Iridium jewellery?

[Tru2customer]

Hello all,
I''m new here but just read up on the Zirc. metal on the link it claims to have a hardness of 6. I have sold Tungsten rings for over three years now and found it be AWSOME!..it will stay permanantly polished. I have a customer take one out for a trial and accidentally hammered it and save his finger.

That''s Protection for you. Trent West created it. Look it up

Talk to you later.

Sean

 

[earnie]

Dear all

The meeting with the Johnsson&Matthey expert was quite fruitful but also a little bit discouraging regarding easy-to-apply possibilities to work with the metal.

Let me summarize the "highlights":

1) Iridum is absolutely not suited to any kind of cold forming. As soon an alloy contains more than 25% Ir, wires or rods have to be hot drawn, whereas hot means 1200°C. An annealed piece of pure Ir can be bent to approx. 5% change of fibre length which is about 15mm diameter of a 1mm wire. More bending will lead to brittleness - and failure.

2) Ir is machineable - with extremely hard tools such as tungsten-carbide at the cost of extremely fast wear of these tools. The most common shaping method is electrical erosion (not sure if this english translation applies). With that method the piece will be shaped or cut by surface erosion through a micro-arc. The method is applied also to other hard metal working such as molds for complex plastic devices.

Electrical erosion is an expensive treatment. But at the same time this is the chance for a small shop which is equipped with such a tool. By forming with elecrical erosion, complex forms can be achieved out of a solid piece of metal.

3) Screws or other machine elements are not available in Ir due to the difficulties to machine it. But in other materials such as Chromium steel or even PtCo - on demand.

4)The industrial yearly demand is 3 metric tons - worldwide. The expert was not sure if this figure is related to new metal or if it includes also the recycled metal from scrap. Recycling playes an important role in the material flow. The main application is crucibles and spark plug electrodes. A minor portion is used as a hardening agent for Pt - alloys.

Will get some more info.

Regards

Earnie

 

[valeria101]

Interesting... the material sounds "indestructible" by now.

Let me see if I got it right:

#1. Hardness - allot more than plat
#2. Weight - about as much as plat.
#3. Looks: very white, very high and enduring polish
#4. Shape:.... now, that''s the problem.

As far as I undrstand you have some 4mm wide rods. How long are those ? Can they be cut ?

No chance to form circles or anything, right ?

This far, no wonder there''s no iridium jewelry... sounds like a bit of a challenge.

 

[earnie]

Dear Ana

You are absolutely right

1)Hardness is by far more than Pt.

2)specific mass is 22,4 g/cm² in the lit. - my rods have 22,3 g/cm² . Pt is 21,4 g/cm³

3)Yes, absolutely

4)Shape

This is indeed a challenge but electrical erosion is not rocket science. It is done at many even small manufacturers. We have access to one and when we get the scrap it will be the first attempt to shape it. Photos will be posted here - but it may take a few weeks.

By the way, they said that they made once a small number of wedding rings from pure Ir - also by electrical erosion.

My rods are 80mm long at 4mm diameter. I didn´t try to cut them, cause I still need them for the test bench BUT I will get some leftovers of sheet and rods for trial at the bullion price which is around USD 160 /oz currently.

If anybody is interested - just let me know

Regards

Earnie

 

[PhillipSchmidt]

Definately,

This is hotting up.

I just bet there are ways and means and the result would definately be worth it.

There are also water saws and lazer cutters that can be used. You would need a huge chunk to reduce from and the scrap would need to be remelt quite often, by a refiner. That would add to the cost.

Some machining would have to be done and there would be a lot you can do. High speed steel or tungston would do. I am surprised that you came away with the impression that this would be cost prohibitive. Steel working tools should be hard enough, yes? I can imagine the tools would heat too fast too quickly, but that could be managed.

Can''t say much else until I get hold of a piece. I was offered some powder and I suppose it is still there to be had. I am afraid I won''t manage a successfull melt on my own. Do you know anything about that?

Phillip

 

[earnie]

Dear Philip

If there are other means to shape should be clarified.

J&M do it by electric erosion which is somehow similar to a saw. A filament of tungsten shapes goes through a sheet or piece of metal in an oil bath. Instead of sawteeth an electric current is applied whcih erodes the area around the filament.

Laser cutting would definitely be optimal. But I suppose, it is difficult to perform at highly IR-reflective metals like copper or silver, cause a big portion of the laser power goes back in the laser head which can destroy the laser head. Ir is highly reflective in the mid-IR-region of the CO2 laser and also very corrosion resistant. therefore it doesn´t tarnish and thus absorb more energy under the beam and in addition has high melting point.

Water saws could be feasible. Our experience ís that this cutting means gives a fuzzy cutting edge, particularly with hard materials.

Melting by ourselves (very good idea!!)

Melting from powder requires an electric arc oven. All samples provided on e-bay are more or less made of powder by arc-melting. I don´t know exactly how such an oven looks like but the principle is the heating up of the cathode side of an electric arc. The metal powder forms the cathode. The container is probably tungsten or carbon, cause it must conduct too. Secondly the anode should be of the same material to avoid unwanted alloy with the anode material. Everything shoud happen in a argon atmosphere to exclude unwanted material loss. Due to the fact that many non professional providers are on the way who sell refractory metal samples such as Zirconium, Tantalum, Niobium, Molybdenum and Tungsten, such an arc-oven should be feasible to make by ourselves.

Shall we investigate in that direction next? It would certainly be the cheapest and most sustainable way to handle the material flow. Melting, cutting the form, recycling the scrap etc. Besides of that I await some Ir-samples from J&M.

Regards

Earnie

 

[perry]

The electric errosion process you describe is commonly known as Electric Discharge Machining (EDM).

There are two forms of EDM. The first form uses a wire to cut a straight line through an object.

The second form uses a shapped electrode to cut the shape of the electrode into the object.

The shapped electrodes are expensive to manufacture, and they sacrifice themselves in the process at different rates depending on the electrode material.

EDM machines are not that expensive. Manufacture of the electodes is, and EDM is almost always used for multiple part runs to amortize the cost of the electrodes accross many parts. I once had another machine shop EDM recessed hex bolt head holes into some exoctic nickle alloy parts.

Perry

 

[PhillipSchmidt]

http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/jmpgm/index.jsp

I found this page with very usefull information on metals including Irridium

Cheers