Poor Man Al

[Mephistos Minion]

Sorry to go a little off topic, but can someone post a pic of these belts you are all using? It just seems strange as my belt (and all pully belts I have used) have lasted ages without much ware. Perhaps looking into a stronger belt would be better than continually having them break all the time.

[Pretty green flame]

Everything i use is heavy duty. The pulleys are cast iron and the belt is ....don't really know what the belt is made of but it looks to me like leather with some rubber outer coating.

 

Pics: http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a374/AVP...lleysndbelt.jpg

[justanotherpyro]

The belts for the shitty Harbor Freight ball mills are similar to rubber bands. The material is stretchy like that, but the belt is thicker and is rounded. They definately are not the heavy duty hardened rubber belts like a car fan belt etc...Mine lasted for a long time for some reason, and then out of no where the mill started having problem after problem.

 

UN sent me three mills that had problems for their parts, but I gave up messing with the damn things because they kept having problems. Converted tread mill works like a charm for my mill now.

[aquaman]

I just got my new belts for my harbor freight rock tumbler off ebay and I have been milling Al foil all week end. It works really well. I'd say I got about 36 hours in the Al powder and right now I got about 45g of finely powdered milling with some coins. I'm going to let that go for about 4-5 hours and see if It is like very dark (I have about 16g of very fine Al powder and it is almost black).

[Dan]

Sorry if this was posted elsewhere, I havn't visited this forum in a year or two, but have you tried extracting al from paints? I have done it with both spray paint and a can of paint and it has been pretty nice quality. I didn't ballmill it down to a really fine mesh but a gritty powder makes numerous nice white sparks if sprinkled over a lighter.

[gwx]

I sourced this from wiki. Im plannig to get a coffee grinder just to grind Al powder, which as we know is crucial in pyrotechnics. I do not know what is a ball mill but is it very expensive cos I heard a ballmill produces better Al. Just to put a quick question in too.... my Aluminium powder I have right now I mix it with KMno4 and Sulphur to make a flash powder ( or "flash powder ). I have played with it many times but it does not suddenly ignite. when it does, it lets off a brilliant flash but it does not have a 'boom' sound that i see videos have. Thus, this is NOT flash powder? Could this be a wrong composition since I check out the material's density and then I measure by volume???

 

Collection of Powdered Aluminum

 

Filing

A labour intensive method is to file an aluminum block. A rough file must be used to prevent excessive packing of the file teeth. It is not safe to use a bench grinder that has been or will be used to grind iron or steel since there is a strong probability that a spontaneous, uncontrolled thermite reaction will occur.

 

 

Crushing Foil

A poor quality aluminum powder can be made by passing aluminum foil in a coffee grinder. A grinder using burr will acheive better results than grinder using blades. Small aluminum particles will contaminate the grinder so extreme care must be used in the cleaning before is it used for coffee again.

 

 

Paint Stores

Automotive paint stores and artist supply stores carry high quality aluminum powder that is used for metalic effect in paint.

 

 

Etch-A-Sketch

The display of an Etch-A-Sketch is filled with fine aluminum powder.

[aquaman]

Just to put a quick question in too.... my Aluminium powder I have right now I mix it with KMno4 and Sulphur to make a flash powder ( or "flash powder ). I have played with it many times but it does not suddenly ignite. when it does, it lets off a brilliant flash but it does not have a 'boom' sound that i see videos have. Thus, this is NOT flash powder?

KMnO4 based flash powders are very strong, and sensitive so it is very dangerous. I would have to sugest to switch to KClO4 & Al (70:30) based flash as it is more safer to use but is still sensitve and very powerful. Another problem is if your Al is homemade then it isn't going to be good enough for a good flash powder. Also flash powder in the open should go *poof* with a "flash" but in a casing it will go bang.

[gwx]

My Al powder is store-bought..

 

My "flash powder" when it goes off, it just lets off a whoosh sound and a bright ( very ) flash... and a very big mushroom cloud. Temperatures are very very high.

 

Is it dangerous if I were to have my hand nearby? Would it do anything ( shockwave? ) ?? Cause from what I see it does not explde when unconfined.

 

When confined, I put in a dry plastic bottle and add some KMnO4. Next I add glycerin and quickly cap the bottle. I threw it down a high rise apartment. It exploded with a large sound and flash and mushroom cloud and its not like anything I've seen...

 

So is this flash powder or merely a rapid deflagaration?

[FrKoNaLeaSh1010]

Well when you add the glycerine to just kmno4 that is a hypergolic reaction bot a flash powder. KMnO4/Al/S is a flash comp though and one I used to use for a long time. I believe the ratio I used was 41/24/35 by weight. Creater of that ratio was mumbles all credit goes to him.

[gwx]

I was talking about using the hypergolic reaction to set off the "Flash powder" in the plastic bottle...

 

Anyways was what I used a flash powder?

 

if it was not flash ( I doubt it is ! ), could missing the wrong ratio by just a bit affect it a lot? ( I found out the density and measured by volume to get the weight ratio so it is not that accurate ). Btw, my ratio used was not by Mumbles.....

[Canadian_Pyro]

You cannot measure using volume. Different powders are "fluffier" than others, and thus you cannot convert it accuratley. If you cannot afford a digital scale or a triple beam balance scale, you should not be making pyrotechnic items, especially flash powder.

[RUUUUUN]

You can't use the same ratios when measuring by volume as by mass, simply because different powders have different densities, so volume-wise it could be 50/50 mass-wise it could be 90/10, so IF you want to measure volume wise you would have to either A) find a correct ratio. or b ) figure out the volume of the substance at a given mass, and calculate from there.

[gwx]

You can't use the same ratios when measuring by volume as by mass, simply because different powders have different densities, so volume-wise it could be 50/50 mass-wise it could be 90/10, so IF you want to measure volume wise you would have to either A) find a correct ratio. or b ) figure out the volume of the substance at a given mass, and calculate from there.

I did measure via volume by figuring out the densities. I did a rough approximation of the volume by the number of teaspoons and stuffs.

 

But as they said earlier its not accurate to use volume at all due to the fact that different powders have different sizes and of course there are different 'grades' of sulphur available. I'm not too sure about the presence of different isotopes but there are also these factors inside too.

 

So the solution is that I'm going to get a kitchen type electronic scale... I'm not sure if its accurate, but it says its accurate to 1gram.

 

Aluminium powder is really fun and there are a lot of uses but pity that I cannot get a mesh size which is small enough to cause nice effects but still - the effect of a blinding flash ( something like magnesium ) of my flash powder is really cool with the 'whoosh' sound accompanied with it

 

I am finding other ways to use my Al powder - can't wait to find em

[aquaman]

You need to find a scale that is accurate to at least .01g. Look for a pocket scale that is 300g max and .1g accurate, it should cost around $25.

[gwx]

Thanks we're getting offtopic so I guess we should stop here. I guess I shall be getting it from my chemical instruments supplier instead of the grocery or hardware store then

[Canadian_Pyro]

0.01 gram accuracy is overkill, 0.1 gram accuracy will work just fine for all pyro needs. Most 0.01 digital scales only go up to 100 - 200 grams, and if you want the same kind of accuracy and a larger capacity, you are going to have to shell out quite a bit of cash. I recently purchased a 500x0.1 pocket scale for $18 shipped from eBay.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/Savage_26/2a_1_b.jpg

 

Good stuff.

[ltf]

LOL My scale cost me 0$ LOL I just stoled it from my school lab!

 

Yeah, LOL, thats soo cool. Thats not how we do stuff around here. It degrades the forum. We are already on the edge with the law, people like you just make it worse.

 

-Rooster

[Mumbles]

The accuracy thing is not as much of an issue. It is the number of weight cells. I imagine a 300gx.01g for $25 has cheap chinese cells in very low numbers. It would probably take about 30 seconds to stabilize. I have a 200gx.01g I picked up for around $100. It's not as fast as the ones at school, but it fits my purposes and has taken a beating.

 

I make very small test batches, as well as some other things. The accuracy, expecially at low weights is neccesary. I wouldn't trust a measurement at any less than 50x the weight increment.

 

Anyway, this has absolutly nothing to do with aluminum. Please get it back on topic.

[gwx]

The old forums says coffee grinder makes the Al foil into small balls of foil which is not what I want. I want powder...

 

They say using a food processor is better. But my question is which food processor? Cause I have limited money and I dont wanna buy the wrong one!!

 

Also, will using ethanol instead of water so as to prevent oxidation be dangerous? The rotor blades might cause the ethanol to ignite?

 

But other than that I think ethanol could be a very good idea since it can be recycled, so, even though its expensive, its still fine.

 

From the old forums :

 

A coffee grinder simply isn't going to work, it uses a different method, you need to use a food processor with a liquid and the foil chunks. The blades of a food processor are designed to create a convection current style vortex in the liquid that continually sucks the Al suspended in the liquid around and through the blades, apparently people have gotten very fine powder like this after 30mins of use (although they overheat very quickly so you have to use it for arouns 2mins and let it cool off before using it again). To get around this I plan to use a pulse timer connected to the power switch of the food processor.

 

Btw the old forums is very informative I am reading it aggressively now http://www.xsorbit2.com/users/apcforum/ind...347248&start=60

[aquaman]

My bad... I ment 300x.1 not .01. Even though the .01 would be great for 10g batches. And for the scale that I said (300g X .01g) will cost maybe double ~$50.

 

Anyways back on topic... I made a 40g batch of some Al and found it to be poor in flash but awsome in a fountain.

[hashashan]

the blades wont ignite the ethanol for sure

however the fumes is another story. the fumes are very easily ignited so just in case stay away and dont smoke near it.