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High-Performance Blades Sharing ideas for getting the most out of our steel.

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  #1  
Old 12-09-2007, 01:19 PM
Jerry Bennett Jerry Bennett is offline
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Very strange result from a smelt. Star chamber produced bizarre metal.

OK, I had a full bore run in my "star chamber " furnace. The first one were I used it as designed. It seemed to go well. Better than expected even. I had one small refractory failure, but that was the bottom 1/3 of the outside of the t-mite crucible. It turned to lava. Never seen clay turn to liquid before.

Anyway, this was the run alloying some rhenium and niobium together. I threw in some small pieces of meteorite for nickel also. I made the alloying metals larger than the tap hole, so I could be more sure that they would uptake into the ingot.

Well, after chipping out the little button, I stuck a powerful magnet to it, and nothing! I cut it in half, there were voids, bubbles. No big deal. I could always re-melt it. But there were NO sparks. I did not add any carbon, but pure iron sparks. This had absolutely none. It looks like steel. Is defiantly metal, not slag. It's heavy and dense. I Thought maybe it absorbed a lot of refractory, but I examined the liner. It was entirely intact. Even the tap hole is the same diameter as it was before the melt. I used a silicon carbide crucible for the ingot. No erosion what so ever.

So what the heck did I make here?? I have had weird accidents, were the iron spills and absorbs all kind of junk and impurities. It's always sparked and highly magnetic.

I guess I'll take it to a lab when I get some extra money, but still there are a lot of questions.

I used about 60 bux worth of alloy metals in this. I humbly ask you to pick your brains on this. Something very wrong here, and it is not obvious.. Thank you, Jerry
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Old 12-09-2007, 06:30 PM
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Thingmaker Thingmaker is offline
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You have any idea on the nickel content of the meteorite? If you got up around 8 or 10% nickel in the alloy, you could have an austenitic mix. 300 series is stainless and doesn't spark much.


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Old 12-09-2007, 07:20 PM
Jerry Bennett Jerry Bennett is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thingmaker
You have any idea on the nickel content of the meteorite? If you got up around 8 or 10% nickel in the alloy, you could have an austenitic mix. 300 series is stainless and doesn't spark much.
Around 6%. There were 2 meteorites. Campo and Henburry. They made up around 4% of the total, So 6% of 4% overall. Not that much total. This stuff does not produce any semblance of a spark. Weird.
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Old 12-12-2007, 11:36 AM
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B.Finnigan B.Finnigan is offline
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I don't know if you remember or not but I had the same outcome when I used black iron oxide vs red. The button was was very metallic looking, non-magnetic and was almost impossible to grind. It was cutting a trough into my AO bench grinder wheel. It did not spark at all but the contact area got orange hot.

It's sounds very similar to your button but we used different alloying metals.

I could not find a single part of the button or the slag that was magnetic. It apears the black iron oxide burned the alum so hot that all the iron was gone.

I was using your 50/50 charcoal ash mix as a refractory and I only put a few pieces of Ti in the mix and nothing else.
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Old 12-14-2007, 06:45 PM
Jerry Bennett Jerry Bennett is offline
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Yes, remember. In fact that was the first thing I thought of.
This is very pretty. Kind of acts like inconel so far. Does not turn colors when grinding or cutting with an abrasive saw.

I have a few guys helping me out as to what it is and what to do with it.
Man, I'm glad for these forums.


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Old 12-14-2007, 07:16 PM
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B.Finnigan B.Finnigan is offline
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I would also be very interested in what you find out. 2.5 lbs of the 5 lbs charge was iron oxide and it is very odd to have all of it gone.
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