taiwanluthiers Posted February 6, 2015 Posted February 6, 2015 (edited) Magnesium is very reactive. It can and will react with things that we normally think of as inert, such as water, carbon dioxide, carbonates, sulphates, etc.. and not only will they react, they will react as though you mixed it with perchlorate!!! Even MgAl mixed with strontium carbonate (and nothing else) will burn fairly well. Therefore people who dares to mill the stuff stay well away and act as if the stuff will explode at any time. Marble is a BAD choice for media, someone here found that out the hard way. I do not know if using a blender to reduce Mg is even a smart idea. Remember Mg reacts with water!! Edited February 6, 2015 by taiwanluthiers
schroedinger Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 I do not know if using a blender to reduce Mg is even a smart idea. Remember Mg reacts with water!!Also water is able too prevent the ignition by cooling and seperating particles. In a ball mill a burning particle touches all other and ignites them, in water they don't touch directly and also get cooled. The next point is that we don't have big chunks of mg only small flakes. They have such a high surface that the water can cool them enough. Also remember the reaction between water and mg is much slower then between air and mg.
taiwanluthiers Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 Toss water onto burning Mg ribbon and see what happens (it can actually burn under water) That said why reduce 200 mesh Mg?? It's fine enough as it is.
schroedinger Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 Did you ever try to submerge burning mg ribbon? It will go out, if you spray it it keeps burning. If you take a chunk of mg it will keep burning for some time, until it cools to far.Reducing 200 mesh mg sounds crazy, thats allready fast enough for nitrate flash. It only interesting to reduce curls.
OblivionFall Posted August 9, 2015 Posted August 9, 2015 There are basically two ways to get the fi e metall powder1st. Atomizing process.2nd. Milling.Both Mg andl can easyle reduced to a useable powder at home using a blender. Fill the blender with the metall you want to powder (either turning or foil) and add 1 cup of water. Now blend down the mass. If you used foil you will need to add it a couple times.Al will take some time to really react with the water, but it can easly and then there is only one thing left to do, flush out the whole blender with a lot of water.Al should leave the blender at the same day. Put the Water into a big bucket and flush out the blender with some water. Now stirr up the whole bucket. Let it sit for 10 minutes decant of the water (into a 2nd bucket), repeat after 30 min, 1 hour and 2 hours 1 and 2 days.Always spread out the metall at the ground of the bucket onto newspaper lined screens. Screen at least twice during drying. This way you will end up with a couple easy and fast to size fractions.For Mg it's the same, but make sure that mg leaves the lender within an hour. Pour the Mg into a coffe filter or better onto a buchner funnel, to get rid of most of the water. Now either wash with ethanol or acetone (recommended if you started with oiled turnings) and/or screenno to newspaper lined screens.With this method you will be left metall ranging fro firefly to flash grade powder. The ammount of each depemds on the blending time. If you have too much coarse powder left over, just blend it again.So you mill it in the blender with water so that if it ignites the water prevents it from wrecking anything? And then you leave the water to evaporate?
schroedinger Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 Yes i do so, only for mgal i don't use water since you run the blender only for a couple seconds and it crushes more easly.
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