Cold Welding Metals In a Vacuum
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- čas přidán 24. 11. 2020
- In this video I show you how it is possible to cold weld metals together in a vacuum. I talk about galling vs cold welding and how it caused problems on the Galileo Spacecraft.
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*Any experiment you try is at YOUR OWN RISK. The Action Lab assumes no responsibility for any injury if you attempt anything you see in this video or on The Action Lab channel. - Věda a technologie
At 7:20 I definitely did not mean Celsius I meant Fahrenheit, lol. I don’t think I’d be very comfortable in a 60 degree Celsius lab.
Ok.
xD you deserve an Oscar
Was just about to comment about that 😂
hahaha i did actually thought what are u saying
love from india bro❤️❤️
Pin that comment or you a lot of comments about it.
So when I push these two pieces of aluminium together, they should stick together.
But they don't. (Vsauce music).
Blah blah blah, right?
WRONG!!!
Or.. Are they?
mathologer, Action lab and Vsauce 2 ❤️❤️❤️
Are you sure this is cold welding and not friction welding? When you put them in the bag and the bag squeezes them, you could have a little bit of friction that could raise the tiny contact points above 85deg. You should put them in the freezer for a while and then try again.
@Joe Duke I’m aware cold welding is occasionally use of space experimentally, my point was that this is not cold welding. This is friction melting gallium which then cools and fuses the pieces together
Great video! Two questions:
1) For the vacuum chamber test, wouldn’t you need to remove the oxide layer that is already present on the surface of the two metal pieces? Just putting them in vacuum does not remove the oxide that is already there
2) Would an inert atmosphere (nitrogen?) work instead of a vacuum?
IME: yes, no. 'twas argon though, no means to try n2. It's freaking wicked hard to find LN2 in this city of five mill nutjobs, I don't get it. "Most of our atmosphere? Sorry, we don't carry that. You want a bunch of a highly unstable fuel, dissolved in acetone, in a tank full of concrete for super cheap, though? Comin' right up!"
Strange having no mention of having to buff off oxide (sulfate, etc) layers to cold weld. Props for knowing stuff, stuff knowers ftw!! So yeah, big time yes to that...unless you're cold welding fine gold or something, then you can just wipe it clean first.
I suspect n2 wouldn't do anything. Moreso than argon or any other noble really. Stuff I can pretty easily cold weld with the same process in an ultra high vac regime, does nothing of the sort in a vessel thoroughly purged of air and filled with Ar. I'd imagine inert gases present between the pieces meant to be welded would do what it typically does: be inert, and occupy space between the metals.
I wonder if you could _pressure_ weld gallium(for instance)? Not like smashing two pieces together, I mean like putting two pieces in an *extremely* robust vessel and pumping it to 1500 bar or something. That'd be cool.
@@phxgen Very interesting, thanks!!
@@phxgen
Just buy liquid nitrogen and let it boil?
@@lucaslucas191202 That's the problem, I haven't (yet) found anyone in this city that'll fill my little dewar. The only place I've found thus far that'll sell me LN2 is like 45min away & they won't fill my dewar, instead they want people to rent their enormous dewars for like $850 & up.
Given the melting point of gallium is under 30° C, the slightest friction may cause spot welding.
Friction welding.
Exactly what I was just thinking.
The problem with welding gallium together is that you have to superchill gallium to get it to resolidify. It will stay melted down to pretty low temperatures. I have some gallium that I have to put in the refrigerator for several hours to get it to change back to a solid. It will very slowly crystalize even when it's ~5° C
The thermal conductivity of the metal is too great to allow heat buildup at the contact point with slight friction.
you have to realize it has to cool back down
I asked for this is the comments ages ago, never thought he’d get round to do it! Great video as always.
I messaged him on twitter about this too some months back and he he replied he is a good person
Same here kid
Same here, i asked him to do it 2 years ago and he did it now.
oh really? wow , way to go
Who asked?
but... removing the air doesn’t magically make the oxide layer disappear? it only would keep it from forming after forging
That’s why gallium/indium is being used IIRC
Yea, I was wondering why ActionLab didn't remove the oxide layer first, but then I remembered that he would have to do that *inside* the chamber with a full vacuum pulled, which sounds like it would be ridiculously difficult haha. He would probably need a much bigger chamber, along with specialized tools/gloves that could be controlled remotely, which I'm pretty sure only a professional laboratory could pull off.
Oh well, I'm sure that somewhere out there is a cold welding video with a truly accurate demonstration :)
@@theoverseer393 I thought he said that gallium has *less* of an oxide layer, not no oxide layer, but maybe I'm wrong.
What confuses me is that I don't think the titanium antenna on that satellite was being squeezed by anything, so how could have cold welded shut if this demonstration is accurate to what happens in outer space?? Even with the squeezing, the gallium in this video was barely welded together, so how could a titanium antenna get welded stuck just sitting out in space, without any outside pressure on it? I thought it must be because the oxide layer on the satellite had been ablated by solar radiation, while the gallium in this video still had its oxide layer. I've tried looking it up to see if I'm right, or if there is something else going on, but I can't find anything.
Thats why you need to twist and press to scratch the metal to get it off
@@wolfsiejk yeah... oxides are SUPER hard - simply scratching or twisting the metal won’t do that
I'm skeptical about whether you were able to actually cold weld. My understanding is that for cold welding to be successful, you have to get the surfaces scrupulously clean. I wonder if what happened was that a vacuum was created between the two pieces of metal and the edges were so well sealed that air could not get in. You probably had about 1.5 sq-in of surface area there, which would mean around 21 lbs of air pressure. When you take new microscope slides out of the package, they will stick together because they are so flat that the air cannot get between them. (Idea for an episode?)
High karat weight gold should be easy to cold weld because it has no oxide layer. Would it work to put a sheet of gold leaf between two very flat silver ingots?
Those surfaces were crude af, so I doubt it could have been held together by a mini vacuum. Maybe grease held them together
He said dissimilar metals have different crystalline structures so don't work. But by his theory, 2 gold ingots that are dead flat and smooth, and clean should work. His attempts were relatively filthy from fingerprint sweat/oils let alone not totally flat for good contact. Pretty poor excuse for a lab experiment.
The two ingots still had the oxidized layer from being exposed to the air previously. That layer does not just go away from being in a vacuum. The oxidization had to be scratched off on both ingots by mechanical manipulation. Only a few small scratches were made and connected which is why it was so easy to pull apart.
@@Newt2799 right but I think he was thinking about the possibility of the bits being vacuum sealed together instead of actually being cold welded
Yes, it looks more like wringing gauge blocks together.
This is so cool! I have an oral presentation to do at the end of my year and your channel is a gold mine of intersting science phenomenons. Thank you for the inspiration! Love your vids
Watch Tom Scot
man i was so sccared about your fingers getting stuck inbetween the 2 monster magnets
i was gritting my teeth. little Neodymium magnets can hurt you.
@@markusgarvey I usually pay extra for them to hurt me
@@youtube.commentator Kinky.
no you weren't
@@sleepful1917 yes I was
James, your genuine excitement over the things you discover in your videos is infectious. Thanks for the killer content!
The fact that it didn't work the first time shows us how genuine your channel is.
I worked in Q.A. in manufacturing for years. We used to "wring" gauge blocks together. The phenomena is not entirely understood, but "cold welding" is thought to be in play. Galling: We press fit steel parts together and with certain product designs we'd get galling, and it took a lot of small process changes to eliminate it.
7:17 Shouldn't it be Fahrenheit?
Galium melts at 29,76 °C
yes clearly fahrenheit.
I'm pretty sure he'd be dead if it was 60°C in his room.
@@jamesbrown99991 heard of a sauna?
@@kukenballe7063 lol that depends on the core body temperature, if your body temperature gets to 60°, you'd be pretty dead
@@matiasivanarevalosbenitez811 yes but we were talking about ROOM temperature
Indium to Aluminium: You don't have the Gall to join in the open.
-
Aluminium: Your bad jokes can't foil my plans.
looool
Yo you’ve been posting my favorite topics these past months. Love it man
Great video, well explained, i like how you showed us how it behaves both with oxygen and without in the same setup (magnets), and also how you mentioned the temperature as i was slightly worried that the gallium might be transfering your body heat, but the room was apparently cold :) credit where credit is due, keep it up!
Galling is one of the reasons we don't typically use stainless steel anchors for pool safety covers. They are made from brass since they resist galling and oxidize to a nice dark finish that compliments most deckings.
3:46 that "close" sounded like it had some autotune on it, lol
Lol yeah
@@fhsjdjskkshi BREUH
You have the least click baity titles.. I usually have to force myself to watch your videos because whenever I do watch your videos I'm never disappointed.
There's another kind of very unique welding done with explosives.
Under extreme heat and pressure you can weld two dissimilar metals making a custom alloy to better suit your needs such as aircraft skin for example.
Friction stir welding also does that, but you can't use it for deep (beyond 1 inch) welds without a special machine.
James in 2040: Today we're going to merge Sun and Mercury together and see what happens
you think humans can survive that far while Covid is here
@@deadski8860 COVID will either last and end next year or it will go on for a long time but with very low cases for the next 3 or 4 years so we will have to see
@@mlgklipz2543 Nice to hear!
@@deadski8860 well we survived ww1 ww2 and black death I think covid is kida small compared to these all.
more like 2400
I remember learning about cold welding in space as a kid, it was so mind blowing, one of many reasons why space it's cool figuratively and literally
You went to space as a kid? That's amazing.
@@Chris.Pontius hahahaha nice bro you make my day
@@FIRE_STORMFOX-3692 danger, Will Robinson!
Tis is also the reason why in slow moving mechanics like in clocks where you can't reliably get an oil film in between moving gears then instead you make the gears out of different materials. It's not because brass is cheap as some people might think. It's because the alloy brass (copper and zinc) won't cold weld with steel (iron). The result is that you get a clock that lasts for generations. Had all gears been made out of the much stronger steel it wouldn't last as long as the steel would grind away because of cold welding. Naturally the largest gears are made out of the softest material as that causes gears to wear more evenly.
Love this channel you can always learn about new things or even thought experiments.
I just love this Channel
I'm a fan of Physics
It's very interesting!
Physics is fun until you have to do an exam... school ruins everything
@@LucasTheBotIt depends on the teacher if the exams are fun or not
Might be in physics, that you get a lot of joy, when you have to calculate how many photons will come out a green laser every second with 3000 W.
@@LucasTheBot
Concept wise Physics is Fun
But yes I agree with you, exam wise it can get bad a lot of times
But as far as you understand the depths of the vast knowledge that Physics provides you, those tests should not matter.
Just that fun of learning is more than enough!!
That's my take.
What say??
you should check out fermilab @atharva joshi, because physics is everything
It's called ringing when you get to pieces of like material to stick together we use this method in qc labs to put gage block together.
i think it's wringing
What about wringing gauge blocks together? Is that cold-welding or galling? 🤔
Both as they're basically the same
Neither it turns out, check the sixty symbols video on it. It turns out that its just that when you make metals extremely flat to the eye, then when you push them together, they form microscopic suction pads, like the kind that hold your phone holder to your car window, just microscopic. They verified this by adding oil to the surface, and a bit like licking your suction cups, that improved the bonding. If it was cold welding, the oil would stop it working, and secondly once you joined then pulled apart your gauge blocks even once, you'd have microscopic mountains and valleys from where it didn't cleave cleanly, so it wouldn't work twice.
I got here because of a comment on a reddit thread when we were talking about this power tool that astronauts use, and someone mentioned cold welding. Then it was like “whaaaat?” and then yup, here’s a link to a video and : boom, I subscribed. This kind of channel is the bread & butter of my CZcams subscription list.
LOVE IT
Cold welding also works with hard metals, if they have perfectly plane surface and you slide them above each other. Distance or mass calibration items are well suited for this. Such items are stored in a fluid to prevent this from accidentally happening.
Basically a shop grease, filtered kerosene, WD40 but generally you want a rust preventative that is easy to remove so kerosene and WD40 work very well.
he is more informative than my school teachers
Damn true
hahaha
That a good looking pickle ngl.
HEh iSs MoR3 inForMatiVE tHaN MY SchO0l tEAchEr$
He makes a lot more money than a teacher
Great to see this in action, thanks.
Finally not someone using LITERALLY ALL TYPES OF WELDING and saying is cold welding.
So nice work!
Cold welding
His nose : Feels cold let's swell
Ya know, I really didn't expect that you can weld using coldness. It's so _cool_
theres a similar thing with ice (ik its not metal) but its kinda the same thing
you push 2 pieces of ice together and they get stuck
@@nuiob1766 that's pretty cool
That's due to a pretty different phenomenon dude
Its not USING coldness.
@@melody3741 Yeah I know, trying to make a pun 6 months ago and I don't even know wtf I was trying to say lol
Damn, this is so satisfying to finally hear about.
Awesome as always!! Keep it up!
The attraction between the large neodymium magnet and the even larger magnet neodynium magnet through the glass was like _a desperate boy wanting to meet his crush_
Lol
this is so cool no..this is AWESOME
Lolf unny pun
I have always been amazed by you experiments. Also you make it so informative and interesting. Keep it up bro.
As a welder, I am a bit familiar with cold welding. The presence of oxygen has a near immediate effect on metals that have been grounded smooth.
Too small to see with the naked eye, oxide and rust immediately forms on a cleaned metal surface on a microscopic level.
But if you were to clean the surfaces of two similar metals in an oxygen free tank, they would definitely stick together. I've seen the experiment first hand with a tank filled with pure nitrogen and sealed rubber gloves protruding into the container.
Hey Action Lab, put ice cubes in your vacuum chamber. Let us see what happens.
They will just melt....😂😂...why does it seem interesting to you....there will be nothing worth significance
@@ADVERSE04 shut up
@@marsen7350 shut up
@@tuyiren781 😂I don't know why people find it interesting.The ice will just melt that's it what do they expect the water to flow or something😂 ,well this is a common misconception among people that gravity doesn't work in no pressure areas
@@ADVERSE04 you must be a fun person
Hey, gallium has a melting point just above room temperature so when you put it in a vacuum, its melting point becomes low and it just sticks to itself! No cold welding today!
Top notch content as always!
In preparatory we had metrology, where we used to have measure patterns made of extremely flat surfaces, and one technique for making a bigger patter used to to be to stick two or more patterns by making hard contact between them, our teacher told to us that it was due to vacumm, but, maybe it was a combination of cold welding and vacumm as well
I was about to look for cold welding on youtube, lucky enough TheActionLab uploads
Day=Made!
Get some engineering slips. They're so perfectly smooth that putting them together essentially creates a vacuum between them and they stick together like magnets, but they're not magnetic.
I used to do this all the time at work with hard drive platters, NO VACUUM CHAMBER NEEDED. And it's super fun
You are a joy to watch. Great content!
I have a little concern about how you performed the experiment in the bag. You performed a twisting motion, which should generate some friction, potentially causing a small amount of liquid Ga to be produced, and then resolidify the two pieces together. Might be something to consider.
I am from indian and my name is ojas and i am of 13 years but has interest in science and i always see this man all videos how he explains that is the best thing of him he explains very clearly
Why did you need to mention your nationality, name and age?
@@vinaythakur4742 I agree
I love your enthusiasm
I learned the property earlier, cool to watch it in action
In large steel structures like bridges we often use Tension Friction connections. The mating surfaces are brushed free of rust and the bolts are tightened to snug tight plus 3/4 turn. This creates a kind of pressure weld between the mating surfaces that is stronger than the sheer strength of the bolts. They don’t continue to stick after the bolts are removed.
Are you sure this is cold welding and not friction welding? When you put them in the bag and the bag squeezes them, you could have a little bit of friction that could raise the tiny contact points above 85deg. You should put them in the freezer for a while and then try again.
I do welding, and I am thoroughly intrigued.
Beautiful .... sensation of the Practical Physics ❤️❤️❤️ dopomin running through my brain
The laws of physics on earth: *exist*
A vaccum chamber: "im gonna pretend i didnt see that"
bleh
Other way round.
Laws of physics exists
Earths atmosphere and chemistry:I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that
I like these videos a bit more than the ultra black paint kind.
Keep it up!
How did you send this 27 mins ogo the video was made 9 mins ago
@@claudiavanvalkenhoef9971 physics do not work in a vaccum chamber :)
Martin James Who asked you?
The Action Lab is my guilty pleasure.
mind constantly blown... by ur videos
Your hair looks great bro❤
3:17 - HOLY SHIT
Just learned about cold welding and was going to ask action lab to make a video on it and then found this!
This is awesome! Would the cold welded bond be stronger if you did the vacuum experiment with the indium?
I don't think they were bonded at all. There is a pocket in each puck, you created a vac between them that held them together
He is the only man who build his career from a vacuum chamber
Your background music always reminds me of mass effect, I don't know if you do this on purpose, but it's nice.
He is simply amazing.
Yesterday I was playing around with slip gauges and my friend rubbed it together and to my surprise it sticked to each other I thought it was magnetic but today after seeing your video I found it was a more interesting phenomenon.
Wait wait wait, so is this considered... cold fusion 😂
This is so interesting and informative thank you sir
Color of gallium is so beautiful!
Stainless steel nuts and bolts will gall especially when using nylock nuts.
Stainless steel pipe fittings are really bad for it, to the point if you dont uses something like graphite in the thread you may never separate them
Is there any chance the friction melted the metal a tiny amount on the surface?
Yes but I am not good at explaining things so I’ll have to look it up but it’s something called “sublime” I think
Not really the friction but yeah friction could help it occur
Sublimation means turning directly from solid to gas, with no liquid stage - such as ice evaporating in temperatures too low for water, or dry ice making clouds. Not related.
@@VoltisArt yes
Love your unique expirements❤👌
Love this cool experiment
7:22
Celsius or Fahrenheit
clearly Fahrenheit. Or do you think 60°C (140°F) are normal house temp?
@@neutronenstern.
It is in my house
@@Banana_Judge good radiator
or do you have a very good wood stove or something. Where can i buy it?
Melting point of galium is 29.76 celsius or 85 fahrenheit. So he misspoke.
@@neutronenstern.
No. I live on the sun
This guy said “together” too many times than is scientifically possible in a 10 minute video.
I think it's also possible the empty space between the billets had a vacuum in it that kept the two pieces together under atmospheric pressure.
You should repeat the experiment with two flat surfaces and see if you can confirm cold welsing.
Another metal notorious for cold-welding when you don’t want it to is stainless steel, particularly weldable 300-series stainless steels like 304 and 316. If you clean a type 304 bolt and nut really well, say by dipping them in hot nitric acid to remove the chromium oxide layer, then tighten the bolt and nut together, there is a good chance that they will never come apart. Many a physics grad student working with high vacuum equipment (which is almost entirely made from stainless steel) has learned this the hard way. The solution is to apply a vacuum-safe lubricant like molybdenum disulfide on the threads first.
5:12 "it didn't stick :("
“They finally found out it was a series of unfortunate events”, is there anything Count Olaf won’t do!
He is very dedicated XD
Bro you were my science teacher during quarantine thank you
I was waiting for video like this for ages lol that was instantclick without thinking
Would cold welding work in an inert atmosphere like pure nitrogen or argon? Personally, unless I'm missing something crucial, I don't see why not
Surface layer of metals must be kept clean from any impurities
Inertgas is gonna keep metals safe from oxide layer . Since every materials have surface roughness and can act as an air pocket ( impurity ) causing Less metal to metal surface contact . Resulting in very awful weld .
Eye protection when playing with strong magnets. Shatter danger.
It definitely helps if you have two flat highly polished surfaces that you put together.
i love this guy and his videos.
you have to find a way to remove the oxide layer in a vacuum then find a way to place the two clean surfaces together without ever breaking the vacuum.
I learn more in this than university
why do i see you everywhere
Lol, I know why he is everywhere, he posted it on his CZcams, but lol the comment itself made me laugh
You should go india and take 8th grade because it was use to teach kid in 8th grade in india LoL
university is just as bad as high school?
Wait....did you say that this concept is given in 8th standards books....stop kidding man....it's definitely not...
You need some friction as well between the two surfaces while in the vaccum, to wear away the bit of oxide layer which is already present
This is amazing NO THIS IS AWESOMENESS TO THE NEXT LEVEL :0000
At last.... Oxygen was the Impostor 😶
Sir can you make liquid metallic hydrogen in your lab.
Do you know what conditions required to make " liquid metallic hydrogen in lab"
Whaaaaaaat!!!!!!!
Sure, let me replicate jupiter's core like presure conditions in my garage.
Cold welding is an actual problem in high & ultra high vacuum systems. Components
like screws are particularly prone to this. One solution is the use of a lubricant such
as Molibum Disulfide it has a low vapor pressure, tolerates temperatures of at least
200 C. Other agents may be available now days it's been a while since i had to deal
with this sort of thing.
Our teacher at the vocational school told us that degreased steel gauge blocks must not be left together permanently, otherwise they would be cold-welded. Gauge blocks are manufactured very precisely and used for the calibration of precision measuring devices. They also told us that if this happens you destroy them if you try to torn them apart with force...a pretty expensive experiment a small set cost around 2500€ ..price depends on the clasification grade.
Damn oxides.. being a welder, I know these things.
First
Ugh
Thank you, this is a great and new information
Great opening