Can You Forge Tungsten?
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2024
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My name is Alec Steele. I am a blacksmith, amateur machinist and all-round maker of all-things metal. We make videos about making interesting things, learning about craft and appreciating the joy of creativity. Great to have you here following along!
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Nuclear materials scientist here - tungsten is such a dope material, we're actually considering it to make the inner walls of future nuclear fusion tokamaks. It's pretty much one of the only materials on Earth capable of withstanding those 3000°C of continuous exposure without losing much if its mechanical properties. My current work is actually about exploring tungsten 3D-printing and basically laser-welding it to other metals (using kW-range lasers).
Anyway - awesome video, very cool to see you play around with it in a blacksmithing workshop!
Thanks for your work! Hope to see much more in the world of nuclear
that sounds really interesting. any literature on it out there?
Within the next few months you will be replaced by a black woman that was the worst sandwich artist at subway and got fired because she never showed up on time.
thats the coolest pfp tbh, never even thought of using a plasma globe as one
Will you be using pure tungsten or will it be an alloy/ceramic like WC? I've seen some crazy tungsten carbide parts but have always been curious about 3D printing it. It would be tough since you'd have to do it green (un-sintered powder) which you would have to account for shrinkage.
13:30 imagine a 5kg block at 1300 °C launching in your direction with lethal speed. I jumped.
right? how is bro laughing I would be terrified. it will probably stick to your skin too if it hits you... maybe you are "lucky" and it hits you so hard it bounces away and breaks your rib instead of frying your skin
I reflexively paused the video in an attempt to freeze the block from hitting him :<
I don't know what my brain thought it could accomplish but it seems I have an innate want to freeze time :
@@user-yn4pi9tr9k Leidenfrost effect would likely have it boil the water from his skin and bounce off from an initial quick contact.
I have been told of a guy who died in a similar way. The melted metal went right thru his body. They were cutting metal with torches, not forging tho.
@@TaylerTayler-up8mc Yeah, force pushing is a huge factor. something bumping you... might only stay in contact a moment. and 5Kg or not... this cube is gonna bounce off. End result would be like getting branded I suspect.
15:27 you made your hydraulic press cry😅
Lol
Is that the hydraulic fluid seeping out? Or something else
@@alexanderson1213either that or possibly just grease for parts that have friction contact.
it sweats power
"I can do it, I promise! Please don't abandon me!"
*repeatedly bounces ineffectively*
As a plasma physicist working on Tokamaks, I am very used to working with tungsten. If you have ever lift a slab of lead, which is surprisingly heavy, tungsten is 50% heavier than lead, so that small piece that looks like you can carry alone, you can't.
Edit: Yep, and 9:31 is exactly what happens when you put it inside a Tokamak.
Does some kind of coolant flow through the inner walls of the Tokamak with this material?
Tungsten is NOT heavier than lead. W is 74 and Pb is 82, how can Tungsten be 50% heavier? I don't have a great deal of experience of W but as a member of a PlumBing family, I've melted a shitload of lead to drainage pipes.
@@wisconsinatIon "The density of lead is 11.34 grams per cubic centimeter (g/cm3)."
"The density of tungsten is 19.254 grams per cubic centimeter (g/cm3), which is comparable to the density of gold and uranium."
@@wisconsinatIon the chemical atomic number has nothing to do with how densely an atom is packed or is packing with each other.
There are way bigger atoms than Pb that have a lower density as well. Tungesten is way denser than lead and therefore heavier.
@@wisconsinatIon that's not how density works. That's just the mass of a single atom. The atoms get packed in different ways, and tungsten happens to pack very densely, like gold.
I don't usually comment on stuff, but this is an area I have some experience. I'm a machinist and have done a good bit of work with tungsten; mostly weights and bucking bars. Other than being very, very dense and stable I wouldn't really call Tungsten a supermetal. It machines just like cast iron, you use pretty much identical feeds and speeds. As you saw it's quite easy to work with saws and abrasives as well. There's a reason (well, many) that you don't have things like knives made out of pure tungsten. Steel is or can be better in effectively every way. Tungsten is tough but doesn't hold an edge well. It's dense but deforms rather easily, we have to remachine bucking bars made from it fairly often. It's a very cool material but not the wondermetal people often make it out to be.
have you seen the purple smoke?
I have also worked with tungsten a little bit, where I had to spot weld it to steel (well, actually I wrapped it thin steel foil and welded that to itself). Welding tungsten sheets was very difficult, and after it heated up to 1200°C it became brittle like a cookie. I would love to see machining of this tungsten block in the video AFTER heating it in the forge, because I believe that we would see a much more brittle surface. Also, the carbon concentration at the surface might have increased, granting it a bit more strength.
The only thing i've ever bought T for is to remake the head assembly of my burners. Cast iron degrades over time, this (at least so far - with one of them having at least 150~160 burns on it) doesn't. I've heated it many times (over all the burners i made) and all of them still have the machining marks on them. Best money ever spent, because i used to have cast ones, which were pretty decent, but over time they'd start getting loose and chipped and the flames didn't have the right definition anymore. I'm currently working out a design for a friend, who saw them and wants tips for his artisan glass making torch.
Tungsten is double the hardness of steel how does it not hold as well of an edge? Is it because it chips due to brittleness or does it get dull from abrasion?
A tungsten hammer would go hard
📍 Tungsten micro folding knife
📍 Tungsten shavings in a steel Damascus
📍 Tungsten logo marking stamp
📍 Tungsten hammer
📍 Tungsten sword Pommels! The extra weight counterbalances an extra long sword.
add guitar pick and bottle opener.
A Damascus by using the tiny chips from machining it.
Tungsten hammer. Make that crazy density useful.
A tungsten counterweight is a fascinating idea - it's got me thinking about the other uses of tungsten in weapons. What other advantages you could gain?
Part of me wants to see an axe forged with an inlaid tungsten carbide edge (sort of how older axes had carbon steel edges inlaid into wrought iron heads).
Melt a measured portion and lift the quench as it forms a large drop… use the shape as a base for the pommel. This tests melting and saves time on rounding the shape.
As a general rule of thumb most metals can be "hot worked" at around the same temperature that they can be sintered or annealled. This is usualy around 0.4-0.6 times their homologus melting temperature (the absolute temperature measured in kelvin). For tungston this would be 1205C-1944C so you should be pretty close. Some metals like lead are at this temperature at "room temperature" so they can be "forged" at room temperature of colder. This is the temperature where the kinetic energy of atoms due to their temperature becomes large enough for them to jump out of their lattice sites and diffuse throughout the crystal. Defects start anihilating and new crystals nucleate and replace stressed crystals (recrystalization) to lower the free energy of the metal by releiving stress and making "brand new" crystals with no imperfections.
Tungston melts at a very high temperature but it is pretty chemically reative (it isn't stable as a reduced "pure" metal) and quickly reacts with gasses in the atmosphere. When it reacts to form oxygen the tungston oxide created has a much lower melting temperature and the molten oxide drips away exposing more metal to react with the air. If you've tried tig welding with no gas you will see something like this.
When you put tungston into molten steel it will make a liquid at a pretty low temperature compared to its metling point. This is because alloys of things will generally "melt" at lower temperatures than pure things. For example salt dissolves into water in small amounts at room temperature, but pure salt melts at about 800 degrees celcius. Iron with different amounts of carbon melts at different temperatures and the lowest melting point is about 4% carbon at about 1200C (which we call cast iron because its so easy to melt). In general this is true because the increase in configurational entropy from additional solute is greater in the liquid phase then the solid phase (liquids are more random than solids this is why they exsist when you heat stuff up and everything starts moving around, adding different types of chemicals in makes it more random and so an alloy will be liquid at a lower temperature). Unless the mixture forms really strong bonds between atoms like sodium and chloride melting at the previously mentoined 800C when sodium would melting in a hot cup of tea and chlorine would be a gas in a deep freezer.
Would be interesting to so the tungston welded in thinner peices (even steel is hard to weld when its that thick). Polarity of the welder would be important to keep the electrode from melting while the workpeice melts.
Edit: I went and found the self diffsuion coeffceints for tungston and calculated the diffusivity as a function of temperature and it looks like it really takes off well after 2000C and I think the oxidation would be pretty bad at that temperature. And this is over the oxides melting temperature so forging tungston in atmosphere doesn't seem likely to me. Also the smoking that alex was shocked by is probably the beginings of this oxidation. Maybe theirs a clever way to heat it electrically and forge it under argon.
Iirc, adding to what u said: Since it reacts with oxygen, it mainly forms tungsten trioxide (WO₃), which partially evaporates (boiling point at ~1700°C/2000K), (maybe also reacting with the moisture in the air forming tungstic acid [or rather, tungsten trioxide monohydrate]?), hence the white smoke.
But yeah, that was quite an unhandy, thick piece. Maybe cutting it into thinner pieces and forging them could work?
Also idk much about forging, but a higher temperature e.g. with an oxy-acetylene torch may help (also may help keep the piece warm and malleable)?
*Töngstin
Same way you handle titanium just a hotter forge.
@@jiranchhetri8863 Thanks, 4o!
I thought Tungsten had an even higher melting point than that since it could withstand temperatures up to 7000°C
Designer for Formula One here. We use tungsten a lot for counterweights and ballast. This probably isn’t pure tungsten but a tungsten heavy metal alloy (check out AMS 7725). It’s a sintering of ~95% tungsten in a slurry of Nickel iron or copper. It’s the slurry which makes it quite easy to machine as the tungsten never truly fuses together. Making pure tungsten is practical impossible due to the melting point
I have a cube EXACTLY like this that's 1.5 inches on a side (exactly 1 kg btw). You're absolutely correct. This is 95% tungsten and it's sintered. The seller probably provided this information and Alec ignored or missed it.
Do we not have forges that can reach it's melting point?
@@flyingfetus4364 Pure tungsten melts at 3,422°C (6,192°F), which is the highest melting point of any metal.
What are you making the heating elements out of?
The only way you're melting it is by running stupid amounts of electric current through it, and that won't last long.
@@flyingfetus4364 how do you think it became a nice 95% alloyed perfectly square block?
Partly correct.
Counterweights in crankshafts etc. are mostly W/Cu liquid sintered materials, only the copper melts and 'solders' the pure tungsten particles together. Therefore it is easily machineable as only the W-particles are 'pulled' out of the matrix. But: depending on the particle size, you'll never get a smooth surface.
"Making pure tungsten is practical impossible due to the melting point": this is certainly not true. Pure tungsten is not fully melted during production, it is sintered in H2 atmosphere under high pressure (the raw material is a W-oxide powder, the H2 removes the O). This limits the possibilities for the geometry of your material. Practically, pure tungsten is almost always only available in rod shape. The reason being the usual production route for 100 years was rod --> drawing the rod --> wire --> light bulb. The reduction rate per drawing step in diamond dies, limited by forces and brittleness of tungsten (the light bulb wire was in fact K-doped tungsten) was only about -11%.
12:34 The smoke coming off of it is tungsten trioxide WO3 I wouldn't recommend breathing it in. The bluish color seen earlier is some other tungsten oxide called tungsten blue
13:30 I HAD A HEART ATTACK!!!! Nothing like a multiple kilos piece of 1300 degree metal flying across the shop at high speed to check the condition of your heart!!!
That’s one way to cure your mortality, I guess.
literal heart attack. It tried to attack his heart
I used to work in a steel foundry. We didn’t do anything with tungsten steel alloys, but I can tell you those arc furnaces can easily get above the melting point of tungsten. The walls of the furnace are lined with a silicon spray, and it gets eaten away at and dissolves in the liquid steel, and has to be recoated after every heat. The steel walls of the furnace have water flowing through them (though that’s more of an emergency measure if a chunk of silicon falls off the wall and exposes the steel wall to the inside temperatures). Even with the water lined wall, when a hot spot is exposed, it’ll glow red hot from the outside of the furnace and needs to be fixed immediately. Our furnaces were usually charged with 15-20 tons of molten steel at a time. We did large scale castings, and some of our castings were bigger than 10 tons for a single cast piece.
Are those with wires jumping from the amount of current flowing and requiring a power plant?)
@@Mr.Leeroy Right?! Also, I've decided I like Alec Steele's following of smart people who make very smart comments based on ACTUAL expertise. 😄
is that silicon coating why alot of cast irons have high silicon content?
what a dangerous job. glad that's past tense for ya
I don't know if this is true of tungsten and steel, but some alloys can be made below the melting point of one of their ingredients. It basically dissolves in the other metal.
13:32 an industructible piece of metal flies towards you at 1300 ºC
Alec Steele: *LAUGHS LIKE THE JOKER*
Sometimes laughing is the only response to the realization that you very nearly could have died.
@@GeekOfArabia I would have laughed like the joker too kek
14:00 don’t do this at home
*puts away hundreds of dollars worth power tools and block of tungsten that I totally have*
Try tens to hundreds of thousands...
@@MacroAggressor he knows a guy that gets him great deals.
You can do it outside your home
That shot actually scared me
$200 bargain hydraulic press, AliBaba (user assumes all injury risk)
The slight forge ability makes me think that Alex should definitely come back to this in the future with some special equipment. Hotter forge, better PPE
Induction heater with argon sheilding.
And maybe try making a tungsten/steel damascus bar using some of the shavings
One of the issues with tungsten is that it can burn at forging temps. So as it's heating up, it will also be burning off. So special furnaces are used when casting to keep oxygen out. I know there's a difference between forging temps and casting temps, but I'm not aware how far apart or how bad the oxidation problem will be at forging temps
Radiation Heat alone would be absolutely terrifying
@@nunyabisnass1141worked at a foundry that would cast molds made with the lost wax process in a vacuum to remove the air.....
$800 is a Steele
It's actually a Tungsten
It's actual market price, so that joke doesn't even make sense, sad fail
You spelled Borrow wrong
@@Gobra5"🤓"
@@FalconHgv I'm glad you got your glasses sorted bro
The thing about tungsten is that it actually gets hardened every time you pull it out of the forge at bright yellow colour. You need to heat it up to cherry red then let it cool very slowly to make it softer. This will probably make it easier for cold forging, and certainly easier for machining, however I wouldn't try cold forging such a thick block for obvious safety reasons.Good luck! =)
Id like to take a moment to appreciate the over 5000 years of metalworking tradition and the great leaps and advances that we as humans have made to come to a point where somebody in their shop can say "working with hardened steel is not that difficult". Even a few hundred years ago working left alone machining hardened steel would be almost impossible.
"Working with tungsten is not so difficult" some vtubers 50 years from now
who asked?
@@slakteriet I did
@@marcosdly no you didnt
Carbide inserts will chew up just about everything you can get in the chuck 😂
A little more info on the tungsten carbide cutters! The tungsten carbide is actually a powder, that is then mixed with often a cobalt or nickel based metal alloy powder. This mixture is then pressed into the shape of the tool, being a cutting insert or end mill, then sintered. This results in whats known as a "metal matrix", in this case, one with incredible hardness and heat dissipation.
There is that but also solid carbide endmills are ground from carbide stock and depending on what the tool is used for it gets chemically or gas treated to achieve a certain coating
11:25 I think he covered that bit.
They do this because tungsten carbide (carbides and UHTCS in general) is extremely difficult to sinter by itself. The cobalt and nickel is really just the high temp bonding agent for the tungsten carbide media.
I love Alex warned us not to do this at home, as if the average person might have a massive power hammer knocking about and a £1000 cube of Tungsten XD. Great videos, entertaining as always xxx
Freelance Baker here-tungsten is such a dope material, I came across it while trying to find ways to improve my baking equipment. Apparently, it’s used in all sorts of high-heat applications, and I’ve started using it to line my bread pans. It’s amazing-bakes everything evenly, and nothing sticks, even at the highest temperatures. I’m also looking into getting a tungsten rolling pin because it’s supposed to give perfect dough consistency thanks to its weight and durability. Honestly, it’s becoming a bit of a secret weapon in my kitchen.
Anyway - awesome video, very cool to see you play around with it in a blacksmithing workshop!
Is it safe for working with food? You can get lead poisoning, maybe tungsten poisoning is also a thing.
@@tomaspecl1082 I would think that because of the durability of the metal even at high temperatures that it would not end up in food in the way that lead--a very soft metal--might. There is limited data about the effects of tungsten exposure because being exposed to high amounts is so rare. That said, there have been studies which showed adverse health effects in rats that were administered sodium tungstate orally, which is less robust than elemental tungsten and is water-soluble. Elemental tungsten does not react with water, acids, bases, or oxygen (unless it is literally red-hot); so in a baking application, it seems unlikely that the material would be stressed enough to pose any threat.
@@fulstop_ but as far as I know elemental tungsten is not found in nature, its always in a compound, so it must be reactive
15:24 the press started sweating 😂
That was a tear 😢
@@abnnuzzinicholasclay686 🤣
13:32 I actually screamed. That could have marked you for life. It's insane that your immediate reaction was just mad laughter. You are terrifying
If you are lucky ledeinfrost effect might save you
That was a stress laugh from what happened 100%. He was laughing that nothing bad happened.
You can hear his voice catch when he says "Don't do this at home", I think it hit him how close he was to serious harm.
my heart skipped a beat. literally jumped back.
You can cut that laugh out of the video and use it as a mad laugh from the joker or something
As an engineer trying to understand ways to work with Tungsten -- this is exactly what I wanted to see, thank you it's actually extremely helpful!
Sintering and pressing
@@BirnieMac1 No doubt that seems to be the optimal general-purpose method for mass-produced moldable geometry or less-workable alloys! But imagine you just need a single, simple bracket to hold some absurdly hot object. The required tooling (the custom die and press to mash the powder into shape) would kill the cost :( But,
on the other hand, if it could be made with just a few operations to a piece or two of stock? I presume even in mass production that may often still beat pressing/sintering on cost!
So for me, I'm very appreciative to be able to see _with my own eyes_ just exactly how the material responds to being sawed, cut, ground, drilled, milled, forged, and stamped...
Honestly I was very impressed at how effective almost everything was! Game-changer. Even the least effective methods "worked" -- forging could be used to for example make bends in a bar or shape a sheet (though it may remain too brittle for much deformation), and even stamping could still apply a texture.
It seems many, many parts can be made from pure tungsten without having to resort to pressing/sintering, which is fantastic because pure tungsten is almost the literal melting-point GOAT of any material of any kind in our universe that's known to man!
Tungsten's element-symbol is W. And it's a pretty massive W if ya ask me ;) ^_^
If you cannot see that this block is fake stop trying to be an engineer. It is not real as in not 100% real, it's an alloy.
@@user-sp4gy7ko5l There's nothing in the video that indicates to me anything of the sort. Tungsten is expensive, but it's not *that* expensive ... he can afford a 5kg cube; and most alloys are made to be stronger, not weaker, than pure tungsten.
@@tompotter8748 I can tell you won't get far in your 'engineering' career. Check that ego before it leads to depression.
15:27 Even the hydraolic press is getting sweaty 😂
@14:41. "Steel(e) always goes in the rear...." 🤣🤣🤣
Wait what? Does Mrs Steele hear what comes out of Alec's mouth when he's being loopy at the forge?
Oh, the merch possibilities! lol
Title...
Congratulations a bot copied your comment ;)
@@Night-Jester Thanks for the heads up. Just reported the account for spam & scams, noting that the bio has a link to a site of dubious content.
14:44 “Steele always goes in the rear” proceeds to make a phallic looking object 😂
There's this fun process called "atomic hydrogen welding" were hydrogen gas is passed through an arc between two tungsten electrodes. THe hydrogen is cracked into rather high energy m̶o̶l̶e̶c̶u̶l̶a̶r̶ atomic hydrogen in the arc, then recombines when it hits the cooler metals you are trying to weld, dumping all the excess energy as heat. Temps can get up to 4000C and it was used do weld tungsten fairly effectively.
not many people know about that one anymore... even less have done it!
it finds certain industrial applications...
The hydrogen molecule H2 is cracked into H atoms, not " high energy molecular hydrogen"
Problem is hydrogen embrittlement. It's such a major concern in industry that there are specific welding rods that are low hydrogen and have to be baked to remove all the water.
@@user-oi2rd8yl2u Lol you got me there, should have been "atomic" instead of "molecular".
@@Hawk013 Thanks. But how have they made thin lamp filaments for eons?
11:42 when he _finally_ shows you if tungsten can be forged.
By adding tungsten to already melted steel - not only a physical, but also a chemical reaction occurs, where the two metals start mixing before the tungsten fully starts melting, effectively lowering its melting point.
Edit: "Chemical change" is a better term here than a "chemical reaction".
Yeah molten metals dissolve each other fairly easily, i've melted copper with tin. Just drop tin on copper and heat it up, the copper will be dissolved by the tin way before it's even red hot
@@jeanladoire4141 it's not a chemical reaction, it's just dissolving like salt or sugar dissolving in water.
@@ParadigmUnkn0wn Which is a chemical reaction :)
Edit: "chemical change" is a better term here.
@@ParadigmUnkn0wn yes indeed, they don't form a chemical compound they just blend together, probably forming an eutectoid that melts easier than both metals
Yup, molten aluminum will eat a steel crucible.
I like how @ 15:29, the hydraulic press starts to sweat from trying to press the tungsten! 😂
Came here to say that 😂
I puckered super tight when the cube shot out of the hammer at 16:13. Good golly, how are you still alive kid?
I puckered harder when he said steele is always in the back door..
Wrong timestamp.
13:30
Never thought I'd be forged by Alec Steele himself! :)
15:27 Even the hydraulic press started sweating lol
Would love to see a little series where you work your way through the advancements in metallurgy, going from the copper age to the bronze age to the iron age to the steel age. Just making the same part, like a knife, in all of them and showing how easy or hard it is to work with each metal and what the maintenance would be for each finished piece as it was used across its lifetime.
Kind of a practical show of the history of metallurgy and forging.
Now this is a cool idea. Make a knife or dagger from metal of each different era from the first metal blade to current
Making a tungsten axehead would be awesome
It would crack. Inconel is much better
It's the exercise of the thing! How about a super dense ball peen hammer?
Too brittle
Timothy Dickerson
@@nightmarejr Timothy Dyck ... no? Canadian Blacksmith - Making A TITANIUM HAMMER
Tungtes is used for TIG welding and other high temp applications because its has one of the best thermal expansion coefficients, meaning it holds it orginal shape and size no matter how hot or cold it gets
It's not really a super metal per say. At least not in it's hardness. Titanium is much lighter and twice as hard. I have a watch band made of Titanium. It got damaged and had a burr getting snagged on clothes, so I tried to file it down with a big steel carbide file....the burr was the size of a pin head and it took me 20 minutes to get it smooth. I was amazed. But The melting point of Tungsten is 6100 F°...over twice that of of steel and almost twice that of titanium. Without it Edison would never if been able to make his. First bulb... They say he tried thousands of filaments before Tungsten.
3:18 "So perhaps Jamie, whoever we bought this from replaced our tungsten with gold... and we've been scammed." Maybe my humour is broken but the seriousness in the delivery of that line had me laughing so hard holy. 🤣🤣
yeah funny af
Well he'd have figured it out pretty quick when he tried melting it :p
I really appreciate that you've toned down the overly excited super high energetic way of working in these last 2 years, now it's just a joy to watch you try out and build stuff and explain the process more thoroughly and just being calm and composed about it. Keep it up man.
this was calm? its borderline unwatchable overexaggerated hype
16:02 kinda looks like a brick
16:02 kinda looks like cubblestone
I’m so glad you mentioned not to do it at home because i was just contemplating doing it 😁
3:46 The refresh rate on that DRO is wild.
They scammed you! They took .5 kg of tungsten and alloyed it with 4.5 kg of .999 gold. You seriously got ripped off, Alec!
lol no... Gold would have turned to soup at that temperature. Steel turns into a marshmallow... gold would straight liquify.
@@marhawkman303 sigh
@@johnathansaegal3156 wdym sigh ? give an actual answer
@@johnathansaegal3156 It's okay, A lot more people did understand your Sarcastic joke and actually apreciated it in silence
@@bedankt007 Heh, you'd have to do some VERY careful sintering to alloy gold to tungsten.
Also... I knew it was a joke, but I didn't think the joke was funny. :p
1:08- we sawr it in your hand, Alec.
12:34 - it's smoking because at this temperature it's alredy oxidizing. This is tungsten oxide, and it settles on everything that comes in contact with smoke. Similarly, if you break a lightbulb and then turn it on, filament will "burn out" producing this exact smoke. Great video!
Or forget to turn on the argon! Poof!
Try heating it via induction. It's pretty easy to set up and it will get the metal to any temperature that you want, you have outlets with more than enough power to make it happen. Great video btw
Seems like you should make something which takes advantage of its unreasonably high density. Like a very small but oddly heavy peening hammer? An automatic touch mark stamp, so like an automatic centre punch but using the high mass of the tungsten as the internal hammer to really whack the end in hard. In industry, you commonly use tungsten as a bucking-bar to hold on the back of rivetts as you form them or for panel beating.
I would make a weight from tungsten for long drive for truckers. Use it to do simple workouts and takes up little space while in use. Even a 10lb weight would be better than nothing.
Despite being very hard, tungsten is very brittle. You could use it in a hammer, but you would want to contain it like the filling in a dead blow hammer.
@@wallacechui9857 Yet it has the highest melting point of any metal in existence, which makes it great for forging as well as applications that revolve around intense heat, or plumbing.
I'm not a smith, but the science behind the properties of different materials can be fascinating. Tungsten is used as a filament for incandescent lightbulbs because it can handle heat EXTREMELY well, but density doesn't actually do too much for the strength of the material. The strength of a material comes from either the small scale structure of the material (most metals have a small, but not quite microscopic, mesh of crystals like the uneven grains of sand in an hourglass) and from the molecular structure of the material (spider's silk is super strong because it's a combination of tiny, rigid molecules held together with a super stretchy polymer, like plastic). Pure tungsten is pretty much like super condensed sand, it's usually found in compounds and has to be chemically extracted before it can be turned into a purified material, and on the atomic level it only has 2 valence electrons, which at the size of the atom means it physically can't bond with enough neighboring tungsten atoms to fill its valence electron shell in a perfect crystalline structure (the glue holding it together is basically Elmer's glue while most carbon compounds use super glue). Pure carbon compounds like graphite and diamond, however, are extremely brittle because they bond so tightly on a chemical level, which makes the physical structure less stable. Graphene is a material made by taking single molecule thick layers of graphite, which you can do at home with some scotch tape and pencil lead thanks to that weaker physical structure.
Tungsten filaments are doped with other oxides to prevent "creep" at high temperatures.
😂 your “Hey Siri” segment, activated Siri on my computer!
😅
I've looked into this too. It seems that if you can get the forge got enough to melt steel and create a puddle in the middle of the forge then place the tungsten inside of that puddle and leave it. The tungsten should absorb some of the steel making it an amalgam which effectively lowers the melting temperature BUT forms a harder product after the forge.
Alloy. Amalgams are specifically _mercury_ alloys.
Many cultures at the end of the bronze age considered iron an inferior metal. Harder to work with, needed hotter forges, couldn't be melted down when it was damaged the same way bronze could. I would love to see you work with some of it, maybe make your own mix of copper and tin that would be fitting for a sword or dagger. And also it just has the coolest color to it. I think a proper bronze sword would be a beautiful piece to sell or display as well.
Bronze was far superior than iron until proper steel could be consistently made. The blades were sharper, it was less prone to shattering, it could be melted and cast without needing a lot of the working iron and lower quality steel needed, it was pretty simple so you didn't need a master smith to use it and it melted at lower temperatures.
Even the best(less likely to explode but expensive)cannons were made from brass right up till the later 1800's when Krupp invented a process to produce reliable high quality steel steel to cast barrels from.
5:03 Probably in an Oxygen free furnace, they keep the oxygen out so the steel does not burn up in the over-heated state. A lot of special alloys (and recycling processes for that matter) use furnaces that are tuned to be oxygen free.
Holy cow I haven’t seen one of these videos in years. Last thing I remember was the making of Nickel/copper Damascus, I think that was like 5 years ago. Good to see this channel still up and running ❤
4:45 easily is my guess.
I have a scrap recovery furnace. It's supposed to be able to melt copper but it just barely can't finish the job. But, if I drop a bit of aluminum in, the whole lump goes liquid in seconds as the liquid aluminum penetrates into the copper lattice.
The resulting alloy is pretty cool: gold in color, tough like bronze, highly corrosion resistant. I've read that they the use aluminum bronze alloy to make boat propellers and dental crowns.
14:03 I feel like Alec realizes no one’s gonna try this at home 😂awesome video
This dude always surprises me with his raw strength. This dude handles The Cube with such ease, and even holds it out at arm’s length to show the camera without the slightest tremor.
He has become fully accustomed to the intensity of its density.
I had to cut a 5/8" diameter round tungsten bar the other day and used a typical abrasive blade (aluminum oxide) in a three HP abrasive chop saw with a 7" blade and it took about four minutes to cut through it. This saw cuts Inconel like butter and low carbon steel effortless and it really struggled to cut the tungsten bar. Not only did it take a long time and require more pressure than typical but it ate up the 1/16" thick cutting disc and the cut was curved and angled which I've never seen with this saw. I switched to a diamond blade which cut it in half the time but it only cut two pieces before wearing out though it wasn't new it only had a little wear to it and the second new blade cut two more and didn't have much life left after that. I had to face these pieces in a lathe and after the cutting experience I was surprised to find that they cut about the same as a tool steel, not bad at all using a carbide inserted tool. I tried to cut it with a carbide inserted cutoff blade in the lathe and it kind of worked but it was slow and took a lot of pressure, after cutting one piece the second piece broke the insert along with the end of the bar off. It seems that they almost get harder as heat builds up as in abrasive cutting but if you keep it cool it cuts fairly easily. I wonder if this would have deformed more had it been kept at room temperature?
alec out here pioneering dwarven hand forged items lmao nice
He should make a powerful hammer
NEXT PROJECT IDEA! Remove the iron from cereal and forge with it!!!!
Freedomheit instead of Fahrenheit is gold! 😂
As one who has taken a certification course in welding, and one who particularly enjoyed the TIG process, tungsten is a fantastic material considering that it can channel amounts of current that would melt any other metal and while doing so producing a clean and precise arc that I've heard described as "ghostly beautiful".
Phone just gave you a new merch idea, "What's the melting Temperature of Cast Karen/Carrot(?)?", with that incredibly confused face.
Part of me wants to wonder if a rubix cube can be made from that block.
Can i forge tungsten or "I dont know how to get my steam hammer working soooooooooo try something".... LOL Love it ALEC!
Work hard play hard!
yea this is a pretty low effort diversion
He said in the last video that he needed to find a boiler to feed the hammer?
@@stubby_nubprobably needs more time to progress enough to make a full video for it,so instead of nothing he chose to do this bit of experimenting
@@OgeiDennepeL sure. personally, I wish he would have forged a knife or something else useful instead of playing with a block of tungsten. I miss the days of his content being full of blade smithing. I know the dude has other things going on, but since moving from montana, the content has become quite.....lame? Please do not get offended, this is just my opinion and should have no effect on you or anyone else reading this.
That was absolutely unhinged and amazingly entertaining! LOVE IT!!
Your outlook on life is a direct reflection on how much you like yourself.
@11:11 Tungsten melts at 3,422°C (6,192°F) Guide yourself accordingly. (You'll need an *_arc furnace._* Natural gas won't do.)
induction mayhaps?
He does not need to melt it just to reach the brittle to ductile transition. A forge that melt the metal is useless. The brittle to ductile transition on tungsten depends on the crystalline structure and so on the method it was produced but so the literature is confusing about that is about 1300C. But even so it is still very hard, but pounding it won't break it.
Even if he melts it and pour into a mold, very few mold will resist the temperature, even silica and graphite will have trouble at this temperature. In metals like Titanium, Osmium, Iridium and Tungsten syntherizing it if preferable.
you can't show us this magical material without making a knife out of it, please at least attempt make a tungsten knife for us.
It would be a lousy knife.
@@Sman7290 so? It would be fun to watch.
He made n kitchen knife out of gold... @@Sman7290
you could try with an induction forge.
I think he actually has one and it would work great
Do you mean an induction furnace? I don't know what an induction forge is.
@@-danR yes that's correct. Im not sure if the tungsten works with induction but I imagine it might
@@Yoshikaable There's a youtube video showing a small rod of tungsten in an induction coil solenoid. For a large cube of the stuff I don't know how that would work or if it would be too expensive.
@@-danR fantastic! I hope Alec sees your reply and gives it another go with a smaller piece, though I doubt it will be tried again
12:56 that glow is basically how oldskool lightbulbs work
Sintered tungsten has up to a couple percent iron in it by weight to aid with fusing. This is one of the ways that a gold scam can be detected easily. Sintered tungsten will attract a magnet due to the iron content. Gold will not. Try using an arc furnace or just raw electric current to heat the tungsten cube. That should get your cube hot enough to deform more easily. Just be wary that the oxidation will be worse. That is what the smoke you observed was. Tungsten will readily react with oxygen in the air at high temperature. Thankfully, the reaction is not energetic enough to keep a large piece of material like the cube caught on fire. It could, however, keep small chips lit on fire if hot enough. Also, if the cube is hot enough to deform easily then it will also be hot enough to damage some of your tools, such as the tongs used to hold it in place. It is also a good idea to wear welding shades since the heat it radiates could damage the eyes nearer to the melting point. If you have an aluminum heat suit then you should use that, too. You don't want to give yourself a weird sunburn.
tbh who would scam tungsten for gold, its the other way around, gold is way more valuable (though tungsten is expensive), the information is still useful in gold buying though!
They would get 10 grams of gold for the value of this 5kg cube
someone please scam me with 5kg blocks of tungsten that has been replaced with gold, i won't report you. in fact i'd even buy more, thanks
Titanium would be interesting to see, too! Careful with machining it, titanium chips are flammable.
titanium needs shielding gas when its heated
He has already forged titanium, made a small anvil while still in Montana.
@@Halbostfriese ideally use HEM(climbcut/heat into chip) and flood coolant.
Tungsten also burns well below it's melting point (that smoke when he pulled it from the forge was likely tungsten oxide. Titanium is even worse, and more energetic.
@@DH-xw6jp I completely forgot about that lol
11:42 he finally puts it in the forge
Thank you
Ol'boy is trying to forge the tesseract
I'd like to see it being made into a tiny anvil, but an axe head or a knife would be nice too. Though I think it could be big enough for multiple things
Make it from depleted uranium
@@dontknow3886 DU would make a terrible anvil tbh - it's hard and brittle, and the dust is highly toxic.
@@patheddles4004 nah i meant for the axe if you swing it upwards of 1.5 km/s it might even self-sharpen as it goes trough the wood
@@dontknow3886 ah right, that makes way more sense. That could work really well.
4:50 tungsten is quite chemicly active metal and it dissolves in liquid iron, also did you notices that fine tungsten filaments exist? thats stuff is quite mallable, we used it to make lightbulbs ;)
btw. try copper-tungsten alloy, excellent machinability
also you can braze tungsten with steel using copper
Used to use tungsten filaments, a power source, and liquid nitrogen to convert the filaments into a glass phase (aka amorphous metal), rapid rapid cooling removes the crystalline structure of the metal and gives it some useful properties.
TIG welders will sometimes current sharpen their electrode and end up with an extremely sharp glass phase tip.
Anyways it was really useful for making certain high voltage electromechanical components, we used it to create a tough material that would flex a certain way under high voltage and current
If you're working with smaller-scale pieces of tungsten, the best way that I know of is using an induction heater. They're not that hard to build, and the heat output is only limited by how much current you can put through it, so you could get it hot enough to completely liquefy tungsten if you had the amperage to spare. The catch is that the piece of tungsten has to fit through the rings on the heater, which limits the size of the piece you can work with severely, and it's a different process because of heat distribution (the surface will heat faster than the core, so if you want to stop short of just turning the entire piece into a puddle, you have to heat in cycles to allow the heat to disperse throughout the work). Bit of a different experience, and it's certainly not conventional blacksmithing, but it can be done.
technically speaking your tungsten carbide end mill is a metal matrix composite, its composed of tungsten carbide particles as the reinforcement suspended in a cobalt matrix, pure Tungsten Carbide is in fact a ceramic
The not so fun fact with that is that if you drop your tungsten carbide wedding ring on a concrete floor it will shatter.
Don't ask me how I know.
Kind of like aluminium oxyde can be considered a ceramic and is commonly used as abrasive, despite aluminium itself being a pretty soft metal and almost useless in its pure form.
Just because it's derived from the same metal, doesn't mean it necessarily has comparable properties.
@@pbe6965 you can actually make a metal matrix composite from aluminium and aluminium oxide, you mix powdered forms of both and then sinter the mixture most MMC's are made in such a fashion
@@TheMingilator I wasn't trying to contradict you (english is not my mother langage so I might have conveyed the wrong idea), just giving another exemple :)
The "Just because it's derived from the same metal, doesn't mean it necessarily has comparable properties" part was referring to the part of the video where he assumed tungsten would be very hard since carbide is, not to your answer.
@@pbe6965 I understand where you were coming from, none of what you said contradicted anything I said, I have a master's in engineering and am a bit of a geek when it comes to materials, you can actually have a ceramic matrix composite using much harder ceramic as a reinforcement and lower melting point ceramic as the matrix, engineering is wild, I've even seen a metal matrix composite with aluminium as the matrix and carbon fibre as the reinforcement, not such a good idea as galvanic corrosion can kick in pretty quickly
Look up: malleability of tungsten in relation to temperature.
You may find some interesting graphs.
is it crazy and has dips in unexpected places?
4:00 To me that looked like £1 of chips.
The tungsten sold by Midwest Tungsten Service Isn't pure. It contains a few percent of nickel. it says so in the product card papers they send you. If you do the math for the cubes density you will find its some amount below 19g/cm3. You can also test its purity with a magnet. pure tungsten isn't magnetic. Most added materials like nickel are.
There is an open access review paper from some gentlemen in the UK going into the forging and processing temperatures and procedures for pure tungsten.
Advanced Processing and Machining of Tungsten and Its Alloys
by Samuel Omole, Alexander Lunt, Simon Kirk, and Alborz Shokrani.
2022 paper published in JMMP volume 6 issue 1.
I can't post a link here but you should be able to find it.
Gist: 1500-1700C with one group hitting it with 2500.
1700C is within the range of a MoSi2 resistance furnace which are very simple to operate.
Wouldn't an induction furnace help?
@@spdcrzy That is what I would use, I have gotten to about 2600C in my big furnace at work, under argon of course.
@@Ammoniummetavanadate I'm surprised Alec didn't think of that, honestly.
Tungsten alloys and pure tungsten are manufactured in a oxygenless furnace. The furnace is open at the end, gas is pumped in and burns where the oxygen in the air and the gas mix, the gas pressure keeps the oxygen out. The tungsten is in a powdered form when you prepare it to alloy. You press the tungsten in a special mold to make a pressed powder bar. I remember that copper and silver alloys would just have the metals in pellet form and would be sucked into the powdered bar by capillary action in the furnace. Pretty awesome to watch. The furnace would get hot enough to fuse the tungsten into a solid bar with the alloyed material. I don't remember how they used to make tungsten/iron alloys for certain, but I think it was all powdered, mixed extremely well, pressed and then fired.
Two questions:
1 - What could you do with the Tungsten shavings/dust?
2 - What if you cut the Tungsten into smaller/thinner pieces?
15:29 what an awesome moment!!!!! guitars rocking crazy!!tungsten never giving up, this is high quality content right here, awesome music very compatible with the mood we should recognize
Steel: Whelp i'm hot, squashed and look like a doughnut. Tungsten: I laugh at your press and hammers and have a nice warm fuzzy feeling
I believe the tungsten dissolves into the steel at high temps. Like CO2 into water (soda) or acetylene into acetone.
This; it also helps that tungsten is easily prepared in powdered form (e.g. hydrogen reduction of oxide powder), and just blending that with some iron, pressing into a pellet, and sintering/melting that, will disperse it pretty quickly.
Let me see here... up to about 15%at (36.7%wt), W in Fe, it's readily soluble, beyond which the liquidus rises beyond 1900K. So that would be a simple way to prepare tungsten master alloy. Even down at 1100K, the solid-state solubility isn't bad, a couple percent; kinda reminiscent of the Fe-C system.
Incidentally, "like CO2 into water" occurs in metallurgy just as well. Brass has a large fraction of Zn, yet is poured above Zn's boiling point; Mg is dosed into cast iron (albeit only a very tiny amount) to induce nodular iron formation (ductile iron). Mn also has a fairly low boiling point (only a bit above Fe MP). Zn even forms reasonable alloys with Fe (or, by the looks of it anyway), though I don't know any have commercial importance. Regular gasses of course have various solubility, H2 being of particular concern for many alloys, and O2 for noble metals (Cu, Ag..); or how iron scale itself can be seen as an alloy between Fe, FeO, Fe3O4 and Fe2O3.
Actually more like salt dissolves into water.
My father was a mold maker and many years ago he worked for my grandfather. My grandfather was a notoriously difficult boss. He was angry one day and needed to yell at someone so, he chose my father who it should be noted trolled his father a lot. My grandfather picked up a piece of tungsten that was on my father’s bench and ordered him to “do something with this!” My father made a set of darts. when the old man found out he nearly lost his mind 😂 so I say in honor of my father you should make something useful but ultimately frivolous
A dart set made from tungsten sounds amazing!
@@jamescomstock7299 Supposedly he used the set to some success and then he sold them and that just angered the old man more. No one could get that man angrier than my dad.
@@jamescomstock7299 I had one some years back. It was designed to be extra heavy while not physically any larger than normal darts. They were really too heavy for me but as I had payed for them I learned to put some more strength into it. Really changes the throwing strength needed.
@@jamescomstock7299 They have been made for friggin years, try again.
It's nice to see young gentlemen getting into the field keeping it alive
“Steele always goes in the rear” 😂
This here would be a tungsten alloy. This is why it is somewhat machinable. If it were pure tungsten, none of your tools would have been able to touch it. Normally ranges between 70-85 Rockwell C hardness. The alloy is usually ~30ish HRC.
Moh's hardness of pure tungsten is only 7.5, hardened steel comes in at 8 which is why it could drill into the block and most common grinding materials come in at 8+. So this is pure tungsten, the alloys can get dramatically harder. Tungsten Carbide for instance comes in around 9, but it's still soft compared to things like boron carbide which is very close to a 10, and potentially exceeds it.
If you are wondering, Rockwell measures the resistance to deformation, not to abrasion.
@@Jake12220 I was speaking more to the HSS drill, inserted carbide cutter, file, and hacksaw blade, not the abrasive stuff. I do still think this is not pure tungsten, regardless. Good info though, thank you for sharing.
@@SGIABC all those things are still abrasive though, they scratch at the surface rather than deform it. The only tools related to impact hardness are things like the punch and hammers.
9:44 I am pretty sure, that you have melted steel in that forge. A couple of years back, while heating a sword in a tube
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
9:00 I am quite curious as to how the cube melted a little, but the rod didnt at all
Surface area
@@discmaniastudiossurely the tip is the smallest surface area? 🤷
prolly the argon cooling the rod down cuz its coming along, it being heated wont cool the cube as much
It's gold? 😂
2:40. A file would have sufficed.
😂
Clearly I cannot, better question is can you
Tungsten is required for some "big rulers" that are used in measuring height-differences in construction, because it doesn't really change size depending on most temperatures, meaning that if you're measuring something over the course of a day (with different temperatures during the day) you won't have any differences from that. This is usually for projects where "1mm uncertainty over 1km distance" isn't really an acceptable margin for error, so... something of a niche.
Steele always goes in the rear 😂 14:42
"smithing skill too low"
“Smithing skill points required: 1800
Current: 102”
it would definitely be interesting to see if there is any difference in hardness after you have tried to forge it.
According to ChatGPT 4o: To forge tungsten, the material would need to be heated to a very high temperature due to its high melting point and extremely high recrystallization temperature. Tungsten has a melting point of approximately 3,422°C (6,192°F), but forging usually occurs below the melting point.
For tungsten, forging temperatures are typically between 1,400°C and 2,400°C (2,552°F and 4,352°F). At these temperatures, tungsten becomes more ductile and workable. However, even at these high temperatures, tungsten is still challenging to forge due to its brittleness and tendency to crack. Specialized equipment and techniques, such as hot isostatic pressing or working in a controlled atmosphere to prevent oxidation, are often required.
On today's episode of "Why we make and use tungsten carbide instead of just leaving it as tungsten" another point is proven.