Alright, simple as this. Will thermite reaction, produce an almost pure form of iron, or is there aluminum mixed in? assuming I use aluminum and iron oxides.
Today I was sitting around staring at a wall, and thought of this. what happens if you made a simple greensand mold and put a tall cylinder on top of it, and cap off the cylinder with some sort of lid, then packed in tightly the cylinder with thermite and placed the cylinder back onto the mold. and lit it. Would it cast iron?
It's used at least in railroad welding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uxsFglz2ig
Where do you think the aluminium goes?
>>903237
Well if it doesn't absorb into the iron, it turns into a slag of sorts.
but asking me questions, based off my question, makes you a huge asshole. you're not being witty or making a point.
The thermite I made produced what looked like a volcanic rock, which was weakly magnetic and brittle. I also made it from dried out red concrete colorant, and milled aluminum foil, so perhaps the mix was impure to begin with. It burned well so I assume it wasn't -that- bad.
I too am curious how any useful weld could be made with it, maybe they use a different composition than the common 70-30?
>>903220
You get ultra slaggy iron full of alumina (Al2O3) inclusions and air bubbles.
>>903250
Cadwelding, a form of thermite but using black or red Copper Oxide. is a pretty good method of welding, and from what I Can tell produces clean copper..
I just need to produce a sheet of maybe 20mm thick iron about maybe a foot diameter so I can forge an iron war hammer... but it would be easier have it in sheet form to begin with, because I need it to be hollow inside [its not suppose to be large] so I can fill the center with lead.
and finding a iron sheet for sale in the small size I need in a reasonable price in north america, is about as impossible as hitting the sun with a 22lr.
>The cheapest method to get a suitable slab of iron for a toy hammer is to burn lots of thermite
I'm not American, but this simply can't be true.
>>903231
So the requirements to lay rail are to be ripped and bald?
>>903269
>spot the shit poster.
If you can't contribute to the discussion don't post, its that simple.
>>903258
>I just need to produce a sheet of maybe 20mm thick iron about maybe a foot diameter so I can forge an iron war hammer... but it would be easier have it in sheet form to begin with, because I need it to be hollow inside [its not suppose to be large] so I can fill the center with lead.
1. I dont think you know how warhammers were made. They certainly weren't made from lead and iron sheet.
2. http://www.metalsdepot.com/products/hrsteel2.phtml?page=plate
there you go, US stockist, steel plate, far more than 20mm thick, in 1x1 foot squares. That took all of about 4 seconds to find.
An "almost pure" iron would be spectacularly shitty, and a complete waste of time to work with.
you may want to consider wrought iron, in which case
http://www.realwroughtiron.com/sheet_iron-199.html
is the only supplier in the world making it.
>>903304
Or shit OP just use steel scrap.
>>903304
>steel plate
>iron
>steel plate
>iron
CLEARLY YOU cannot read.
also they where made of IRON. NOT STEEL. Fe. IRON. get it? IRON?!
also I didn't ask for your help on my project. YOU INDEED don't know how to fucking read. I asked, if you can get IRON from thermites reaction. Not all this other shit.
>>903306
well an almost pure iron would be pretty hard to get either way without the advance of super expensive kilns and foundry's.. Wrought iron and cast iron is no different other then wrought iron has been pounded to shape and the smaller air pockets inside have been worked out making it slightly stronger.
If nobody can answer my original question. I may just find a cheap-o cast iron skillet ill just carefully work that hopefully keeping it whole.
>>903314
>CLEARLY YOU cannot read.
Actually, I can read perfectly well, And concluded that you're an idiot who didn't know what you're talking about. Something that you have clearly shown.
"pure Iron" is virtually non-existent. its used in laboratories for scientific testing. it is not, and has not at any point in history been used for weapons, or for structural material.
Pure iron is an abysmal material, its peak hardness is around 100VPH - it doesn't even register on the Rockwell C scale. Its ductility, shear strength, and ability to be forged are all quite simply, shit. Bronze outperforms it in every single criteria.
So when I read someone saying "I want pure iron" for manufacturing I can safely conclude that they know absolutely zero about both history and metallurgy, and what they actually want is a steel alloy, which is of some use for any application outside of a lab.
But, since you're an angry little antisocial shit, fuck your warhammer. You can forget about any advice I was going to give freely on the details how real ones are constructed and about the right alloy choices. Go waste your fucking time making something that will not work, and not listening to anyone.
>>903319
Wow you got so butt blasted for someone who is so sure of themselves they're right.
Almost pure. Wrought iron has like 3% slag. Thats ALMOST. pure. You should really check yourself. Also pure as in the aluminum doesnt mix in as again. Refer to the orginal fucking question you idiot.
Also if you where going to give any real helpful advice you would of before hand. You have no real helpful advice.
And again... Youre going way off the original topic trying to prove some nonexistant point.
>>903322
You clearly have absolutely NO clue what you're talking about, if you think that Wrought (3% stringer inclusions) is "almost" pure.
by that logic, A36, with 0% inclusions and 0.25% median carbon content is not only "almost" pure, but significantly purer.
Both have drastically different material properties.
--
You have no idea what the hell you're talking about, while shouting angrily at people who are trying to correct your ignorance.
you're a waste of fucking time.
>>903237
>aluminium
Don't you have some bongs to count?
OP, you are retarded.
Iron, as that other guy said, is an absolute shit material to work with. Steel is very flexible depending on what kind of additives you mix in with the iron, and you can get it to suit a lot of different purposes that way. No "warhammers" would ever be made of pure iron - they'd shatter the moment they hit something with any amount of resistance. I'm not even that familiar with metalworking, but I know enough to know you're a moron.
Other guy who was trying to explain this shit to OP: just leave, he's not worth your time.
>>903341
>they'd shatter the moment they hit something with any amount of resistance
the other way round - they'd bend and dent.
Iron is really soft and malleable, not brittle and likely to shatter.
(its actually much like copper, in its raw state)
>>903349
Whoops. I thought raw iron was supposed to be really hard and brittle - or am I thinking of pig iron?
>>903355
yeah, that'll be pig iron.
>>903355
Pure iron is very soft.
Iron with a few percent worth of carbon is steel; potentially extremely strong, potentially very hard, potentially marginally different from pure iron.
Iron with loads of carbon (like unrefined and a lot of cast iron) is fairly hard and much more brittle than pure iron.
>>903333
some problem with proper name of the element in latin, mate?
>>903443
Yeah, no one here is typing in latin. We use English. This is an American webpage. The name is Aluminum in American English.
>>903444
> says the country that pronounces "solder" as sodder, yet can somehow say "colder", "holder" and "bolder" without sounding like retarded faggots.
>>903443
That's not the 'proper name in Latin.'
The dude who named it called it aluminum, but the British society of chemists renamed it literally so it would sound fancier.
Also the current British accent was originally an affectation put on by poor people so they could sound fancy.
Hm. Seems to be a trend.
>>903527
> but the British society of chemists renamed it literally so it would sound fancier.
It's so it was inline with the other metals. Like how Prometheum was renamed Promethium.
It can't have escaped your attention that they nearly all end in "ium".
>sodium, lithium, titanium, chromium etc
>>903244
>>903314
>>903322
Get a load of this wanker
>>903531
And that's why you have to value those few elements which are named in a different manner.
I'm only half-joking.
>>903538
>and go metric maybe we'll get somewhere
like, the moon? Wait a minute...
>>903588
Sorry to break it to you, but NASA uses metric, and the nagivational system used metric.
also, the russians got a lander there first. With metric.
>>903670
So we are better than you because we're smart enough to use metric and imperial where appropriate? Thanks euro buddy
>>903220
Thermite to get pure iton?
This is the STUPIDEST thing I've ever read in regards to chemistry.
First. Think about what thermite is. A granular metalic oxide mixed with a another powdered element that can take the oxygen from the oxidized metal releasing surplus energy in the process.
Traditional thermite is iron oxide with aluminium powder. The reaction leaves metalic iron and a slag of aluminum oxide. The seperation of each from the other is problematic.
We have iron oxide and all we want to do is get the oxide off of the iron onto something else.
What elements can do this? The first one to come to mind should be carbon. Carbon is like that two bit hooker on 13th street that everyone has put their dick in.
The nice thing is that when the carbon does mind with oxygen it does something fucking miraculous. Turns into a gas as either carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide.
The difference between these two reactions, thermite and iron-oxide/carbon... is that thermite is EXOthermic (puts out extra energy), while the carbon process is ENDOthermic (consumes energy)
To reduce iron oxide you need a high heat crucible in which you place your iron and carbon source, and heat it to red hot.
Pretty soon you'll see liquid metal forming and the carbon source will conveniently float on top.
I use this all the time to reduce old lead acid batteries.
The best carbon source I've found is natural wood charcoal. Losing the top of the crucible will speed up the reduction because oxygen from the atmosphere wont combine with the charcoal.
>>903815
Honestly I wasnt gonna follow up until I had some data to provide and proof of concept.
Im starting with black copper oxide and aluminum since it stays molten for a longer period of time after the reaction. And can be remelted easier to exam.
My thoughts being if I could introduce a flux into the reaction and since aluminum floats on molten iron. That the aluminum would be forced to the surface of the iron. As slag and I could do a little heating and hammering to smooth out any inner airpockets.
There are many ways to do something. Indeed I could make an iron bloom. But without some sort of power hammer it honestly doesnt seem to be worth the effort for this particular project as I could use other metals instead.
>>903949
Ok. You're not making any sense. I know full well theres more than one way to skin a rabbit. But the way youre skinning your rabbit needs a degree in metalurgical theory to purify.
If you have traditional thermite you have two compounds.
>Iron oxide (FeO)
>Aluminium (Al)
If you burn those two you get
2FeO + 2Al -> 2Fe + 2AlO + heat
The iron and aluminium oxide are more or less homogeneously mixed leading to purification problems
Instead if you ditched the aluminium powder all together and use wood charcoal you get
2FeO + 2C + heat -> 2Fe + 2CO
That is, you get Iron and carbon monoxide gas. That means you dont need any flux, you dont need to purify it, you dont do shit to it but dust off the leftover carbon ash.
Now i have no idea what the hell you're going on about cupric oxide and aluminum because i dont see any iron in there, unless you're talking alchemy here, in which case I concede that I know nothing on that topic.
>>903980
Let me put it this way:
>take your crucible and add in your FeO and charcoal.
>put the lid on the crucible.
>heat it up with a blowtorch to red hot.
>remove crucible from heat
>remove lid
>dust off the charcoal from the inside of the crucible.
>pour out the molten iron into your form
Thats all there is to it.
No slag
No aluminium oxide
No flux
No air pockets
No hammering
No power hammer
No solvents, acids, or toxic components
No UV flash
No out of control unstoppable exothermic reactions.
You sure can use the exothermic process if you want to go through all of that work for no bennefit.
But if you want an easier, safer, and purer resulting product then you do what the fucking foundries do and use the carbon redox process.
>>903983
>if you want an easier, safer, and purer resulting product
He wants it to be cheaper than store-bought steel plate.
>>904010
Everytime someone says something about steel in this fucking thread about iron. Increases the chance of themselves receiving uncureable cancer.
Fuck off I am talking about iron not steel. Dunno how many times it has to be fucking said before one of you idiots gets it thorough their thick skulls.
>>903983
I have concluded you havent worked with metal once in your life besides watching your mum put tin foil on a sheet metal pan to cook you pizza rolls.
>because a blow torch in a graphite cruiceable is hot enought to melt iron at 4000 degrees.
Im glad you can google anon. But again. You just described making cruiceable iron with "your" charcoal method. That actually turns into pig iron. That has a carbon content of 40% and is brittle to all hell.
You people are trying to educate me on shit I already know about without providing really any real information on the orginal subject.
>>904038
and how many times do we have to tell you, to get it through YOUR thick skull that "iron" is not what you want for fabricating an object?
>"Hey, guys, I want to make a car. I'm going to build the body and chassis from brass."
is pretty much how fucking stupid your question is. Followed by having a hissy fit like a petulant 12-year old each time someone tells you to use steel.
Not one comment you have made indicates that you have the _slightest_ clue what you're actually doing, even though you're very, very keen to yell at people about how wrong they are, and you know better.
Well, let me tell you; you do not know better. You are the worst sort of moron; one who is either too fucking thick, or too fucking stubborn to realise they are wrong.
you are, quite simply, a fucking oxygen thief, and a waste of people's time.
>>904048
Continue to be butt blasted. Im sorry does my want of using iron instead of steel in "my" project some how effect your way of life? Daily living? Water quality some how? See heres the deal. Your broad assumptions of how I am are really off the spectrum!
You're the type of person who if someone isnt doing something the way "you" think it should be done. That all the sudden everything else is the wrong way!!
You pretty much described yourself in that last bit of your post. Glad you can reconize the problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Oh look, its OP.
>>904054
Since you think you know everything already and won't listen to anyone else, why don't you fuck off and start making that IRON slab of yours already?
Imagine your bragging rights and shit if you don't fail miserably.
>>903527
>>903531
>>903538
Aluminum wasn't even picked by anybody involved in chemistry, it was just some fuck in a random journal unrelated to chemistry. And he changed it because it "didn't sound good."
>Davy settled on aluminum by the time he published his 1812 book Chemical Philosophy: "This substance appears to contain a peculiar metal, but as yet Aluminum has not been obtained in a perfectly free state, though alloys of it with other metalline substances have been procured sufficiently distinct to indicate the probable nature of alumina."[78]
>But the same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, in a review of Davy's book, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound."[79]
>The -ium suffix conformed to the precedent set in other newly discovered elements of the time: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy isolated himself).
>Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time, as for example platinum, known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, discovered in 1778, and tantalum, discovered in 1802.
>The -um suffix is consistent with the universal spelling alumina for the oxide (as opposed to aluminia), as lanthana is the oxide of lanthanum, and magnesia, ceria, and thoria are the oxides of magnesium, cerium, and thorium respectively.
This is my first post in this thread, and metric is more sensible than imperial, but "aluminium" is fucking stupid.
>>904173
>The -ium suffix conformed to the precedent set in other newly discovered elements of the time: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy isolated himself)
>still thinks Aluminium is unacceptable.
"ium" or "um" they are both acceptable and perfectly logically for a metal, read what you quoted again.
>>904253
aluminum would be fine if people didn't pronounce it alooooominum instead of properly like ahl you min um
aluminium - ahl you mini um
>>904253
>The -um suffix is consistent with the universal spelling alumina for the oxide (as opposed to aluminia), as lanthana is the oxide of lanthanum, and magnesia, ceria, and thoria are the oxides of magnesium, cerium, and thorium respectively.
