Friends,
You have quite a lot of material here. Very cool! I am interested in welding metallurgy and material science in general. I also enjoy music and DIY projects. Even better if I can combine all three, right? Right!
current project: 1954 Bob Moog theremin Theremin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I have attached the design plans below and may soon start a thread on the build focusing on the metalworking. I am fabricating a steel stand about 3 feet high (welded), 2 metal spheres (cast) and hand crafting the electronics housing (will involve a torch, a vice, a little elbow grease and some aluminum sheet. The wiring is going to be the hard part here but the metal is going to be the FUN part.
Project status: acquiring parts and materials
I work as a research assistant to a welding metallurgy professor at the Colorado School of Mines, Dr. Stephen Liu. My research under him is currently focussed in two areas.
1)My Job - Determining the mechanism for failure in explosively cleaned coal fired power plant steels.
Basically, steel tubes crack when you put a stick of dynamite next to them...sometimes. Who knew?
2)Senior Design Project - Determination of a method for measuring the temperature of an explosion weld's interface (it happens in about a microsecond)
Anyway, since the economy has most prospective employers scared for their bank accounts they no longer want to fund academic research, meaning I may be taking an unexpected break from school before returning for grad school. One potential plus...free time!
I look forward to spending some of that time in interesting discussions here! (oh yeah and getting free advice) :cool:
The downside...probably not as much explosives. :(
QC, Cool! E-beam is pretty sweet. Thats got to be some vacuum chamber! Its a bummer people have to go and muck up a good thing like buying dynamite at the feed and seed. For stump blasting right? :cool: TP, I may have to do that. Would you know Vilem Petr? He graduated there (PhD - something to do with mine design and explosives) a while back. He runs the explosives show at the school's experimental mine in the mountains. He would have made an impression. He's got some interesting stories about the Czech army. Maybe this summer? Fe-Wood, Explosive forming is similar to explosive welding except you don't want your forming metal to stick to the die. Your friend probably could have done it room temp with no problems. Also, its typically done under water to distribute the explosive force better, and you would want to draw a vacuum in between your die and workpiece so your setup doesn't blow itself up....kind of like this: Explosive Forming Metal Forming Process For the steam tubes they have to (usually) shut down the boiler and try and knock off chunks of slag attached to the heat exchangers so they can work work on the boiler without having to worry about a slag boulder falling 50 feet and crushing them and their scaffolding. This is achieved by putting a stick of dynamite on the end of a long rod through a service door and getting it near the slag. but not too close and BOOM. I'm looking at how the steel ages in the boiler (some of these tubes are 30+ years old!) and how that affects the explosive loading sensitivity. All, Thanks!