Argon's heavier than air when it's the same temperature as the air, but you heat it up to a bajillion degrees and it'll rise right up out of that box. Looks like the gas flow couldn't make up for that, oxygen got in the box and it was game over. That's why the crucible caught fire too.

The argon saved the titanium from that nasty oxygen how noble of it lol

This has got to be one of the funniest machinist (if I can even call it that, trolol) channel I've ever come across. I have to say I have been entertained on each vid I've come across. Keep up the good work AvE

Videos like this are great. Most of the time I'm thinking "Chris is a professional, he's been in the industry a long time, he's got a great shop, he's got a little extra money to burn, he's not like me, I can't do stuff", and then you just try stuff and sometimes it fails and I'm like "Oh yeah, he's just a guy who tries stuff, I should just keep doing stuff too." I hear lots of times from professionals "This is the only way to do this", and "This has to be done or it won't work".. well, sometimes professionals confuse the best way with the only way. There are lots of crappy ways of doing things too and I find half the time they work just fine for me, but sometimes they don't work out and it's neat to see *why* some things need to be done a certain way. Learning the perfect method doesn't add a lot of context, it's just blindly following instruction.

Titanium is an interesting one to forge as well, especially drop forging. It takes a fair bit of effort to heat up in the furnace, plus we had to run it a bit rich to avoid major oxidation. When we got it into the die (we were making SBC con rods) and started hitting it, the titanium absorbed all of the energy out of the drop hammer and was fairly reluctant to fill the dies completely, we had some slight underforming at the top of the wrist pin end. The impact absorbing trait I found really intriguing, because you can "bounce and catch" the hammer off regular steel forgings, whereas the titanium just took out all the energy of the hammer and you had to yank on the handle to bring the hammer back up every time

Fun fact: If your walls are painted white, they most likely get that color from titanium dioxide. Titanium is nearly as common as iron in Earth's crust, it's just super hard (and therefore expensive) to get it out of the oxide form.

I'm a Military certified Tig welder. We need to retest every three months for titanium, and let me tell you right now, just because you put the torch inside that box, does not mean that the argon lies in there like water. I have a hard enough time trying to purge the inside of a 4 inch pipe, that's completely purged with only a 3 inch gap open at the area that I would be welding. It can be purged completely confined and at the beginning I could not understand why the root would have contamination. The best thing to practice with is Stainless. Stainless does 2 things. You will either have a nice looking bead, or it will look like blackened, cratery shit!! You should have just clamped the torch with the gas just feeding into the cup. The weight of it could have helped keep the cup a bit stable if clamped properly. Try it again! It can be done.

I turned my wedding ring from titanium bar stock on the lathe, the carbide tool took 10 minutes to cool before I could remove it, the ring I put the ring straight on, it was still ice cold. The stuff does not conduct heat, it all builds up in the tool and can ruin the cutters without plenty of cooling.

7:38 excuse me sir, but your graphite appears to be on fire

Its like its some kinda titanium or something...

"Pretty much tried nothing, and I'm all out of ideas." That is my life motto.

I spent some time deburring titanium on a belt sander, the thing that freaked me out was the part got hot where you were grinding on it, then when you dipped it in water the heat moved up the part rapidly and burned your fingers where you were holding onto it that was previously cool. Got me every time

Making elephant's foot in the garage again?

The only thing I can think of to try which might result in pure titanium is to use two pieces of titanium as electrodes with an arc between them feeding them into one another and allowing the molten metal to flow directly into your mold below. Commercial systems use a vacuum chamber, special liquid cooled copper crucibles with induction heating and calcium fluoride. The calcium fluoride melts before the titanium insulating the titanium electrically from the copper crucible and the active cooling causes a thin layer of titanium to solidify on the walls of the crucible protecting the melt from contamination. You can use argon instead of a vacuum. Commercial titanium molds are made from zirconium or silica ceramics.

That was the most unintentionally funny engineering, casting thingy vid I’ve ever seen. Outstanding effort mate. Love ya vids man. 👍🏻👍🏻

awesome eye candy, Been spoiled by PCC for 2 years and never realized how hard it was to cast titanium without proper equipment. love the videos!

I love how it stopped burning right at the exact moment you said it wouldn't stop. It's like it stopped just to spite you, lol.

Fook me I was trying to hold the crucible with the cursor

Great, I love it. I hope you wearing all safety gear, zoris, t shirt and shorts. Thanks, Randy

you don't know it but you've been teaching me for a while now thank you

knipex is also just a few km away from my house, in cronenberg, wuppertal, germany. a friend from school works for them, he told me the worst thing he ever had to do was help out in QC, because their standarts are so high that its downright annoying

Hi AvE, Just to say thanks for all your videos, and I hope you and your family have a great 2016 xmas and New Year. Take care, mrbluenun

Solution is obviously to use more ampersands!

The argon is denser than air, but if you heat it with liquid metal it might get hot and escape, putting some air in your inert atmosphere. Convection currents.

While Carbon would otherwise be ideal for melting most metals, titanium is unlike most metals, and will combine one to one with carbon forming TiC, titanium Carbide. I think you made a crucible of Titanium Carbide, which accounts for the continued development of heat after the arc was removed. It's physically similar to Tungsten Carbide in most areas such as hardness and crystalline structure, though not nearly as dense. It too is used as a tool coating. The yellow/gold portions may have been Titanium Nitride, if nitrogen became introduced at some point: it is also very hard and used decoratively to simulate a gold finish. Of course, it may have been gold, but would that much Au gone unnoticed in the crucible?

Just re-watching this. I wonder if it wasnt all the carbon in contact with the titanium - titanium carbide is apparently pretty easy to make.

Amazing, how one man's agrivation can be another's entertainment!

Man, I just wanted to see some nice videos while eating, and then this turned to be AWESOME

Of all your crazy lines, this one is my favorite one yet... "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas"

Back in the good old days when I was but a lad. I was given the task of cutting a part of a soldering fixture. The fixture had some titanium rails on it and I had been told that titanium won't burn. You know we use it as a soldering fixture, because it's non-reactive. So being the clever lad that I am I thought well if I've just got to shorten this whole thing why don't I put it in the saw and just cut it off? Well it would not fit in the saw. It was too big. The big welded piece was too big the saw wouldn't handle it. So the boss was saying hurry up hurry up we got to get this done and I thought okay I'll just cut it off with a torch, because it's titanium the torches will just cut the steel then I'll have to saw the Titanium by hand. So I lit up the torch. When I got the iron good and hot and hit the oxygen, the titanium rail blew off of the part. It seems that when you hit it with a hot iron and 25 psi of oxygen it combusts in a hell of a hurry.

Gives one a distinct appreciation for titanium products.

Very interesting! I'm glad that you made this experiment. I learned a lot from it, which is great considering my purpose. I know only about jewelry casting, meaning silver and potentially gold. At school we're told to always use a different crucible for each type of metal we are casting. Because there always is some residue that could cause contamination. Plus like other people said, you needed a sealed cover to create a vacuum and then fill your chamber with argon. Obviously if the crucible caught fire, it's because there was oxygen in there for it to burn. Taking into account the temperature at which titanium melts might be a good idea too. It's pretty high: 1668°C, or over 3000°F. Maybe graphite didn't stand a chance at these temperatures, even more in presence of residual oxygen. Thanks for saving me a lot of trouble!

Those knipex pump pliers are the best pumps on the market hands down. Been using them for years as a plumber and they never disappointed

The gold stuff is TiN, either from gas trapped in the graphite or from the air drawn in around it. Looks like the argon actually sat around for a little while, but after a minute or so, the intense convection away from the thing (3000 degrees, it's hot, eh?) drew in fresh air, which also explains the yellow flame on the crucible (which should actually be blue from the surface layer of carbon monoxide, but maybe there's sodium around too). Far as I know, the only way to handle titanium liquid is in a crucible (and mold!) made from an even more reactive metal's oxide (MgO?), which is extremely brittle, and doing it under full inert conditions: not just glove box, but pull a vacuum and backfill with 99.999% argon kind of inert. Or just leave the vacuum, which is the usual way (which also draws trapped gasses out of the metal).

ur vids are awesome man...never change...

Watching all that arcing... the home electrical box meter must've been having a fit, and the electrical company rubbing their hands when the bill due.

"we swtiched to square.....because titanium" LOL. I love your channel keep it up

Love that arc sound

what about a closed argon filled induction heater? i remember aluminium heating up to crazy temperatures very fast even in static magnetic fields. it should be possible since titanium is also very paramagnetic. not so sure what about the oxidization. maybe such a closed chamber should be sucked free of air before filling it with an overpressure argon atmosphere.

Use castable graphite powder with titanium powder embedded in chamber shaped like target cast. Also embed stainless steel screen on opposite sides of the graphite. Protect tub with zirconia or like refractory. Flood tub with argon thru fluffy mineral wool to reduce convection currents. Leave a little reservoir above cast for extra fill of titanium. You can also design mold mixture with less conductive castable ceramic to customize resistance, even to weld with direct 220VAC. Mineral wool makes good heat insulation around mold too. Find some castable graphite and silicon carbide. Works and is FUN, too. Thanks.

Ti is such a nightmare to work with as a liquid that is why it costs a fortune. 1600°C melting point and reactive enough to be classified as an explosive. Requires processing in a vacuum chamber. It's extreme reactivity is partly what makes it stick to itself (and self anodise). When we figure out how to refine the stuff and work with it cheaply... whole new set of possibilities for mechanical engineers. One of the most interesting ways of handling and forming titanium is selective laser melting. Lasers work optimally through a vacuum. Titanium is super finicky to weld, also. Needs multiple jets of shielding gas, and to be absolutely free from contamination. Not a cheap process. Ti oxide... world has loads of it. White paint. Expensive problem is turning that into metal... if that can be figured out... then it could become cheap enough that we could use it industrially and architecturally. Need more robots. And vacuum that is empty like outer space.

Good to see " Watson Gloves ". I worked there for many years, but imports kicked the shit out of our glove business.

So new, but so old. Nice work as usual.

Hi, And so many thanks for all your super interesting videos! I almost feel I know a lot more than I really do when listening to your descriptions and Maths, thank you for in my honest opinion the best channel on you tube, especially if like me one is really into engineering and design and often wonder why something was designed ‘The hard way’ when doing it differently could have been easier you know what I mean. Loved the melting Ti an amazing metal and when one knows how its made it is easy to understand why it costs so bloody much! It doesn’t play by the rules though like other metals! I have subbed if you . Take care mrbluenun

I knew a guy who worked on the titanium "bath" that the pilot sat in, in the A-10 WARTHOG on LONG ISLAND back in the 70s and he said they use to blow out drill bits, reamers, end mills, etc like crazy working with that metal.

Sounded like a lightsaber duel going on in there. lol

Also I agreee about the knipex... I’m a plumber and was taught to only ever use channel lock brand. But man do I love those knipex!

Can't say I have any knowledge to help with you titanium problems, but it still was a fun and interesting video to watch.

if you're a fan of military aviation you're probably familiar with Lockheed's SR-71 or the "Blackbird" as it was nicknamed...the skin of the plane was a titanium alloy and the leading edges were a radar absorbing composite.....flying at altitudes above 75,000 ft at mach 3 the plane would heat up and temper the titanium making it stronger than it was prior ...each flight....titanium is a strong and beautiful material ..i have a crap ton of folding knives in my collection ....the titanium ones are are something to behold......love this channel...truly entertaining, informative and addictive....glad i found it

Wow! Lots of comments below from guys clearly experienced with working materials. But here in the shallow end I barely know how to use a drill so that was fucken mind blowing. It's like you were channelling that photonicinduction fella.

Burning graphite and oxidized titanium can't happen without oxygen present. You could put a cover on your aluminum box to keep the argon in. No wind in the shop, but you do have turbulence from the argon flow. With a top on the box you could slowly purge it through the top with argon, maybe 1 cfm for an hour (slow to minimize O2/argon mixing). Then lower the graphite electrode through a small hole in the cover. If you make the cover out of glass or acrylic, you could see what you're doing. It'd be a good opportunity to make that aluminum box into a glove box (like a sand blasting cabinet) so you can do stuff like this with no oxygen contamination.

When I was a kid I was at an alloy supply house, in NY, dental alloys, they had an experimental set up to cast ti. The problem that was stopping them was the mold material. They where looking to use quartz mixed with the refectory material. Gold was getting expensive and they needed something else. Nowadays they use CZ. Got a bridge in my mouth with CZ substrate and porcelain backed on top. Aloha

Thanks to the forestry department for having a water bomber orbiting over the house while we tried this. You know in case the smoke alarm went off because of the strawberry poptarts getting stuck in the toaster. Remember tip your goal judges, them stools don't buy themselves.

something you might try for melting your metals is to use an old school way of heating and brazing. that is carbon arc. using two carbon rods with the arc between them. it was used a lot in the 40s and 50s . i used to have the holder to feed the rods and keep the arc stable. the same way searck lights worked

What a great video. Please make your next project the homemade separation of U-235, and be sure to livestream the results. We'll be watching!

well for support, landing gear for large air raft is made with 6-4. so it's strong. use it for everything.

My mate works at BAE, and he gave me a Titanium bottle opener made in a 3D printer. It has BAE laser etched into the side, and it is uber cool! They were intended as corporate gifts, and there were some left over. It works as well!

I don't know if anyone has suggested it before but The King of Random on KZfaq has a small arc furnace that might give you better results melting stuff. he melts all kinds of stuff in it. great videos! keep em' comin!

See the flex. Thats why titanium bikes are so good. Strength and spring. Good clip to see

Loved it! Why not an induction forge? Coil around your crucible, drop in the metal, high amps..... Will that work with titanium? There are KZfaq videos of guys doing it with steel anyway.

Try heating the middle of the rod up and pulling each end apart stretching the titanium into strands

Argon is a shielding gas used in weld Chambers and MIG welding!

"Your a hard doer for sure chap" as we say down in the South of the South. Cheers!

I love you and your spare time. Chooch on.

Ti is typically cast using an investment process. A positive wax mold is coated in ceramic slurry and then baked to drain the wax. The ceramic mold is pre-heated (about 2000°F), Ti is melted using an electrode arc heater under effectively zero atmosphere, and dumped into the mold at high speed. You might be able to do it at "home" with a relatively large tank to house the process, and automated controls. Very high energy and high temp required.

OMG! WOW that was a fantastic try. Most adventure I've ever done was centrifugal platinum casting. It was not a disaster. Got some crunchy looking rings out of it, kind of cool actually.

The TiC thing got spotted below, but something else you might be interested in is that you can't use High Speed Steel tools on Titanium (like your sabre saw blade) because titanium sort of absorbs the iron ions... I destroyed a HSS drill to find out how fast that happened ;) You either need to use Titanium Nitrided tools or go for carbide drill bits and endmills to make it work, otherwise it'll blunt anything you put anywhere near it just about.

I saw once in a foundry they only cast titanium ina vacuum furnace. I’ve seen it welded a lot inside a bubble/ inflated bag of argon.

Titanium burns easily 🔥 When drilling or machining, you must keep it cool. Look out for chip fires if you don't!

I have no idea what he was doing, but it looked terrifying.

That is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen

I always thought it was impossible to cast titanium. as far as I know when I worked with the stuff we always heated it up to increadbly hot temperatures while it was really hot we stuck it in a industrial press and smashed it into a mold with atleast 200 tons of force

at least you tried it. cant hurt. you now learned some ting.

like this channel and well on my way to tomorrow's hangover. That in mind, how about winding out a titanium specific induction coil, surrounded buy argon jets. and let the mess drop into the mold.

Awesome stuff, do you think with a second person running an oxy torch you could pre heat the titanium before putting it in the crucible so that less time is spent heating it there with your method?

I had another idea coat the titanium with silicon oil/grease and quarts sand once hot this should make a protective layer between the titanium and oxygen/contaminants in the air. The silicon oil/grease will not be enough on its own as most silicon oil will boil long before titanium melts it dose serve as a binding agent and lower temperature barrier. Quarts has a similar melting point to titanium so will serve as high temperature barrier however using quarts sand will probably require a 3rd intermediary barrier material which i have not sourced however if the materials boiling point is adequately above the melting point of titanium it could replace quarts. I have recommended silicone based materials for several reasons, they will form a barrier layer, they will and will absorb oxygen and other contaminants.

I would suggest blowing the argon directly into the crucible perhaps attach the argon flow to the gouging rod or a separate holder pointing it into the crucible

very interesting video. i like the ingenuity. have you thought about powderizing the titanium and trying to use gunpowder? something like making your own titanium cadweld shot that you put in a custom made mold?

I wonder if you could make a float to indicate how full the tub is with argon gas. I know they've used very light aluminum foil boats to float on heavy gases, i wonder if you could make a light ball partially filled with helium to be extremely light, to be able to float on top of your argon in a perforated clear tube to indicate how much argon you have in that tank.

I worked at a titanium plant for 2 years and it was melted under vacuum with electron beam guns. The crucible was water jacketed copper and as the raw material came in on rollers or from a hopper, it was hit with the beams where it ran into a basin and overflowed into the crucible. The basin was a safety feature to keep inclusions out like tungsten and such as this was potential aerospace material. The bottom of the crucible was drawn down slowly until the desired length ingot was achieved. Ingots were about 3 feet by 4 feet by 20 feet, approximate. Titanium is VERY volatile in the presence of water. If you burn through the water jacket you will most likely have an explosion!

PURELY AWESOME

Now you may need to use Thermite reduction over your casting mold which may fail because it's commonly know for a type of welding based from the common type of thermite mix, swap iron oxide for titanium dioxide add some extra aluminum powder...The gas shielding is still needed argon will do just fine as you mentioned... While under your graphite mold I would lay that on top of a bed calcium sulfate and aluminum powder this is just to keep things hot so the metal distributes evenly that might even get the hottest near the end the calcium could mix into the metal so make sure that's under your mold, I would pot all this inside a clay garden pot or fire brick. do this outside the flames could be over a foot tall.Remember el metal es muy caliente so Aufenthalt aus dem Krankenhaus heraus Hope this helps thanks for all the good content Love the show Thanks...

Just for you, at 2:24 the reason why it is so cool is because of its rather good thermal conductivity i´d say, it was also mechanical connected to the iron thing you clambed it into ( i dont know the word for)

knipex ARE the world's best pliers! I'm glad you agree

the gold colour is titanium oxide, the shielding gas should be helium and use the argon to purge. suggest using a box with with a partial lid also reverse the polarity

I have a older and newer watch from tissot which initially them being made entirely made from titanium and being machined so well attracted me to using them which begs the question? Do they cnc or cast their watches? Because they are insanely well engineered to a fine tolerance.

I think I would love to be like you. Everything on your channel I have seen is really interesting. If you ever need some computer related work done, I would love to help out.

That was fun to watch. If you haven't anodized titanium before, maybe give it a shot. Just need a diode bridge, variac, water and borax and is fun to play with.Sands off easy so you can do it over and over. As for ideas for melting/molding the titanium, some sort of current controlled arc rod positioner and the entire process done in a vacuum chamber.

You should cover the top of the box with plexiglass or something to keep the argon in. Also, a lot of metals can react with carbon at high temperatures, so it might be better to use a long, shallow alumina or zirconia crucible and just have 2 stick electrodes.

you almost got it. that was cool. i bet youll be casting titanium in no time with a few changes.

smaller deeper box? Maye cover part of the box. I remember when I worked in a semiconductor fab that if a titanium sputtered silicon wafer was accidentally run through an rapid thermal anneal tool on the wrong recipe that it would turn the prettiest color of purple. It ran process O2 at 800 or 900 degrees C.

Add to the last comment. You can do light welds with argon, vacuum pumps is suggested along with taking breaks to allow the ti to cool.

I've been thinking about this for awhile now, because I want to cast nitinol someday. Anyway, what you need is an induction heater in a vacuum. Get one of those $100 vacuum pots on Ebay and rig an induction head in there around your crucible, and a pouring rig somehow that lets you keep the vacuum, and it will work.

this is the insane ave that I miss

Vacuum is your best bet.Titanium melts at 1940K, under vacuum carbon sublimes at a smidge under 4000K. Chromium melts at 2130K, Boron at 2570K. If you dont mind a little contamination you just need to make a graphite crucible with a Cr or B plug in a vacuum chamber and set your mold directly underneath it and give it's hell's furry until your window goes black (carbon sublimation) or your blow your breaker: whichever comes first.

"Well I'll feed ya, baby birds" ❤

Maybe there was a pocket of normal air inside the crucible? If you get the opportunity for Round 2, try specifically pouring the argon into the crucible first, leave the spout in there for awhile?

might be a chemical change happening with the arc rods being introduced to the base material. I can say from experience as being a welder that hast to back gouge alot got UT welds that their is a color change between steel and the slag that has been ground. when the raw steel has been made bright the slag will give off a golden tinge under an l.e.d. flashlight. also when the grinder is introduced to the slag in hives off a spark that for lack of a better term fizzles. instead of glowing orange and staying whole, it breaks apart and almost ignites. maybe if you could heat it in a vacuum ? it's a bit far fetched

The other way would be like how they do it in an arc furnace. 2 graphite electrodes drawing the arc between them in a ceramic lined crucible, with the shielding gas of course.

I know nothing about this subject, but could you make a graphite tub to inject the argon? then as I was thinking quickly about this in has I thought that's a bad idea if you'd like to keep you epidermis in one uncooked pice. then I thought about if it would be possible to do this presses under a close vacuum of argon. just a random thought.