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Processing Titanium turnings


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Posted

How would you guys go about breaking down these Ti turnings?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/killforfood/Pyro/titurnings002.jpg

 

 

They are quite the pain because they're so fluffy, long and stringy.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/killforfood/Pyro/titurnings003.jpg

 

 

I attempted to ball mill the chips in a piece of 8" steel pipe for a jar and used old solid carbide inserts as the grinding media. I think the final product was well contaminated with carbide chips and steel from the jar walls. There has to be a better way.

 

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/killforfood/Pyro/titurnings001.jpg

 

Posted
A blender or coffee grinder you don't care about possibly.
Posted

About the only way is to use a garbage disposal.

You set it up out side, run water hose to it and grind the turning

through it in to a 5 gal bucket. It works....

BJV

Posted

A blender or coffee grinder you don't care about possibly.

NHL,

Goodwill is full of stuff I don't care about :D

I think its worth a try but I also wonder if this stringy crap won't just tangle around the blades.

What I really need is a baby version of a scrap yard metal shredder. Since I don't think there is such a thing, I'll try the blender.

Posted

NHL,

Goodwill is full of stuff I don't care about :D

I think its worth a try but I also wonder if this stringy crap won't just tangle around the blades.

What I really need is a baby version of a scrap yard metal shredder. Since I don't think there is such a thing, I'll try the blender.

 

Filling it with water also similar to the garbage disposal idea might work well also to get the turnings really moving around. Let me know how it works, I've got a big bucket of aluminum turnings I might do the same with.

Posted

About the only way is to use a garbage disposal.

You set it up out side, run water hose to it and grind the turning

through it in to a 5 gal bucket. It works....

BJV

Hi BJV,

I got the biggest kick out of a video you posted.

It was the one with the stars shooting out to the sides as the shell ascended.

You were in the background giggling like a little school girl.

I thought "now there's a man who truely loves and appreciates the art of pyro".

Thanks for the "moment", the shell wasn't bad either.

Anyways back to the subject. I didn't see your post until after I put up that last post.

The garbage disposal idea is a really good one.

In high school I had a job washing dishes. The restuarants industrial garbage disposal would eat anything. just for kicks, we used to through those big solid glass ashtrays in there and it would chew them up in one to two seconds.

I have friends that do home remodels. I'll ask them to keep an eye out for one.

Posted (edited)

Filling it with water also similar to the garbage disposal idea might work well also to get the turnings really moving around. Let me know how it works, I've got a big bucket of aluminum turnings I might do the same with.

Thanks for the tip. The water would do a good job of holding the whole mess in suspension.

In the machine shop up front, they have a big band saw that mostly just cuts aluminum. I'll bet there's a good pound or two of fine shavings in the bottom of it right now.

The only other thing that only occasionaly gets cut on it is wax. I don't know if a small amount of wax contaminant would be a problem but FREE makes it worth playing with.

Edited by killforfood
Posted

I think its worth a try but I also wonder if this stringy crap won't just tangle around the blades.

 

There are no blades in a sink garbage disposal - just a spinning iron plate surrounded by a cast iron tube with slots in it. There is a danger the titanium will get between the spinning plate and the cylinder and jam it, however. I've seen one jammed by a dime that fell in.

Posted

If you have access to a small hand operated, or pneumatic sheet metal shear?

It will do the job down to around ¼ inch lengths.

It’s a laborious process feeding one though.

 

A commercial or lab grade stainless steel blender will reduce those ¼ inch clippings down to about any size you want.

 

 

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