say the least.
+chemech Any proper usage of nymphomaniac in a metal discussion gets extra points.
Videos like this are great. Most of the time I'm thinking "Chris is a professional, he's been in the industry a long time, he's got a great shop, he's got a little extra money to burn, he's not like me, I can't do stuff", and then you just try stuff and sometimes it fails and I'm like "Oh yeah, he's just a guy who tries stuff, I should just keep doing stuff too."
I hear lots of times from professionals "This is the only way to do this", and "This has to be done or it won't work".. well, sometimes professionals confuse the best way with the only way. There are lots of crappy ways of doing things too and I find half the time they work just fine for me, but sometimes they don't work out and it's neat to see *why* some things need to be done a certain way. Learning the perfect method doesn't add a lot of context, it's just blindly following instruction.
They confuse "the exact way to do something" with "the method they use to do something", no one becomes an expert over night.
It's Vigeous, not Videos.
6 years later and this comment is still relevant and inspiring. Respect.
@@JustinShaedo9 years later. I like blindly following instructions part.
This has got to be one of the funniest machinist (if I can even call it that, trolol) channel I've ever come across. I have to say I have been entertained on each vid I've come across. Keep up the good work AvE
machinist?
Titanium is an interesting one to forge as well, especially drop forging. It takes a fair bit of effort to heat up in the furnace, plus we had to run it a bit rich to avoid major oxidation. When we got it into the die (we were making SBC con rods) and started hitting it, the titanium absorbed all of the energy out of the drop hammer and was fairly reluctant to fill the dies completely, we had some slight underforming at the top of the wrist pin end. The impact absorbing trait I found really intriguing, because you can "bounce and catch" the hammer off regular steel forgings, whereas the titanium just took out all the energy of the hammer and you had to yank on the handle to bring the hammer back up every time
I turned my wedding ring from titanium bar stock on the lathe, the carbide tool took 10 minutes to cool before I could remove it, the ring I put the ring straight on, it was still ice cold. The stuff does not conduct heat, it all builds up in the tool and can ruin the cutters without plenty of cooling.
That's why Sauron used titanium to forge the One ring. 😁 And yeah, never use a titanium wedding ring cos it will outlast you for sure
Fun fact: If your walls are painted white, they most likely get that color from titanium dioxide. Titanium is nearly as common as iron in Earth's crust, it's just super hard (and therefore expensive) to get it out of the oxide form.
LazerLord10 or on your food
@@flamingmohmohawesome4953 depends. A lot of companies don't use titaniumoxide or cobaltblue anymore for foodcolouring. The customer wants natural colours.
It is used in food to.
Or aluminium oxide
@@hornetIIkite3 toothpaste has it.
The argon saved the titanium from that nasty oxygen how noble of it lol
The only thing I can think of to try which might result in pure titanium is to use two pieces of titanium as electrodes with an arc between them feeding them into one another and allowing the molten metal to flow directly into your mold below. Commercial systems use a vacuum chamber, special liquid cooled copper crucibles with induction heating and calcium fluoride. The calcium fluoride melts before the titanium insulating the titanium electrically from the copper crucible and the active cooling causes a thin layer of titanium to solidify on the walls of the crucible protecting the melt from contamination. You can use argon instead of a vacuum. Commercial titanium molds are made from zirconium or silica ceramics.
"Pretty much tried nothing, and I'm all out of ideas."
That is my life motto.
7:38 excuse me sir, but your graphite appears to be on fire
+Noah Keck Thats what happens with you heat argon up to insane heats. It becomes lighter than air. Then air replaces it and shit catches on fire, and molten titanium oxidizes :)
Haha! If you burn graphite do you get CO2? :o
Dude it's a build your own Chernobyl kit! Love it!!!
That's a flashback to the early 80's. "Excuse me comrade, your graphite appears to be on fire!"
@@wayneashby5030 yes, if combusted stochiometrically.
I spent some time deburring titanium on a belt sander, the thing that freaked me out was the part got hot where you were grinding on it, then when you dipped it in water the heat moved up the part rapidly and burned your fingers where you were holding onto it that was previously cool. Got me every time
***** if you still have one of those rods you should do this on thermal camera
that is my theory as well
That was interesting, can you show me some theories of how that thing can happened?
Its like its some kinda titanium or something...
While Carbon would otherwise be ideal for melting most metals, titanium is unlike most metals, and will combine one to one with carbon forming TiC, titanium Carbide.
I think you made a crucible of Titanium Carbide, which accounts for the continued development of heat after the arc was removed. It's physically similar to Tungsten Carbide in most areas such as hardness and crystalline structure, though not nearly as dense. It too is used as a tool coating.
The yellow/gold portions may have been Titanium Nitride, if nitrogen became introduced at some point: it is also very hard and used decoratively to simulate a gold finish. Of course, it may have been gold, but would that much Au gone unnoticed in the crucible?
aw, I didn't know any of this 'til you asked the magic "why didn't it work?" question... I thought you had it for sure with the tub of argon...
From what I've read, they didn't even have Ti metal outside the lab until the mid-1940s, because it's such a PITA to refine and then work it...
That it reacts with graphite and nitrogen when heated makes it a helluva tough substance to do much with. Graphite conducts heat 4x better than titanium; aluminum 10x, copper & silver 20x.
I wonder how water jets do with Ti....
Nevin Williams water jets are widely used to cut titanium. IRC Metals in Portland, Oregon uses them to cut through slabs over a foot thick.
awesome eye candy, Been spoiled by PCC for 2 years and never realized how hard it was to cast titanium without proper equipment. love the videos!
Making elephant's foot in the garage again?
Robert Last time I heard of elephant's foot, it involved a melted nuclear core! ;)
Robert I just fucking pissed from this😂
@@dphorgan there's the joke.
That was the most unintentionally funny engineering, casting thingy vid I’ve ever seen. Outstanding effort mate. Love ya vids man. 👍🏻👍🏻
Watching all that arcing... the home electrical box meter must've been having a fit, and the electrical company rubbing their hands when the bill due.
Back in the good old days when I was but a lad. I was given the task of cutting a part of a soldering fixture.
The fixture had some titanium rails on it and I had been told that titanium won't burn. You know we use it as a soldering fixture, because it's non-reactive. So being the clever lad that I am I thought well if I've just got to shorten this whole thing why don't I put it in the saw and just cut it off? Well it would not fit in the saw. It was too big. The big welded piece was too big the saw wouldn't handle it.
So the boss was saying hurry up hurry up we got to get this done and I thought okay I'll just cut it off with a torch, because it's titanium the torches will just cut the steel then I'll have to saw the Titanium by hand.
So I lit up the torch. When I got the iron good and hot and hit the oxygen, the titanium rail blew off of the part. It seems that when you hit it with a hot iron and 25 psi of oxygen it combusts in a hell of a hurry.
What did the boss say?
I love how it stopped burning right at the exact moment you said it wouldn't stop. It's like it stopped just to spite you, lol.
Of all your crazy lines, this one is my favorite one yet... "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas"
The argon is denser than air, but if you heat it with liquid metal it might get hot and escape, putting some air in your inert atmosphere. Convection currents.
Solution is obviously to use more ampersands!
***** Profit?
***** And here I thought that was for comedic relief. Haha!
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*****
I wanna know how much things you say like amperstands or rippems (rpms) are just you fundeling elgrish or is it youre making fun of some of the stuff Canadians say (like 2 4 beer for a 24 pack)
Oh ok. More international understanding for me. Also, your videos on tool review are the best. The in depth looks on everything, including the materials you didnt know about is really what makes it great.
Fook me I was trying to hold the crucible with the cursor
Digital connections to physicals devices have a tendency to fail eh, not skookum at all..
Ti is such a nightmare to work with as a liquid that is why it costs a fortune. 1600°C melting point and reactive enough to be classified as an explosive.
Requires processing in a vacuum chamber. It's extreme reactivity is partly what makes it stick to itself (and self anodise).
When we figure out how to refine the stuff and work with it cheaply... whole new set of possibilities for mechanical engineers.
One of the most interesting ways of handling and forming titanium is selective laser melting. Lasers work optimally through a vacuum.
Titanium is super finicky to weld, also. Needs multiple jets of shielding gas, and to be absolutely free from contamination. Not a cheap process.
Ti oxide... world has loads of it. White paint. Expensive problem is turning that into metal... if that can be figured out... then it could become cheap enough that we could use it industrially and architecturally.
Need more robots. And vacuum that is empty like outer space.
spied onandon why not just do it in outer space?
You do have a good point, but I feel the need to remind you that the vacuum of space is not "empty." It's the hardest vacuum that can be achieved, yes, but it is certainly not even close to being "empty." It is full of dust, gas and radio-isotopic particles of all sorts. Otherwise, the younger planets and stars out there never would have formed.
All of you have good points. When the F-14 Tomcat fighter was being developed, the engineers at Grumman, the plane's builder had to invent a special welding process to weld the plane's skin to the airframe.
The gold stuff is TiN, either from gas trapped in the graphite or from the air drawn in around it. Looks like the argon actually sat around for a little while, but after a minute or so, the intense convection away from the thing (3000 degrees, it's hot, eh?) drew in fresh air, which also explains the yellow flame on the crucible (which should actually be blue from the surface layer of carbon monoxide, but maybe there's sodium around too).
Far as I know, the only way to handle titanium liquid is in a crucible (and mold!) made from an even more reactive metal's oxide (MgO?), which is extremely brittle, and doing it under full inert conditions: not just glove box, but pull a vacuum and backfill with 99.999% argon kind of inert. Or just leave the vacuum, which is the usual way (which also draws trapped gasses out of the metal).
you don't know it but you've been teaching me for a while now thank you
Amazing, how one man's agrivation can be another's entertainment!
knipex is also just a few km away from my house, in cronenberg, wuppertal, germany.
a friend from school works for them, he told me the worst thing he ever had to do was help out in QC, because their standarts are so high that its downright annoying
I love my Knipex Cobra. I'm glad to hear that they have high standards for their tools! Thanks for that information.
sse
+xx1simon1xx Look morty, more cronenbergs.
I bought my pair of Knipex Cobras a few months ago. Best damn pliars I've ever used
I swear by knipex tools.. those pliers have been through some utterly unspeakable things.. and they’re still rockin. We use them on seized hydraulic fittings where you can’t fit a pipe wrench.
Burning graphite and oxidized titanium can't happen without oxygen present. You could put a cover on your aluminum box to keep the argon in. No wind in the shop, but you do have turbulence from the argon flow. With a top on the box you could slowly purge it through the top with argon, maybe 1 cfm for an hour (slow to minimize O2/argon mixing). Then lower the graphite electrode through a small hole in the cover. If you make the cover out of glass or acrylic, you could see what you're doing. It'd be a good opportunity to make that aluminum box into a glove box (like a sand blasting cabinet) so you can do stuff like this with no oxygen contamination.
Great, I love it. I hope you wearing all safety gear, zoris, t shirt and shorts. Thanks, Randy
Just re-watching this. I wonder if it wasnt all the carbon in contact with the titanium - titanium carbide is apparently pretty easy to make.
Carbotanium©, on the other hand is pretty difficuilt to make ^^.
Thanks to the forestry department for having a water bomber orbiting over the house while we tried this. You know in case the smoke alarm went off because of the strawberry poptarts getting stuck in the toaster.
Remember tip your goal judges, them stools don't buy themselves.
Strawberry poptarts are to die for....and most likely will over several years of eating said tart.
Gives one a distinct appreciation for titanium products.
Good to see " Watson Gloves ". I worked there for many years, but imports kicked the shit out of our glove business.
I lived in Gloversville NY for a while, leather and glove capital of the world...until NAFTA put it and the rest of upstate NY out of work. I feel ya brother.
if you're a fan of military aviation you're probably familiar with Lockheed's SR-71 or the "Blackbird" as it was nicknamed...the skin of the plane was a titanium alloy and the leading edges were a radar absorbing composite.....flying at altitudes above 75,000 ft at mach 3 the plane would heat up and temper the titanium making it stronger than it was prior ...each flight....titanium is a strong and beautiful material ..i have a crap ton of folding knives in my collection ....the titanium ones are are something to behold......love this channel...truly entertaining, informative and addictive....glad i found it
The panels were made to fit extremely loose, because once it was at operating temps the titanium would expand and seal correctly. Most of the SR's would leak fuel all over the runway until they made their first warm up pass. Absolutely a fascinating plane. I also happen to have a few Chris Reeve's and a Hinderer, so I'm also a titanium knife guy haha.
SR was/is amazing for it's time, and even today..as far as jet engine aircraft are concerned.....i've seen a bunch of docs on it where the fuel leakage issue was said to be overstated...but it DID leak .....one of my favorite planes along with the F18 Falcon, F4 Phantom, and the Concorde...i'm am very sorry to hear that you are a knife collector...you know there are groups out there where people like us can get the help we truly need before we spend our last dollar on another shinny sharp flippy flicky thing.......i'm just getting into semi-custom / mid-techs myself...but the majority of my knives are production Benchmades, Spydercos, Microtechs...with a assortment of 5-6 other brands .....and as of now i'm concentrating on fixed blades.....i need help ;)
u r correct...was gonna double check before posting but obviously did not.....if i'm not mistaken the Hornet was second to the Falcon in the Air Forces Lightweight Fighter Program which was a response to the complication and expense of the F14....the Falcon was chosen over the Hornet, but the Hornet was adopted for use by the Navy ...both beautiful planes ..TY
Very interesting! I'm glad that you made this experiment. I learned a lot from it, which is great considering my purpose.
I know only about jewelry casting, meaning silver and potentially gold. At school we're told to always use a different crucible for each type of metal we are casting. Because there always is some residue that could cause contamination.
Plus like other people said, you needed a sealed cover to create a vacuum and then fill your chamber with argon. Obviously if the crucible caught fire, it's because there was oxygen in there for it to burn.
Taking into account the temperature at which titanium melts might be a good idea too. It's pretty high: 1668°C, or over 3000°F. Maybe graphite didn't stand a chance at these temperatures, even more in presence of residual oxygen.
Thanks for saving me a lot of trouble!
Titanium burns easily 🔥 When drilling or machining, you must keep it cool. Look out for chip fires if you don't!
"we swtiched to square.....because titanium" LOL. I love your channel keep it up
See the flex. Thats why titanium bikes are so good. Strength and spring. Good clip to see
Ti is typically cast using an investment process. A positive wax mold is coated in ceramic slurry and then baked to drain the wax. The ceramic mold is pre-heated (about 2000°F), Ti is melted using an electrode arc heater under effectively zero atmosphere, and dumped into the mold at high speed. You might be able to do it at "home" with a relatively large tank to house the process, and automated controls. Very high energy and high temp required.
what about a closed argon filled induction heater? i remember aluminium heating up to crazy temperatures very fast even in static magnetic fields. it should be possible since titanium is also very paramagnetic. not so sure what about the oxidization. maybe such a closed chamber should be sucked free of air before filling it with an overpressure argon atmosphere.
Man, I just wanted to see some nice videos while eating, and then this turned to be AWESOME
Those knipex pump pliers are the best pumps on the market hands down. Been using them for years as a plumber and they never disappointed
Liquid titanium will dissolve literally anything so even under inert gas, it will dissolve the crucible it's in. Normally for melting titanium, crucibles made of titanium are used. They cool the crucible as the metal melts. Super challenging to work with and extremely expensive for this reason
I wonder how they made the very first titanium crucible?
Stigstigster probably some super thick steel to not melt through
Copper crucible in a water jacket. Vacuum arc furnace, 16-22Ka, melts about 26 lbs a minute. Doesn't "dissolve" anything. Carbide tipped tools, anything tungsten (go to any ti foundry, you won't find a ball point pen for a mile), pd, Ru, anything like that causes high density inclusions. They do not melt under normal Ti conditions.
@Tom Marshall you work in Niles?
Going over some of the comments, I would say that a couple are on the right track. Induction won't work as he is attempting to melt the Ti. The more energy that is in the material, the less effect magnetism will have. The Curie point (where the material becomes paramagnetic) of Ti is lower than its melting point.
I would say that you need to find a way to heat your entire enclosure to about 2000 degrees F (easy right?), and carry the current from a Ti rod instead of a carbon arc rod. The Ti ingot that you did get seemed chock full of porosity (contamination) and inclusions (too low temperature), and was surely more TiO2 than Ti. If you can't increase the heat, reduce the size of the electrode and see if you can get Ti in a powder.
Can't say I have any knowledge to help with you titanium problems, but it still was a fun and interesting video to watch.
I wonder if you could make a float to indicate how full the tub is with argon gas. I know they've used very light aluminum foil boats to float on heavy gases, i wonder if you could make a light ball partially filled with helium to be extremely light, to be able to float on top of your argon in a perforated clear tube to indicate how much argon you have in that tank.
Use castable graphite powder with titanium powder embedded in chamber shaped like target cast. Also embed stainless steel screen on opposite sides of the graphite. Protect tub with zirconia or like refractory. Flood tub with argon thru fluffy mineral wool to reduce convection currents. Leave a little reservoir above cast for extra fill of titanium. You can also design mold mixture with less conductive castable ceramic to customize resistance, even to weld with direct 220VAC. Mineral wool makes good heat insulation around mold too. Find some castable graphite and silicon carbide. Works and is FUN, too. Thanks.
I worked at a titanium plant for 2 years and it was melted under vacuum with electron beam guns. The crucible was water jacketed copper and as the raw material came in on rollers or from a hopper, it was hit with the beams where it ran into a basin and overflowed into the crucible. The basin was a safety feature to keep inclusions out like tungsten and such as this was potential aerospace material. The bottom of the crucible was drawn down slowly until the desired length ingot was achieved. Ingots were about 3 feet by 4 feet by 20 feet, approximate. Titanium is VERY volatile in the presence of water. If you burn through the water jacket you will most likely have an explosion!
My mate works at BAE, and he gave me a Titanium bottle opener made in a 3D printer. It has BAE laser etched into the side, and it is uber cool! They were intended as corporate gifts, and there were some left over. It works as well!
Also I agreee about the knipex... I’m a plumber and was taught to only ever use channel lock brand. But man do I love those knipex!
Hi AvE,
Just to say thanks for all your videos, and I hope you and your family have a great 2016 xmas and New Year.
Take care, mrbluenun
the gold colour is titanium oxide, the shielding gas should be helium and use the argon to purge. suggest using a box with with a partial lid also reverse the polarity
I have no idea what he was doing, but it looked terrifying.
That sulfur-looking junk is likely titanium nitride, so you probably didn't have the air purged as well as you thought. Titanium reacts with nitrogen just as well as oxygen! My guess is the heat of the arc created enough convection currents to pull air in.
What you really need is an enclosure like a glove box, or at least a good ceramic pot (not that red clay flower pot junk) that you can line with refractory, put the crucible in and flood with argon from below. Having a small opening to atmosphere will really help reduce any air from getting in.
Maybe use a regular torch with a slightly rich mixture? Titanium melts at a mere 1700C - only one or two hundred hotter than steel! How hard can it be? ;)
you almost got it. that was cool. i bet youll be casting titanium in no time with a few changes.
*****
hrmmm
Tactical Keychains are awesome. But no longer owned by brad. Probably just as good
The TiC thing got spotted below, but something else you might be interested in is that you can't use High Speed Steel tools on Titanium (like your sabre saw blade) because titanium sort of absorbs the iron ions... I destroyed a HSS drill to find out how fast that happened ;)
You either need to use Titanium Nitrided tools or go for carbide drill bits and endmills to make it work, otherwise it'll blunt anything you put anywhere near it just about.
I don't know if anyone has suggested it before but The King of Random on RUclips has a small arc furnace that might give you better results melting stuff. he melts all kinds of stuff in it. great videos! keep em' comin!
Loved it!
Why not an induction forge? Coil around your crucible, drop in the metal, high amps..... Will that work with titanium? There are RUclips videos of guys doing it with steel anyway.
I've been working on an induction furnace too. A fairly big 6kW one, not the chintzy Royler/flyback based ones that blow mosfets after 600-1000W.
The 4HV (.org) forums I've found to be the best community for that kind of stuff. Really helpful, smart, good people.
*****
That'd be sweet. Sure! I already have a fancy anodizing setup. Umm, RUclips PM to exchange contact info?
***** I have some 32g wire in titanium, maybe a few bits of 24g too, but not much. I have Niobium, Tantalum and Zirconium to play with, and some Multi-Etch I've never actually got around to using. Supposedly makes anodized titanium far less matte.
Why avoid Multi-Etch? Everyone I know who uses it swears by it. (Sampling bias I suppose).
This is kinda late to the party but I might have some pointers. There's a government materials lab here in Hamilton, Ontario with an inert vacuum furnace used to melt titanium. I've spoken with one of the materials engineers there by the name of Kumar Suddayappan, a well known copper and magnesium specialst. Apparently, he says when melting the titanium, not only is the environment completely inert, but the only material that can be used for a crucible is copper. It's called a copper "skull" crucible or something along those lines and is used because it is the only material that wont react with the titanium. This is an induction furnace mind you, but what happens is the titanium apparently forms a shell on the copper so that essentially the liquid titanium is held within more titanium. Not sure how you could pull that off in a garage unless you made some sort of sealed box with sand blast cabinet type gloves and did everything within an inert booth and somehow. Then there's the issue of getting the power necessary to run an induction coil that'll be able to melt down titanium.
Just my 2 cents anyways. Either way, loved the videos, this is something I've always wanted to try but never had the resources.
So new, but so old.
Nice work as usual.
Try heating the middle of the rod up and pulling each end apart stretching the titanium into strands
Titanium can be caste in a vacuum. I remember back in my youth. My Irish mother would cook potatoes in an aluminum pressure cooker pot.
The problem is that titanium melts at 2000 degrees. So you can use an aluminum pressure cooker pot. So you will need a ceramic pot, or something brick lined that can go to 2000 degrees. It will also have to be in a vacuum.
Although the titanium has to get to the temp. of 2000 degrees, the entire vacuum ceramic pot or brick lined chamber does not have to get to 2000 degrees.
You could place the titanium in the chamber or pot, and have gas jets directed at the titanium (like you were doing in the video). At the bottom of the chamber would be a gutter, when the titanium melted it would ooze into the gutter. When the titanium started to ooze down the gutter sensors would go off, and open a door to the gutter.
Once the door was open, then the titanium would go into the mold.
Wow! Lots of comments below from guys clearly experienced with working materials. But here in the shallow end I barely know how to use a drill so that was fucken mind blowing. It's like you were channelling that photonicinduction fella.
What a great video. Please make your next project the homemade separation of U-235, and be sure to livestream the results. We'll be watching!
I haven't failed. I have found 10,000 ways that won't work.
- Thomas Edison
This guy has balls and I appreciate he publishes his screw ups too
I work in a foundry that casts titanium. It is done in a similar fashion, but is done in a high vacuum.
Titanium is really a PITA to melt. Industrial it would be molten in a watercooled crucible, making this process extremly dangerous, if a leak occur and the molten titanium get to the water. I guess the best take would be induction heating the metal under a cloak of argon gas? I have one time welded titanium..let me tell you..stainless is almost a joke compared to this stuff.
Here is a link to a company that does molds with titanium: www.castingstechnology.com/ismtialloys.asp
Just for you, at 2:24 the reason why it is so cool is because of its rather good thermal conductivity i´d say, it was also mechanical connected to the iron thing you clambed it into ( i dont know the word for)
Build a copper clad, water jacket, vacuum chamber, with a water cooled copper strike plate, and use titanium oxide, or finely ground titanium, and you'll be in business :)
Should build a sealed enclosure and do it in a vacuum titanium requires there to be absolutely no contamination... Supposedly. Just use electronic actuators to contact the crucible. Might be worth a try. Little vacuum pump for automotive a/c work should do it given sufficient time to depressurize.
knipex ARE the world's best pliers! I'm glad you agree
Maybe there was a pocket of normal air inside the crucible? If you get the opportunity for Round 2, try specifically pouring the argon into the crucible first, leave the spout in there for awhile?
You might have failed to cast anything but even trying made it a win in my book. I think you should consider reactions between the crucible / electrode and the titanium. The crucible appeared to be on fire, since there was no oxygen that implies there was some other reaction taking place. This paper (link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00790858#page-1) seems to indicate that you'll form titanium carbide at as little as 1873degK. That would certainly explain why it got so thoroughly stuck in the crucible. It seems commercially they use a copper crucible, lined with refractory cement and built in cooling.
You might be trying to go about this the hard way, Ave. Apparently, your acetylene rig is able to melt tungsten carbide and titanium has a lower melting point than tungsten carbide. The only problem is, once you get molten titanium you need the container to be of something that the molten titanium won't melt through. Maybe some kind of high-temperature ceramic or something like that. Just a suggestion.
very interesting video. i like the ingenuity. have you thought about powderizing the titanium and trying to use gunpowder? something like making your own titanium cadweld shot that you put in a custom made mold?
That's kind of how they make Uranium derbies. Granular material mixed with reactive material within a bomb proof reactor. Apply heat to start reaction
Yeah dude you're going to want an argon filled glove box with one hell of a heat removal system
I would recommend turning your enclosure into a glove box or just get a glove box, purge it with argon, and melt the titanium with inductive heating instead of the arc.
It needs to be held in the flame that forged the Elven swords of Gondor. Titanium doesnt melt easily. (obviously) You're a brave soul.
"Your a hard doer for sure chap" as we say down in the South of the South. Cheers!
you state the gas flow is 15 "CFM", usually gas flow is measured in CFH. if you are using only 15 CFH of argon it's probably not enough. usually tig welding titanium requires a much higher argon flow and a purge for the back side of the weld.
love your channel!
If you can put a cover on that and make a stone like container for the Titanium, like a forge, you should be able to melt the metal as long as the containment can handle the temperature. That is a theory. Another possibility is doing what one blacksmith did. Take your Titanium, make a stone or powder cast and enclose everything in rocks, clay, mud, whatever, to keep the heat in and use up the oxygen inside the containment before the Titanium melts.
Add to the last comment. You can do light welds with argon, vacuum pumps is suggested along with taking breaks to allow the ti to cool.
What if you microwaved it in an inert gas? I saw a company once that was using microwaves in argon-filled chambers to smelt and cast reactive metals. Since they were doing it on an industrial scale, they were using 10kW microwaves, but maybe it will work with smaller pieces at lower wattages.
Now you may need to use Thermite reduction over your casting mold which may fail because it's commonly know for a type of welding based from the common type of thermite mix, swap iron oxide for titanium dioxide add some extra aluminum powder...The gas shielding is still needed argon will do just fine as you mentioned... While under your graphite mold I would lay that on top of a bed calcium sulfate and aluminum powder this is just to keep things hot so the metal distributes evenly that might even get the hottest near the end the calcium could mix into the metal so make sure that's under your mold, I would pot all this inside a clay garden pot or fire brick. do this outside the flames could be over a foot tall.Remember el metal es muy caliente so Aufenthalt aus dem Krankenhaus heraus Hope this helps thanks for all the good content Love the show Thanks...
Make a glovebox and recirculate the argon with a filter and this just may work, and not only for you, but for others who want a relatively inexpensive way to melt high temp metals without having to deal with a complicated vacuum arc or induction system.
I figured the titanium wouldn't even start melting. A melting point of over 3000C is pretty intense. Really brittle, but overall tough as hell. It turns one of the most beautiful blues when you anneal it.
That was fun to watch. If you haven't anodized titanium before, maybe give it a shot. Just need a diode bridge, variac, water and borax and is fun to play with.Sands off easy so you can do it over and over. As for ideas for melting/molding the titanium, some sort of current controlled arc rod positioner and the entire process done in a vacuum chamber.
TSP (paint isle at the Despot), baking soda, and table salt work too. Water just has to be conductive. (You're doing electrolysis and forcibly bonding the oxygen to the metal, [hydrogen bubbles off] creating a thin transparent layer that prisms the colors a specific way). But don't use table salt! (Or rather, do and see why). Chlorine forcibly bonds with everything creating green swamp water and poisonous gas.
There are only 3 chemicals that strip off the titanium-oxide coating letting you un-do anodizing or getting you back to lower voltage colors. Two of them are uber-nasty (mere fumes from them pass right through your skin, into your bones, give you organ damage)... but the last one "Multi-etch" is almost harmless. You used to have to smuggle it into Canada because there was only 1 supplier, but now you can get it up here from TheRingLord.
Hope that helps.
Turn up your pressure or add in a surrounding container pressurized with purge gas. Use a bottomless fish tank with a top on that you can reach through. Miniature arc furnace.
well for support, landing gear for large air raft is made with 6-4. so it's strong. use it for everything.
Sounded like a lightsaber duel going on in there. lol
OMG! WOW that was a fantastic try. Most adventure I've ever done was centrifugal platinum casting. It was not a disaster. Got some crunchy looking rings out of it, kind of cool actually.
As my mama would say... LOL, your second mistake was thinking the first one wasn't serious... LOL that poor crucible!
My suggestion is dump the mess and cuddle up with a glass of your favorite adult beverage and dream of things to come.
I had 3 titanium surgical screws removed from my foot that I kept, since they apparently cost $1,200.00. I thought about melting them down in to something with my oxy/acetylene but after watching this video...nah, don't think so. Thanks for saving me a headache.
Love that arc sound
Try a closed container in a mild vaccum filled with argon. Get the titanium as sand or small grains. Put the titanium grains in your Casting mold and create an arc between two or four maybe six graphite electrodes close to the grains. The elektrodes need to be spring loaded as they will burn down faster than the titanium grain will melt. Your casting mold has to have a higher melting point then the titanium. Good Luck.