I'm starting to lose track of how many times I've seen something on this channel that I would have thought was flat out unrealistic for anyone to be able to pull off in a home lab/shop. genuinely amazed
@@JustinKoenigSilica Money is common enough, that's not a problem. It's much worse, this crap takes time, effort and dedication. Most people doing similar stuff just do it for work and never bother making educational youtube videos out of it.
50 years ago a friend gave me a small tube of a special solder that was also a special alloy that did pretty much the same thing the ultrasonically applied solder does, but 'wetted' and reflowed well using a conventional Weller 60 watt soldering Iron. It was about the thickness and consistency of standard spooled 60/40 resin core tin lead solder and left no visible flux residue. It was coiled up in a plastic tube similar to the 'free' solder sample you often get when you purchase a new soldering iron. I didn't have much use for it at the time, but over the years I used it to solder things I would not normally have been able to solder; such as Nichrome wire (but not the part that could glow red hot), Aluminum, Stainless, etc..... My biggest use for it was repairing solar cells (which were extremely expensive back then, and were always round) It was the ONLY way for me to successfully reconnect broken tabs to the metalized glass on the back,. or to bridge over surface cracks in the tiny treelike pickup paths on the front surface of a cell. I never tried soldering to plain window glass. I never asked my friend for more of it because I still had some, and he passed away long ago. There was a name on the plastic container but I am in my mid 70's and can't remember that name now. I only mention this because you may be able to do some research to find who made it and what was in it now that you know that it did exist,........ at one point in history...
I worked for the company which developed much of this ultrasonic joining technology, not requiring solder, which was then taken over by EWI. If you'd like to pursue this further and have specific technical questions feel free to reach out.
Really interesting stuff. I'm surprised your ultrasonic iron worked so easily just bolting stuff to the front of the transducer. When I've played with them they seemed really finicky about tuning and I think I burnt out two of those ebay driver boards. I guess being so overpowered means they don't have to be performing optimally to get the job done.
Thanks! My driver board is finnicky too. I think it helps that there isn't much mass connected to it, and I'm not pushing hard, so it doesn't have much mechanical load. If I build another rev of the iron, I'd use a smaller driver, and a more controllable circuit. I like your new channel logo!
Unrelated, but kind of crazy, I've been watching both of you since I was in middle school. I'm a senior in aerospace engineering in college now. Both of you have had a positive impact on my life
I just made a similar post above before reading yours here. My company owned two ultrasonic impact grinders and two ultrasonic rotary drilling/milling machines and all of the diamond tooling had to be tuned to a nodal point for the given mass and length of the tool or it would put too much stress on the transducer and the tools would not perform. We machined ceramics and other very hard materials using all diamond tooling. You did not want to burn out a transducer as, even back in the 80's, they cost about $30,000 each. I enjoy watching your videos and always learn something from them.
We've got some ultrasonic press machines at work, used for sealing and joining stuff, primarily plastic. One time, one machine had a bolt fracture on the booster, and it made such a horrible screech that could be heard outside the building, with the doors closed, over 50 feet away! Ear protection is a must! Granted, these machines are about 900W each. They're indeed picky about the dimensions of the tooling, it has to be tuned, otherwise you risk damaging the horn (transducer) or having poor efficiency.
It's not so much to avoid the email, it's just usually expensive when a company says contact for pricing so he made his own to save money and because he can
@@jakobfindlay4136 on the contrary, if you have even the most basic appearance of a business or a promising application, many places will gladly send you engineering samples and have an engineer reach out to you to help you design your process.
haha most dont know that this crappy behavior was standart in the >2000's , usually if a company didn't list price you could not afford it xD also totally unpractical. Its a method from the 1970's where it was normal to order over physical mail.
@@gasfiltered This is very true and sometimes you can be pretty open about the fact that you're only looking for a few pieces for proof of concept. Years ago I, and a few other people, got a handful of JFETs as samples for projects which seemed to arouse enough interest in the DIY community for smaller distributors to begin stocking.
Amazing process, and as opposed to most of Ben's projects, I've got almost everything, just need a bit of cerium. I do a lot of alloying, have vacuum pumps, induction furnaces, ultrasonics. Really right up my alley, somehow I never heard of this process. Thanks.
Great comment, and I don't think many think about what sets Ben's channel apart: there are no mid-video commercial interruptions; Ben is genuinely excited about what he is doing and that shows, and he loves sharing information; nothing is dumbed-down. I consider Tom Scott, Captain Disallusion, Tech Ingredients and Technology Connections to be in that same camp.
Outstanding video with zero fluff, as usual. You brought attention to many people, myself included, of a technology of which there was near-zero awareness!
@ 3:30 ish. it might be helpful also to mention that this principle applies to iron/steel as well. A black iron oxide finish is often used to keep forged pieces from rusting, and a blued (oxide) finish is often used to protect firearms and other mechanical parts where a thicker oxide coating is not desired. These protective oxide coatings just typically don't form on their own like they do in copper.
SuperAWaC clockmakers use the bluing to protect the metal. Its not bluing like on guns with a bluing liquid and oil, they literally burn the steel very evenly and it literally turns blue (or straw) and if you do it like that it is not porous and you dont need oil at least as far as i understand.
@@melody3741 I am a machinist. Any form of bluing (converting the iron to magnetite) is porous. They all require oil to get maximum mileage out of them. What you are referring to is just using heat to temper the metal, the oxide layer formed doing that is extremely thin (the thickness of the layer determines the color due to the way it interacts with light) and largely cosmetic.
@@melody3741 Ah, the difference between "Clickspring bluing" and "This old Tony bluing". But I think clickspring do it mainly because the metal needs to be tempered after hardening, the color and protection is just a by-product.
This Information was very helpful to me. I use indium solder to bond silicon sputter targets. Ultrasonic soldering techniques dramatically improved my process. Thanks!
Ben: Easy do it yourself project! All you need is a small fusion reactor, 2 oz. of anti-mater and a sprinkle of Einstein Bose condensate. Now the condensate may be hard to find so we'll make that ourselves. Lol! Love you Ben :)
As always, an absolutely awesome video. I need to make myself an ultrasonic soldering iron now. Looking forward to the video making the active solder alloy
@@nThanksForAllTheFish True, but if it's ductile enough it might make a good seal. You could/would use another material for mechanical rigidity, like the upper and lower metal rims of fish tanks provide.
Greetings to you from Russia bro !!! Thank you for a simple and understandable soldering iron scheme, in Russia these cost about $ 4000. Now I can assemble one myself for my experiments, also thank you for the composition of the solder for the soldering iron. The metal analyzer is expensive and I'm impressed you have it. You are unreal cool🇷🇺❤️
If I remember correctly, while researching how to desolder surface mount components, I found an article that stated that soldering iron tips will degrade over time in continuous use, and it's important to replace the tip every few months. Perhaps if you had converted a much better soldering iron, you may have been able to retain the tip being replaceable, thought I'm certain that would have made the conversion 10 times more difficult.
As a follow up, can you use the active solder to prepare a difficult surface (glass window, tube, etc.) then run a conventional pass complete the joint/get a good looking product?
Good question - the answer is yes, you can! As far as I am aware, this was one of the techniques used to seal vidicon tube image plates, which needed a full metal ring in contact with a photocathode, at the very front of the tube. You can't really do internal seals though, have to be very careful with how the solder is positioned so as to not create virtual leaks, which would ruin the vacuum.
You should look into how copper to glass seals are made...seems pretty straightforward (I've never tried it) and is well documented, but the devil is in the details. I found some old papers online explaining it once. From memory it involves creating a thick oxide layer (but not too thick) on the copper and the oxide layer bonds to the glass.
It absolutely makes sense for the commercial solders to contain zirconium. It is even more active than titanium, to the point that it can react with superheated steam to form hydrogen and zirconium dioxide.
I find this technique extremely interesting. Two things: 1. would love to see more on your process of making the solder, and 2. would like to see tests bonding aluminum foils to copper wires, as that could be handy in thin circuit prototypes. Great video! Thanks!
A while back I was working on a battery charger for a golf cart oddly enough the transformer was made with aluminum wire. I found a special solder that was specified in the manual called Kapalloy9 used with Kapp golden flux work great soldering the copper connectors to the aluminum wire.
Super nice! It would be really, REALLY interesting to see this applied to high-vacuum glass-to-metal seals! Would make viewports and electrical feeds a breeze!
I think it could be interesting to test this procedure on bone and stones. They mostly consist of metal cations from the first two groups of the periodic table and the anions are different to those that you have already tested.
This is a great demonstration. A customer handed an automotive ABS module made by Bosch to repair. (It had several broken/corroded bypass capacitors) Needless to say I failed on an exemplary level because I forgot about ultrasonic soldering in general. I couldn't figure out why the heck solder wasn't adhering and as to why the original components were not coming off at all. It was literally the biggest single slab of silicon I've ever seen with even more small COB's on top of it. Needless to say, I would love to invest in this technology so I can expand my repair services to say the least.
I found out today that old air-cooled engines have parts cast from magnesium. After some research I found that is easier said than done. There was almost no information on anyone having successfully performed that DIY. For light and strong metals with excellent heat dispersion properties, magnesium looks really good.
Awesome video as usual. You asked for suggestions for applications, I might have one: would it be possible to make an hermetically sealed metal feed through in glass or ceramics in this way? For example by applying the ultrasonic energy to a copper tube from one side while inside a hole in a glass plate and at the same time heating it from the other end and applying the solder? Metal seals are known to be completely hermetic to moisture / gasses and this technique would be very useful in vacuum systems for making a quick hermetic feed-through.
This is exactly why I happen to have some of this stuff. It's often used to form a hermetic seal between titanium and sapphire glass. Maybe Ben has been playing with the surgical robot at work.
Very cool indeed Ben. I.m going to build this project. I looked at buying an ultrasonic soldering iron and they are way too expensive at around $7000.00 US. Looking forward to the next video.
Incredible stuff! Every video of yours never fails to blow me away. By the way, I can almost guarantee that the erosion of the tip is simply due to the horrifically cheap quality of that iron. I bought the exact same one a while ago and it shocked me how quickly the tip fell apart, honestly the worst iron I've ever used.
Scrap Science What I learned way back when was that ordinary tin/lead solder eats copper tips of soldering irons. To overcome that, you coat the tip with iron. OK, supposedly all soldering iron tips since that revelation have been iron coated, with copper inside for adequate heat transfer.. BUT, when the coating fails, as it eventually does, at least my soldering irons at some point stop heating the tip. Then I find that they have become HOLLOW!. No more copper, no more heat transfer...
I had that exact "solder-ate-the-tip" phenomena on a cheap-ass solderstation. Happened with lead-free solder and a really hot temperature (the solderstation temp regulator was exceptionally useless). Felt like it was similar to what gallium does to aluminium.
Thanks, man. Before the video I did not even know the thing existed. If I needed to connect a wire to a piece of glass I would probably look for someone who has an old vacuum metal spattering chamber in his garage liberated from somewhere during the soviet era decline and ask him to put on a thick enough layer of silver to accept a regular Pb/Sn eutectic solder joint on all the required spots. It is good to know that there is a technology that makes it possible to get the same result at home with no bulky and noisy equipment needed.
I used "YT Comment Finder" to find comments about "LED" because I suspected I am not the only one who is intrigued by the reason why the LED blinks. I found more than 12 times this question was asked. It is really a very helpful tool that I will use from now on.
I just used a comment finder too, searching for "LED" in all caps, only to find that the retraded Google Chrome does not have case-sensitive search... You need an extension or external tool for every basic little thing nowadays.
wow thats great stuff... I dont think ill build my own iron but before this vid i didnt even know this tech existed. Something to stash away in the brain box for someday when i have exotic bonding needs ;-) ... Thanks!
This is a pretty amazing project. Nitinol on pcb gave me all sorts of ideas for a Carl Bugeja-type project. Someone just needs to find a distributor for the solder, i ain't got time for alchemy. Did you per chance try using the 'soldering iron' for ultrasonic welding of plastics? Might be a nice secondary use.
Ben: The ultrasonic soldering iron is really easy to make. Me: Cool I can built that. Ben: But the ultrasonic solder I created in my vaccum induction furnace. Me: 😵
@@user-yp5fp8gn7o I do, got the vacuum pump and variac for 40 bucks at a yard sale and a big transformer on craigslist for 10. Once you start getting or building lab equipment, you can put it together like legos to make whatever you need at the time. Ben has the money and space to keep all his projects assembled and buy new parts but he could have used the same transducer and driver for a number of his projects for example if needed to
yo dude. i just found your channel. and i have learned more in the last 2 hours than i have in the last 2 months. i learned how u can make a water cutting machine out of a simple pressure washer. i learned how u can drill holes in any conductive metallic object, how you can put holograms in chocolate, there was one video about a glass pump that i did not understand (way above my level of intelligence) but it made funny lights happen at the end so it was cool. and i learned about the internals of an x-ray gun. oh and also that if you pull tape fast enuf it produces x rays. like wtf epic dude. thanks for the content man i love this kinda stuff.
I wonder if you could solder a canning jar sealing ring onto a glass jar through the ring? Would you have to have contact with the solder and glass or the transducer is powerful enough to penetrate through. Don't know what purpose that would serve but neat to find out.
i don't know anything about stir welding, and i know it is different than this, but this video is making me realize it would be great to learn about it from your channel! thanks again for another great video.
I've heard it said that the body of knowledge which exists in the modern age is so expansive and encompassing that no living human can lay claim to the title of polymath. I'm becoming convinced that you sir, are a challenge to this hypothesis.
Wow! I never knew about active solder. Good topic for science. Growing up I would look forward to the next Scientific American issue for the Amature Scientist column. Sadly it's gone, but thankfully we have this youtube channel. More please. How can we make solder that sticks to glass?
Question: will the 1% gallium in the active solder react adversely with aluminum surfaces? (Or is it in such small dilution, that it has no real effect on aluminum surfaces?)
@@meercreate Important to note there is that the galinstan makes no contact with pure aluminum in such a use case. All "bare" aluminum quickly becomes covered and protected by aluminum oxide. To get the adverse amalgamation going the surface may have to be fairly seriously damaged, all the while not contacting any air.
This is an Amazing process. It was used to bond the SR71 windows (Quartz) to its structure (Titanium Alloy) and it worked fantastically well, keeping it air tight at high temperatures (>350°C) at supersonic flows (> Mach 3.2)
aluminum welds to glass in a vacuum chamber. i had a guy re-aluminize my primary & secondary telescope mirrors he made is own vacuum chamber machine with a titanium filament & aluminum foil from walmart can do up to 17" research grade polished mirrors. he had to use a acid to remove what was left of the old it was well embedded in the glass and i could'nt get it off
I found it fascinating having studied welding and metallurgy many years ago. I was asking myself how they actually manufacture the produce the complex alloy solder without corrupting the ratios of metals in the process.
> I tried to use “copper mirror” chemical reactions for ages and it didn’t work. Have you tried other metals, like silver or mercury alloys? Or use regular modern mirror, which uses aluminium?
Ben, I genuinely need to thank you so much for this video. I had never seen this technique before, and it's so simple. I wish I had seen this 4 years ago when I was working on a research project that required soldering to doped silicon -- we ended up using this weird proprietary compound called nickelex instead, and it was a disaster and our contact quality sucked, and this was despite the fact that said compound was 1% HF acid. This is so much simpler and safer... I'd be really really curious to see if you get good ohmic contacts across silicon oxide -- if you could do a quick IV sweep to check I'd be /extremely/ grateful. I'm also really curious if that silicon wafer holds up to a post-solder anneal, and if it improves the contact quality at all. Again, thank you so much for this!
@@absalomdraconis I've never heard of ultrasonic soldering being leveraged within a semiconductor engineering context prior to this -- usually, within that context, affixing anything to silicon via methods other than wirebonding to pads is out of the question. The goal of this project was solid state sensor fabrication outside of a clean room, which restricted the options pretty significantly. I'm sure this was an option that was known at the time, but neither my teammates nor the professor we were working under knew about this possibility ahead of time or stumbled upon it during our research. Dunno if that means we just missed the right sources, if it wasn't as widely adopted at the time, or if it's a research siloing thing.
@@hedgeberg : Not ultrasonic soldering, ultrasonic welding. I understand it to be _the_ norm for semiconductors, using gold wires that are ohmicly bonded to contact points on the semiconductor die via ultrasonic actuators of some sort. I have neither training nor experience in this field, so I might be misunderstanding something about the whole subject (for instance, maybe the bonding is actually to pre-deposited solder instead of directly to silicon?), but I've run across mentions of it intermittently for years.
Ah yes, another awesome technology that us mortals can only dream of having access to, and indeed wouldn't even know about without this guy spilling the beans.
Very interesting! Can you tin a surface with active solder, then use regular solder to connect to the tinned area? Perhaps you could use PWM to decrease the ultrasonic power? Is your soldering tip made of aluminium? Gallium would dissolve it (although maybe not when alloyed). ITO would normally be bonded to by first masking and using PVD to add Ti-Au bonding pads. That's how we did it, anyway.
I bought all of the equipment to do this a couple years ago but several concerns stopped me from finishing the project. I had no way of determine the amount of ultrasonic power I was emitting. I didn't want to damage my or my dog's hearing. I did some research but did not come up with any way to test this without the risk. I also had some concerns about exposure to my hand. There are a couple of stories online about guys who put their hands in ultrasonic parts cleaners only to have their bones disintegrate. While this seems unlikely it is the case that ultrasonic cell disruptors are a real things used to homogenize tissue samples in biology. My approach to protecting my hand was going to be using layers of different density materials to provide essentially mismatched impedance. To reduce the radiation into the air I was going to turn a horn. I know that it would not be very well tuned but the hope was that I could increase the efficiency substantially so that I could reduce the power needed. One thing that you may be interested in is a way to control the power. Hoping to mitigate these concerns I showed the power supply to an EE friend with a lot of experience in RF. I offered to draw out the circuit (never fun but very doable in this case) but he just looked at it and drew the circuit in a couple minutes. He proceeded to explain which components to change to make the power adjustable. He even explained what would ultimately limit the range and how to address those issues. Did you have anybody these concerns?
Next week: "This project requires Helium3. Fortunately, I already built a short-range wormhole generator that allows me to collect some from the far side of the moon."
@@davidliddelow5704 if a group with resources wants to know the composition, I assume that the XRF gun is but one method they could use. That is, I assume you basically can't keep something like this secret. But that thing might as well be a tricorder. It's pretty cool that it exists and is instantaneous. (And the sci-fi sounds still amuse me... 😁)
@@senselessnothing yep, just look at the special glass he made a while back the ingredients you put in have to be wildly different from the final glass mix, because of all of the reactions that happen when cooking it
I’m so amazed when I’m searching online for a rear part that I need for my project and offer comes up with ready made of my whole project for way cheaper than it’ll cost me to
I used acid based flux once because I was soldering two pipes together using my hakko electronic soldering tool. I came back a week later and the flux had almost entirely dissolved the soldering tip. It was amazingly instructive and unexpected. It was just gone- I don’t know where the tip went
Tees active soldering alloys are very interesting! I like the idea of playing around myself but I don't have the equipment to do small batches! I imagine a tin lead silver gallium alloy would stick quite well
I bout the same soldering iron and the same happened to me just from using it in ordinary soldering work. Probably a reflection of the price. Thank you for sharing your insight! Very interesting
![Coheed and Cambria - Searching for Tomorrow [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hDsYGLbmadg/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm starting to lose track of how many times I've seen something on this channel that I would have thought was flat out unrealistic for anyone to be able to pull off in a home lab/shop. genuinely amazed
@@JustinKoenigSilica Google X probably pays him at least 300k, so yeah, money helps.
@@Taygetea As far as I'm aware, he basically designed the HTC Vive hardware, so money and experience is a hell of a combination.
@@kyleemmerich2460 Well at the moment he's one of the most important researchers in that medical offshoot of X, so that probably pays well.
Well, it helps to have an electron beam microscope in the shop. Oh yeah, built that too!
@@JustinKoenigSilica Money is common enough, that's not a problem. It's much worse, this crap takes time, effort and dedication. Most people doing similar stuff just do it for work and never bother making educational youtube videos out of it.
50 years ago a friend gave me a small tube of a special solder that was also a special alloy that did pretty much the same thing the ultrasonically applied solder does, but 'wetted' and reflowed well using a conventional Weller 60 watt soldering Iron.
It was about the thickness and consistency of standard spooled 60/40 resin core tin lead solder and left no visible flux residue.
It was coiled up in a plastic tube similar to the 'free' solder sample you often get when you purchase a new soldering iron.
I didn't have much use for it at the time, but over the years I used it to solder things I would not normally have been able to solder; such as Nichrome wire (but not the part that could glow red hot), Aluminum, Stainless, etc.....
My biggest use for it was repairing solar cells (which were extremely expensive back then, and were always round)
It was the ONLY way for me to successfully reconnect broken tabs to the metalized glass on the back,. or to bridge over surface cracks in the tiny treelike pickup paths on the front surface of a cell.
I never tried soldering to plain window glass.
I never asked my friend for more of it because I still had some, and he passed away long ago.
There was a name on the plastic container but I am in my mid 70's and can't remember that name now.
I only mention this because you may be able to do some research to find who made it and what was in it now that you know that it did exist,........ at one point in history...
I worked for the company which developed much of this ultrasonic joining technology, not requiring solder, which was then taken over by EWI.
If you'd like to pursue this further and have specific technical questions feel free to reach out.
What is your contact info?
@@sudoscapy9631 same question
@@sudoscapy9631 I made an email just for this. ultrasonic.joining@gmail.com
@@Hexauslion I made an email just for this. ultrasonic.joining@gmail.com
@@otm646 thanks
Really interesting stuff. I'm surprised your ultrasonic iron worked so easily just bolting stuff to the front of the transducer. When I've played with them they seemed really finicky about tuning and I think I burnt out two of those ebay driver boards. I guess being so overpowered means they don't have to be performing optimally to get the job done.
If you two teamed up and brought in Tech Ingredients, you could rule youtube. Please consider it
Thanks! My driver board is finnicky too. I think it helps that there isn't much mass connected to it, and I'm not pushing hard, so it doesn't have much mechanical load. If I build another rev of the iron, I'd use a smaller driver, and a more controllable circuit. I like your new channel logo!
Unrelated, but kind of crazy, I've been watching both of you since I was in middle school. I'm a senior in aerospace engineering in college now. Both of you have had a positive impact on my life
I just made a similar post above before reading yours here. My company owned two ultrasonic impact grinders and two ultrasonic rotary drilling/milling machines and all of the diamond tooling had to be tuned to a nodal point for the given mass and length of the tool or it would put too much stress on the transducer and the tools would not perform. We machined ceramics and other very hard materials using all diamond tooling. You did not want to burn out a transducer as, even back in the 80's, they cost about $30,000 each. I enjoy watching your videos and always learn something from them.
We've got some ultrasonic press machines at work, used for sealing and joining stuff, primarily plastic.
One time, one machine had a bolt fracture on the booster, and it made such a horrible screech that could be heard outside the building, with the doors closed, over 50 feet away!
Ear protection is a must!
Granted, these machines are about 900W each.
They're indeed picky about the dimensions of the tooling, it has to be tuned, otherwise you risk damaging the horn (transducer) or having poor efficiency.
You know you're a real engineer when you fire up the homemade vacuum induction furnace to avoid sending an email
It's not so much to avoid the email, it's just usually expensive when a company says contact for pricing so he made his own to save money and because he can
@@jakobfindlay4136 an email is already too great of a cost
@@jakobfindlay4136 on the contrary, if you have even the most basic appearance of a business or a promising application, many places will gladly send you engineering samples and have an engineer reach out to you to help you design your process.
haha most dont know that this crappy behavior was standart in the >2000's , usually if a company didn't list price you could not afford it xD
also totally unpractical. Its a method from the 1970's where it was normal to order over physical mail.
@@gasfiltered This is very true and sometimes you can be pretty open about the fact that you're only looking for a few pieces for proof of concept. Years ago I, and a few other people, got a handful of JFETs as samples for projects which seemed to arouse enough interest in the DIY community for smaller distributors to begin stocking.
You raise the DIY bar for all of us Ben, thank you so much. I want to be you when I grow up (I'am 46 so don't hold your breath or anything).
"An alloy that I made myself" -best channel on RUclips
100% agree... @tech ingredients is right there as well, imo. Lol
Cheers!
Amazing process, and as opposed to most of Ben's projects, I've got almost everything, just need a bit of cerium. I do a lot of alloying, have vacuum pumps, induction furnaces, ultrasonics. Really right up my alley, somehow I never heard of this process. Thanks.
@@verdantpulse5185 hi sir any way to contact you I have a few doubts to clear
Great comment, and I don't think many think about what sets Ben's channel apart: there are no mid-video commercial interruptions; Ben is genuinely excited about what he is doing and that shows, and he loves sharing information; nothing is dumbed-down. I consider Tom Scott, Captain Disallusion, Tech Ingredients and Technology Connections to be in that same camp.
"... by melting down the ingredients in a vacuum induction furnace." Yes!
Outstanding video with zero fluff, as usual. You brought attention to many people, myself included, of a technology of which there was near-zero awareness!
@ 3:30 ish. it might be helpful also to mention that this principle applies to iron/steel as well. A black iron oxide finish is often used to keep forged pieces from rusting, and a blued (oxide) finish is often used to protect firearms and other mechanical parts where a thicker oxide coating is not desired. These protective oxide coatings just typically don't form on their own like they do in copper.
rust bluing does not, itself, provide much rust protection, rust bluing is a porous coating meant to hold oil that does the protecting.
SuperAWaC clockmakers use the bluing to protect the metal. Its not bluing like on guns with a bluing liquid and oil, they literally burn the steel very evenly and it literally turns blue (or straw) and if you do it like that it is not porous and you dont need oil at least as far as i understand.
@@melody3741 I am a machinist. Any form of bluing (converting the iron to magnetite) is porous. They all require oil to get maximum mileage out of them. What you are referring to is just using heat to temper the metal, the oxide layer formed doing that is extremely thin (the thickness of the layer determines the color due to the way it interacts with light) and largely cosmetic.
@@melody3741 Ah, the difference between "Clickspring bluing" and "This old Tony bluing". But I think clickspring do it mainly because the metal needs to be tempered after hardening, the color and protection is just a by-product.
Good commentary
I freaking love this channel. The kinds of stuff that has been done on here is amazing and the fact it's being done in a garage is encouraging.
Chemical supply house: "wont sell to hobbists"
Hobbyists: "Hold my vacuum induction furnace"
@Lassi Kinnunen Bingo 😎
Nah he lives in California so he'd probably go for a Nevada corp.
"Hobbyist" is stretching it a bit with Ben though :)
@@T3sl4 more like mad scientist. but i love it anyways.
muh bunsen burner
This Information was very helpful to me. I use indium solder to bond silicon sputter targets. Ultrasonic soldering techniques dramatically improved my process. Thanks!
Ben: Easy do it yourself project! All you need is a small fusion reactor, 2 oz. of anti-mater and a sprinkle of Einstein Bose condensate. Now the condensate may be hard to find so we'll make that ourselves. Lol! Love you Ben :)
😂
Unbelievable! You're a magician, on every single video of yours that I've watched. And I've watched most of them. Thanks Ben!
As always, an absolutely awesome video. I need to make myself an ultrasonic soldering iron now. Looking forward to the video making the active solder alloy
Thanks, man!
Blown away. Thanks for making it accessible, because it would have been out of my reach commercially!
weld a glass box. like a fish tank sealed with silicone but a glass one soldered with that.
Brake a windshield with a hammer and solder it all back together without a noticeable crack. easy money.
@@calholli That would be great for it, especially if you could just solder the chips... I wonder how reflective the solder is..
I think this might not work as Ben described the bond is not that strong.. It is soldering, not welding after all..
Mechanical strength may be an issue with larger tanks
@@nThanksForAllTheFish True, but if it's ductile enough it might make a good seal. You could/would use another material for mechanical rigidity, like the upper and lower metal rims of fish tanks provide.
The complete gamut of tech and engineering , with fundamentals included . Superb . An university by itself .
Dang it Ben, I’m trying to sleep! You can just post a video with that title, I’m gonna be up all night!
Ditto, Ben!
Yep I'm already going down the research rabbit hole. Eyeing my parts bin to see what I might do.
Same boat, man 😅
@@Ryan6.022 Sourcing Cerium... Wallet says "ouch"
@@matthewellisor5835 eBay! www.ebay.com/itm/Cerium-Metal-Element-Sample-10g-Chunks-99-5-Pure-Periodic-Table/372414604226?hash=item56b5a3e3c2:g:fSYAAOSwWh1bfypP
Greetings to you from Russia bro !!! Thank you for a simple and understandable soldering iron scheme, in Russia these cost about $ 4000. Now I can assemble one myself for my experiments, also thank you for the composition of the solder for the soldering iron. The metal analyzer is expensive and I'm impressed you have it. You are unreal cool🇷🇺❤️
Привет! Ты разобрался с плавлением припоя? Какая температура разогрева и время выдержки?
I love that someone dissaproves of ultrasonic soldering.
WHY HAVE PEOPLE DISLIKED THIS? Everything Ben does is amazing. If you don't like it, don't watch it.
Love to see a high speed microscopic view of the solder in action.
If I remember correctly, while researching how to desolder surface mount components, I found an article that stated that soldering iron tips will degrade over time in continuous use, and it's important to replace the tip every few months. Perhaps if you had converted a much better soldering iron, you may have been able to retain the tip being replaceable, thought I'm certain that would have made the conversion 10 times more difficult.
Any chance of being able to make a vacuum tight connection on glass? For instance making various tubes or apparatus?
Good question, that would be a nice way for sealing glass joints if it works.
As a follow up, can you use the active solder to prepare a difficult surface (glass window, tube, etc.) then run a conventional pass complete the joint/get a good looking product?
Good question - the answer is yes, you can! As far as I am aware, this was one of the techniques used to seal vidicon tube image plates, which needed a full metal ring in contact with a photocathode, at the very front of the tube.
You can't really do internal seals though, have to be very careful with how the solder is positioned so as to not create virtual leaks, which would ruin the vacuum.
@@JoshStLouis314 this wouldn't be a great mechanical seal unless you were just trying to be air tight with 0 pressure
You should look into how copper to glass seals are made...seems pretty straightforward (I've never tried it) and is well documented, but the devil is in the details. I found some old papers online explaining it once.
From memory it involves creating a thick oxide layer (but not too thick) on the copper and the oxide layer bonds to the glass.
It absolutely makes sense for the commercial solders to contain zirconium. It is even more active than titanium, to the point that it can react with superheated steam to form hydrogen and zirconium dioxide.
I find this technique extremely interesting. Two things: 1. would love to see more on your process of making the solder, and 2. would like to see tests bonding aluminum foils to copper wires, as that could be handy in thin circuit prototypes. Great video! Thanks!
A while back I was working on a battery charger for a golf cart oddly enough the transformer was made with aluminum wire. I found a special solder that was specified in the manual called Kapalloy9 used with Kapp golden flux work great soldering the copper connectors to the aluminum wire.
you are the smartest science /tech / engineer I know. So many areas of practical knowledge combined
The Doctor would like his Sonic Screwdriver back when you‘re done with it.
Super nice! It would be really, REALLY interesting to see this applied to high-vacuum glass-to-metal seals! Would make viewports and electrical feeds a breeze!
I think it could be interesting to test this procedure on bone and stones. They mostly consist of metal cations from the first two groups of the periodic table and the anions are different to those that you have already tested.
Your question is a little worrying, honestly 😂
@@AlanPMatthews just wiccan things
This is a great demonstration.
A customer handed an automotive ABS module made by Bosch to repair. (It had several broken/corroded bypass capacitors) Needless to say I failed on an exemplary level because I forgot about ultrasonic soldering in general. I couldn't figure out why the heck solder wasn't adhering and as to why the original components were not coming off at all. It was literally the biggest single slab of silicon I've ever seen with even more small COB's on top of it. Needless to say, I would love to invest in this technology so I can expand my repair services to say the least.
This is awesome! I learned a lot from this video, as always. I had no idea that flux was used to remove the oxide layer. Thanks ben!
I found out today that old air-cooled engines have parts cast from magnesium. After some research I found that is easier said than done. There was almost no information on anyone having successfully performed that DIY. For light and strong metals with excellent heat dispersion properties, magnesium looks really good.
Awesome video as usual. You asked for suggestions for applications, I might have one: would it be possible to make an hermetically sealed metal feed through in glass or ceramics in this way? For example by applying the ultrasonic energy to a copper tube from one side while inside a hole in a glass plate and at the same time heating it from the other end and applying the solder? Metal seals are known to be completely hermetic to moisture / gasses and this technique would be very useful in vacuum systems for making a quick hermetic feed-through.
This is exactly why I happen to have some of this stuff. It's often used to form a hermetic seal between titanium and sapphire glass.
Maybe Ben has been playing with the surgical robot at work.
Keep in mind, If materials thermal expansion are not the same, sealant can't be stiff, or it will not work at all.
My god, your channel is the most underrated in all of RUclips.
Underrated because so many are undereducated.
smartest man that has a youtube channel. change my damn mind
i don't care what you're planning to do, just do more of it, every single video on this channel is awesome!
"You're not going to make a trailer hitch out of this" haha
"Hold my beer"
Codyslab: hold my mushrooms
Haha so funny I'm dying
Love the subtle FU’s to “the man” in your videos!
New Applied Science! Today is a good day!
And so soon after the last one.
Very cool indeed Ben. I.m going to build this project. I looked at buying an ultrasonic soldering iron and they are way too expensive at around $7000.00 US. Looking forward to the next video.
Incredible stuff! Every video of yours never fails to blow me away.
By the way, I can almost guarantee that the erosion of the tip is simply due to the horrifically cheap quality of that iron. I bought the exact same one a while ago and it shocked me how quickly the tip fell apart, honestly the worst iron I've ever used.
Scrap Science
What I learned way back when was that ordinary tin/lead solder eats copper tips of soldering irons. To overcome that, you coat the tip with iron. OK, supposedly all soldering iron tips since that revelation have been iron coated, with copper inside for adequate heat transfer.. BUT, when the coating fails, as it eventually does, at least my soldering irons at some point stop heating the tip. Then I find that they have become HOLLOW!. No more copper, no more heat transfer...
@@InssiAjaton so that's what happened to my cheapo chinese soldering iron.
Every time I watch one of your videos, I think to myself, this guy is pure genius.
I had that exact "solder-ate-the-tip" phenomena on a cheap-ass solderstation. Happened with lead-free solder and a really hot temperature (the solderstation temp regulator was exceptionally useless). Felt like it was similar to what gallium does to aluminium.
It also happens on copper tips if you use them too high temp and from memory it is some corrosion as certain compounds boil off.
Thanks, man. Before the video I did not even know the thing existed. If I needed to connect a wire to a piece of glass I would probably look for someone who has an old vacuum metal spattering chamber in his garage liberated from somewhere during the soviet era decline and ask him to put on a thick enough layer of silver to accept a regular Pb/Sn eutectic solder joint on all the required spots. It is good to know that there is a technology that makes it possible to get the same result at home with no bulky and noisy equipment needed.
You come up with great ideas for videos.
I used "YT Comment Finder" to find comments about "LED" because I suspected I am not the only one who is intrigued by the reason why the LED blinks. I found more than 12 times this question was asked. It is really a very helpful tool that I will use from now on.
I just used a comment finder too, searching for "LED" in all caps, only to find that the retraded Google Chrome does not have case-sensitive search... You need an extension or external tool for every basic little thing nowadays.
wow thats great stuff... I dont think ill build my own iron but before this vid i didnt even know this tech existed. Something to stash away in the brain box for someday when i have exotic bonding needs ;-) ... Thanks!
There is a giant section of the internet devoted exclusively to "exotic bonding" needs. Just ask the Google.
I keep coming back to this one while waiting for the next bit of content from Ben. Great stuff and always eager for more!
This is a pretty amazing project. Nitinol on pcb gave me all sorts of ideas for a Carl Bugeja-type project. Someone just needs to find a distributor for the solder, i ain't got time for alchemy.
Did you per chance try using the 'soldering iron' for ultrasonic welding of plastics? Might be a nice secondary use.
Oh i like that idea instead of the commercial melters.
I'm a beginner (barely in anything) but I understood everything. It's very clear and well illustrated, thank you very much!
Ben: The ultrasonic soldering iron is really easy to make.
Me: Cool I can built that.
Ben: But the ultrasonic solder I created in my vaccum induction furnace.
Me: 😵
Doesnt everyone have one on hand ?
And that's another video which removes the incentive to watch this one
@@user-yp5fp8gn7o I do, got the vacuum pump and variac for 40 bucks at a yard sale and a big transformer on craigslist for 10. Once you start getting or building lab equipment, you can put it together like legos to make whatever you need at the time. Ben has the money and space to keep all his projects assembled and buy new parts but he could have used the same transducer and driver for a number of his projects for example if needed to
Would really like to see the vacuum furnace / alloys video!
try dissolving the solder off the glass slide with acid to see if the soldering processes actually etches the glass
Neat, reminds me of ultrasonic wire bonding used in ICs and RF circuits, but on a macro scale.
Company: "Contact us for more details"
He: "So I made it myself" hahahaha
yo dude. i just found your channel. and i have learned more in the last 2 hours than i have in the last 2 months. i learned how u can make a water cutting machine out of a simple pressure washer. i learned how u can drill holes in any conductive metallic object, how you can put holograms in chocolate, there was one video about a glass pump that i did not understand (way above my level of intelligence) but it made funny lights happen at the end so it was cool. and i learned about the internals of an x-ray gun. oh and also that if you pull tape fast enuf it produces x rays. like wtf epic dude. thanks for the content man i love this kinda stuff.
Have you tried using this for glass-to-metal seals for vacuum stuff? Would be REALLY handy!
I wonder if you could solder a canning jar sealing ring onto a glass jar through the ring? Would you have to have contact with the solder and glass or the transducer is powerful enough to penetrate through. Don't know what purpose that would serve but neat to find out.
Very cool! This really simplifies the soldering process for a lot of metals. No more finding the special flux or technique for each metal!
When this guy says "pretty advanced stuff", you know it's out of your league :p
i don't know anything about stir welding, and i know it is different than this, but this video is making me realize it would be great to learn about it from your channel! thanks again for another great video.
"Oh yeah it's super easy!
You just need this, this, this, that, this, that, and this!"
- Ben, 20xx
I've heard it said that the body of knowledge which exists in the modern age is so expansive and encompassing that no living human can lay claim to the title of polymath. I'm becoming convinced that you sir, are a challenge to this hypothesis.
Very interesting stuff. Have you tried putting the substrate on the ultrasonic module and just use a normal soldering iron?
If I remember right, the manufacturers recommend exactly that as an option.
Wow! I never knew about active solder. Good topic for science. Growing up I would look forward to the next Scientific American issue for the Amature Scientist column. Sadly it's gone, but thankfully we have this youtube channel. More please. How can we make solder that sticks to glass?
I wonder if the solder is bonding to the graphite, but the flaky surface is just giving way under low load.
How about soldering into a (through) hole to give mechanical strength?
Спасибо друг, очень давно ищу тему ультразвукового паяльника за дешево, все понятно и доходчиво даже с моим плохим английским)
Question: will the 1% gallium in the active solder react adversely with aluminum surfaces?
(Or is it in such small dilution, that it has no real effect on aluminum surfaces?)
Some people have used galinstan (gallium, indium, tin) as a TIM for heatsinks
0.1 percent
@@meercreate Important to note there is that the galinstan makes no contact with pure aluminum in such a use case. All "bare" aluminum quickly becomes covered and protected by aluminum oxide. To get the adverse amalgamation going the surface may have to be fairly seriously damaged, all the while not contacting any air.
@@meercreate generally only done with copper heatsinks, gallium alloys will still eat aluminum
This is an Amazing process. It was used to bond the SR71 windows (Quartz) to its structure (Titanium Alloy) and it worked fantastically well, keeping it air tight at high temperatures (>350°C) at supersonic flows (> Mach 3.2)
aluminum welds to glass in a vacuum chamber. i had a guy re-aluminize my primary & secondary telescope mirrors he made is own vacuum chamber machine with a titanium filament & aluminum foil from walmart can do up to 17" research grade polished mirrors. he had to use a acid to remove what was left of the old it was well embedded in the glass and i could'nt get it off
I landed on your video by accident, but found it absolutely fascinating. Thanks nmuch for sharing.
"will solder to anything"
*Looks over at cat*
That's an even worse idea than putting a cat in a bath, lol.
Did you notice his table? He started sticking metal to everything.
Dont u touch that puddy tat. Use something more annoying like welding two cockroaches together.
Such a joy to watch this channel!
"I wonder what Ben's been up to..."
*Uploaded 3 minutes ago.*
Being of course
I found it fascinating having studied welding and metallurgy many years ago. I was asking myself how they actually manufacture the produce the complex alloy solder without corrupting the ratios of metals in the process.
“The problem is we live in an oxygen atmosphere, here.”
Damn.
Nah were already wbout to get rid of this nasty stuff though, just wait for it
I appreciate your teaching.
I know that I probably will never use this wonderfully detailed information.
Keep up these nifty videos!
Can you make a circuit board on a pane of glass with this ?
I tried to use “copper mirror” chemical reactions for ages and it didn’t work.
From video it looks to me like you could.
You'd need a reliable way to make traces in the conductive coating on the glass. Either etching it off somehow or masking during application.
if you mask the glass with a solder resist mask you might be able to just paint it on. or paint a thin layer on and etch the excess away.
> I tried to use “copper mirror” chemical reactions for ages and it didn’t work.
Have you tried other metals, like silver or mercury alloys? Or use regular modern mirror, which uses aluminium?
Conductive glass is usually sputtered or vapor deposited right? Or am I misremembering?
This could revolutionize the process for solar panels and photovoltaics in general.
Water cooled and induction heated tip for the next version?
That's amazing! Ben, you come with the most fascinating ideas to check into and show us how you made work, I love it.
Ben, I genuinely need to thank you so much for this video. I had never seen this technique before, and it's so simple. I wish I had seen this 4 years ago when I was working on a research project that required soldering to doped silicon -- we ended up using this weird proprietary compound called nickelex instead, and it was a disaster and our contact quality sucked, and this was despite the fact that said compound was 1% HF acid. This is so much simpler and safer...
I'd be really really curious to see if you get good ohmic contacts across silicon oxide -- if you could do a quick IV sweep to check I'd be /extremely/ grateful. I'm also really curious if that silicon wafer holds up to a post-solder anneal, and if it improves the contact quality at all. Again, thank you so much for this!
I believe that ultrasonic welding is the norm for silicon?
@@absalomdraconis I've never heard of ultrasonic soldering being leveraged within a semiconductor engineering context prior to this -- usually, within that context, affixing anything to silicon via methods other than wirebonding to pads is out of the question. The goal of this project was solid state sensor fabrication outside of a clean room, which restricted the options pretty significantly. I'm sure this was an option that was known at the time, but neither my teammates nor the professor we were working under knew about this possibility ahead of time or stumbled upon it during our research. Dunno if that means we just missed the right sources, if it wasn't as widely adopted at the time, or if it's a research siloing thing.
@@hedgeberg : Not ultrasonic soldering, ultrasonic welding. I understand it to be _the_ norm for semiconductors, using gold wires that are ohmicly bonded to contact points on the semiconductor die via ultrasonic actuators of some sort. I have neither training nor experience in this field, so I might be misunderstanding something about the whole subject (for instance, maybe the bonding is actually to pre-deposited solder instead of directly to silicon?), but I've run across mentions of it intermittently for years.
Ah yes, another awesome technology that us mortals can only dream of having access to, and indeed wouldn't even know about without this guy spilling the beans.
Very interesting!
Can you tin a surface with active solder, then use regular solder to connect to the tinned area?
Perhaps you could use PWM to decrease the ultrasonic power?
Is your soldering tip made of aluminium? Gallium would dissolve it (although maybe not when alloyed).
ITO would normally be bonded to by first masking and using PVD to add Ti-Au bonding pads. That's how we did it, anyway.
I bought all of the equipment to do this a couple years ago but several concerns stopped me from finishing the project.
I had no way of determine the amount of ultrasonic power I was emitting. I didn't want to damage my or my dog's hearing. I did some research but did not come up with any way to test this without the risk.
I also had some concerns about exposure to my hand. There are a couple of stories online about guys who put their hands in ultrasonic parts cleaners only to have their bones disintegrate. While this seems unlikely it is the case that ultrasonic cell disruptors are a real things used to homogenize tissue samples in biology.
My approach to protecting my hand was going to be using layers of different density materials to provide essentially mismatched impedance.
To reduce the radiation into the air I was going to turn a horn. I know that it would not be very well tuned but the hope was that I could increase the efficiency substantially so that I could reduce the power needed.
One thing that you may be interested in is a way to control the power. Hoping to mitigate these concerns I showed the power supply to an EE friend with a lot of experience in RF. I offered to draw out the circuit (never fun but very doable in this case) but he just looked at it and drew the circuit in a couple minutes. He proceeded to explain which components to change to make the power adjustable. He even explained what would ultimately limit the range and how to address those issues.
Did you have anybody these concerns?
Next week: "This project requires Helium3. Fortunately, I already built a short-range wormhole generator that allows me to collect some from the far side of the moon."
I was going to ultrasonic solder my hand to a famous gallery painting, but I caught the end of the vid. Thanks for the interesting info.
12:38 did you just reveal their exact recipe??? XD
XRF guns are magic
That gun just looks made to ruin so many industry secrets its amazing it exists.
@@davidliddelow5704 if a group with resources wants to know the composition, I assume that the XRF gun is but one method they could use. That is, I assume you basically can't keep something like this secret. But that thing might as well be a tricorder. It's pretty cool that it exists and is instantaneous. (And the sci-fi sounds still amuse me... 😁)
the building process is often the harder part
@@senselessnothing yep, just look at the special glass he made a while back
the ingredients you put in have to be wildly different from the final glass mix, because of all of the reactions that happen when cooking it
@@cleverca22 Exactly, the recipe is just the first step
You come up with more really cool applied physics than I see anywhere else. Every video you upload is a must watch.
The sites mention BiSn solder as "active" - have you tried those?
you’re the ultimate king of diy
But can I use it to bond with my girlfriend?
Yes.
Seems to work best on ceramics, so you'd better get ready for some couples dentistry
try using flux next time😂😂
@@mohammedsaad3503 Did you mean "fucks?" (sorry, couldn't pass that up!) :)
@@glasslinger Hey I watch your videos. Nice content!
I’m so amazed when I’m searching online for a rear part that I need for my project and offer comes up with ready made of my whole project for way cheaper than it’ll cost me to
"Nooo you can't just use sound to bond materials together!"
"Haha ultrasound go brrrrrrrr"
I used acid based flux once because I was soldering two pipes together using my hakko electronic soldering tool. I came back a week later and the flux had almost entirely dissolved the soldering tip. It was amazingly instructive and unexpected. It was just gone- I don’t know where the tip went
Lol “sodder”.
That's how you're supposed to say it though? "ˈsädər"
oh lol, it's an American thing
Lötzinn.
@@TheGinGear its spelt solder... and that "L" is not silent... i wince every time i hear americans say that.
@@christianbuczko1481 Your personal opinion doesn't affect dictionary definition
@@TheGinGear its the ENGLISH language, and the ENGLISH dictionary agrees with me.
Tees active soldering alloys are very interesting! I like the idea of playing around myself but I don't have the equipment to do small batches! I imagine a tin lead silver gallium alloy would stick quite well
I bout the same soldering iron and the same happened to me just from using it in ordinary soldering work. Probably a reflection of the price. Thank you for sharing your insight! Very interesting
Hi!
Can't wait to see the furnace. I am working on one myself but there are some gotchas I have still to figure out.
Great vid!
Regards,
Etna.