Fail Of The Week: This Inanimate Titanium Rod

September 11, 2014 by Kristina Panos 69 Comments

You saw [Chris] cast aluminium on the cheap using Kinetic Sand a few weeks ago, didn’t you? He recently got his meaty hands on some titanium through the magic of modern transactional methods and was bowled over by its strength, hardness, and poor heat transfer.

He thought he would cast it into a nice, strong bottle opener. As you can probably guess, that didn’t go so well. First off, it wasn’t easy to saw through the thin rod. Once he did get it split in twain, it was surprisingly cool to the touch except at the tip. This is nasty foreshadowing, no?

[Chris] takes a moment to help us absorb the gravity of what he’s about to do, which of course is to send several hundred amps through that poor rod using a DC arc welder. Special precautions are necessary due to the reaction between oxygen and heated titanium. His trusty graphite crucible is grounded to the bottom of a big aluminium tub, and a cozy blanket of argon from a TIG welder will shield the titanium from burnination.

Well . . . the titanium didn’t melt. Furthermore, the crucible is toast. On the up side, vise-enabled cross-sectional examination of the crucible proved that there was still gold in them there walls.

Do you have any (constructive, on-topic) suggestions for [Chris]? Let him know below.

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CNC’d And Anodized Ti Engagement Rings

May 11, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

[Patrick] met someone, and then some stuff happened. Good for him. Because of this, [Patrick] found himself in need of a pair of engagement rings. With a friend, some titanium bar stock, and an awesome lathe, he turned out a few awesome rings and also managed to selectively anodize them with a subtle rainbow of colors.

Rings Making a ring on a lathe is a relatively simple ordeal, but the two larger rings [Patrick] made (one was for a friend) featured some interesting patterns that aren’t easy to make without a good CNC setup. Luckily, this friend has an awesome CNC with a rotary fourth axis.

With the machining out of the way, [Patrick] then turned to anodization. This was done by constructing a simple power supply with a variac, four diodes, and a big honkin’ cap. He managed to get a good result with a sodium carbonate solution. He doesn’t have any good pictures of it, but by varying the voltage from 20 to 100 Volts, the color of the anodization will change from green, purple, to yellow, to blue.

The Wedding Band: Milling Titanium And Wrapping It In Palladium

November 13, 2012 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

You’ve got to admit that custom milling your own wedding band is pretty hard-core. In this case [Jeremy Swerdlow] is making it for his friend, but that doesn’t diminish the fun of the project. After the break you can watch him mill a titanium ring and wrap it with a palladium inlay.

To solder palladium to titanium [Jeremy] would need special equipment, so he found another way to mate the dissimilar metals. He milled a dovetail groove in the center of the titanium band. To do that, he had to make a special cutting tool that was just the right size. Once had milled the ring’s rough dimensions, he had to fabricate a custom mandrel to hold the ring for the rest of the job. The dovetail was then filled with a palladium strip using a combination of heat and hammering. The two ends are soldered together using palladium solder. The ring in the middle shows this solder joint. To the right is a ring after the inlay is milled flush but before the final polishing which will bring out the best qualities of both metals.

If you don’t have the machine shop skills to pull this off you could always try your hand at 3d printed rings.

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Hackaday Links: September 21, 2012

September 21, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 31 Comments

And then Obi-wan said, “you were supposed to be the chosen one!”

Yesterday, a little bird told us Makerbot will be moving to a closed source model for their newest printer. This was confirmed, and now [Zach Smith] a.k.a. [Hoeken] – creator of the RepRap Research Foundation and co-founder of Makerboth Industries is weighing in with his take on the situation.

Hey! Free stuff!

Remember that DIP28 ARM chip with BASIC? Remember how I told you Coridium will be giving a few hundred away as samples? Yeah, that’s happening now.

Replacing a scroll wheel with titanium

[Rhett] has been using a Logitech mouse for a few years now. Recently the scroll wheel became corroded, so [Rhett] replaced it with a titanium version. The perfect match for the trusty battle axe, theIBM Model M keyboard.

Web-based IDE for the Raspi

[Phil Torrone] sent in a video of something he and [ladyada] are working on. It’s a web-based IDE for the Raspberry Pi. We’ll do a full review of this when it’s released.

Intro to software defined radio

So you have one of those TV tuner dongles and want to get in to software defined radio. Where do you start? [Al Williams] over at Dr. Dobbs has a great introduction to SDR, and gives a few pointers that should help you get that cool looking waterfall plot very quickly. Thanks for sending this in, [Chris].

Anodize Titanium At Home

February 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

We don’t really have any titanium lying around, it’s not exactly a cheap material. But this hack that shows you how to anodize titanium in your home laboratory (or kitchen for that matter) and it might help the metal make its way into a future project. It seems the process is not overly difficult or dangerous and it’s possible to achieve a lot of different colors in the finish.

In the image above [PinkFlute] is using Coke Zero, a sugar-free soda, as the chemical agent in the process. The alligator clip attached to the utensil is providing the positive voltage and the yellow wire dipped in the drink is negative. Finish color is determined by the voltage supplied. You can choose various shades of green, purple, yellow, and blue based on a voltage range of about 100V to 20V.

This is one of two anodizing methods shown. the other uses a foam brush dipped in soda with the negative lead clamped onto it. You just brush in the electrified substance to alter the camping spork’s finish.

[via Reddit]