I think this is your best technical video yet. You have had some good and funny videos, especially when Jamie scares you, but this is just great education.
Alec, if you have trouble with heat loss (which im sure is a thing you'll experience), try putting some insulation on the dies as well as preheating them. We did that for inconel & titanium forging (big aerospace stuff) at my shop.
As someone who doesn't work with metal at all, but thoroughly enjoys the videos, those visuals with the colored cards about diffusion bonding were amazing!
5:41 @Alec Steele Super fast thought without even seeing how the interlayer experiments turn out, you could try electroplating either your titanium or steel pieces with one of the interlayer metal candidates to achieve the thinnest layer possible.
I came to the comments to say the same thing but you beat me to it 😀. Considering all the multiple series of forging required for damascus, trying to use plates of interlayer material for each forging would cause problems with adding more and more interlayer material into the damascus with each forging. At least with plating you are only adding a small amount of material each time.
@@cognitoidI would think that they don’t need to worry about adding interlayers during the additional forging steps, if they keep the titanium on the outside of the billet. Then you’d simply have titanium touching titanium, rather than the titanium touching steel. Additionally, the plan Alec described is a San Mai style knife, where you have a single layer of high-carbon steel surrounded by two (or more) layers of a different metal, like a taco, rather than repeatedly stacked and folded Damascus (which would be more like lasagna for a food analogy)
If the thinner layers of copper had done better or even similarly to the thick ones I might agree, but it seemed like the opposite. Going back to what Alec said near the beginning: you need the interlayer to be thick enough to prevent intermixing of the steel and titanium, and especially with the warping from unequal thermal expansion I don't think an electroplated layer would be able to do that.
@@danilooliveira6580 He could still add a sheet of copper, then that way in combo with the electroplating, instead of trying to bond titanium to copper in the forge, all the forge would need to do is bond copper to copper.
5:11 no vanadium? It’s one of the material referenced in the comments and it’s on the Wikipedia page for vanadium as a common intermediary for cladding steel and titanium.
I second this. Also Zirconium is a prime candidate being very chemically similar to Titanium, and Molybdenum and Tantalum are known for their high bond strength to Titanium. Experimenting with further known Zinc Alloys (like Inconel and Monel) and Aluminium as used in Aerospace are other good candidates. Finally, using 316L Stainless Steel should also give better results bonding to the interlayer, even Titanium itself, due to it's chemical composition - it's used in some biomedical applications with Titanium. I'm not sure how exact the temperature and pressure control would need to be for this practically, however.
@@AlecSteele As for ideas to try...... a more gentle flex test. If you've seen forged in Fire, Dave Baker loves doing a test where he does a little flex to one side, then returns to the center before flexing the other way. Yeah this would be a pretty quick way to test bonding and in the show... he's had blades just... separate into layers. A success would have it flew both ways and return to straight with no de-lam.
Fair play Alec, your communication skills are top notch! Explaining these pretty complex processes in such a clear and easy to understand way is not an easy task, but you really manage it well. Even an absolute wooden head like myself can understand!
I'd give Cobalt a try. It bonds well with Steel and with Titanium. So this could be interesting. Manganese could work too and isn't as toxic as Cobalt. Another thing I'd try is Vanadium, which mixes great with Iron and could work with Titanium too.
Alec! Time to partner with a university! Your approach is that of a phD student and your workshop just turned into the best available metallurgy lab! I love your content, keep on enjoying what you do and share it with us... Thanks a lot
The video had a nice research paper like fibe, I am sure many people enjoy and appreciate these types of educational videos. It is also very nice that the people in the comment section share their knowledge as well, nicely done Alec and comment section!
I completed my frist titanium to steel bond in December after almost 6 months of trying. I did not use a interlayer. You are over working it. Set the weld in one press and your done. That is what I found out that worked for me.
Point of interest for the inert atmosphere, if possible, can you alternate between a vacuum and Ar? Think of it as rinsing the surfaces free from oxygen. 3 rinses should be quite good. Worked with highly reactive compounds in a glove-box and when introducing something it had to be rinsed in the prechamber
Try using copper and silver together. In our pots and pans at Demeyere we use a multi layer core with silverdust and copper to fuse the layeres of aluminium and steel together 😊 could be interesting to see.
Both iron (carbon steel!)and Ti form carbides so maybe try brushing graphite powder between the plates. Also try Mn, V, Cr and Co metals from the first Transition Metal series if you can get them in sheet form. Stainless steels contain both Chromium and Nickel so something like marine grade 316SS might be worth a go too in place of your current grade of steel.
Alec, I would be very curious to see you try making a metal matrix composite using diffusion bonding. Not only would I be curious to see if you could achieve a damascus effect with carbon fibers and steel/titanium but also I wonder if the pure carbon layers would function well as an an interlayre because of their high flexibility and incredible tensile strength. Eitherway I think that exploring metal matrix composites would be a cool avenue to explore in the world of forging exotic aerospace materials.
Loving the scientific process! The one thing missing is a control, it would be cool to see how normal laminated steel reacts to the bend and future tests. Awesome video as always
Great test results, could try forge welding at slightly hotter temperatures with the next batch and see if that has any impact on bond strength. Also be interesting to stress test regular 1084/15n20 Damascus in the same billet size for comparison.
Loving these new videos, the format is perfect, I just love sitting down for 30 mins on a sunday afternoon to watch my favorite youtuber fix machines and make stuff.
I think impact resistance between the layers would be a good test for an edged tool. It would be interesting to see if sudden acceleration could sheer/pop the layers apart. Obviously I'm not expecting a big chopper for the finished piece, but even a kitchen knife takes thousands of little impacts against a chopping board
Have you considered getting(a workshopversion) of those "closed environment" boxes they use in laboratories and sometimes for ultra-clean room for eg data-recovery where you have to take a hdd apart. Its basically a closed aqarium without water, where arm-sized holes has been drilled and closed again with a giant arm-sized glove. So you can work with stuff in an ultra-controlled environment. You could use it for eg stacking of these metal-plates in an oxygen-free environment, an argon enriched environment, co2 enriched or what have we.' Youd be 100 % in control of what types of air/gasses you allow to touch the surface.. ??
Again, the camera work around that shear is INCREDIBLE! I'm also really enjoying the nature of these experimental videos, they're very entertaining AND informative!
Oh my godness what an incredible video Alec, I have seen your channel several years ago, but this level is amazing. The way of explanation, the scientific way....amazing. Congratulations!!!! Eve I'm not a blacksmith the way you explain all is very sticky for looking. Thank you!!!!
Might as well forge weld the left over bits together to see how they hold up to additional forge welding since you'll have to do that for an end product Damascus.
Maybe take a steel that airhardens? Kinda avoid the problem of quenching altogether. Question 2: Can you forge this stuff? Question 3: Bonding time, you did 10 minutes. Does the bond grow stronger with more time at temperature? Should be, right? Give it time to form a stronger bonding layer
Hey Alec, loved the experiment you've been doing, I applaud you for that 👍🏻 maybe it's because of the steel core you're using. Maybe you can try using AEB-L/Nickel stainless as Damascus instead? Seeing that those need a different form of hardening and tempering you might succeed in creating yourself a functioning billet
I don't know much about metallurgy. But maybe you could electro plate the titanium with copper, grind off the sides you don't need. Then that way the electroplating might do a better job at bonding the titanium to a layer of copper, then when you weld it together with a copper plate, You are just essentially welding a copper plate to more copper.
Excellent work! Love this series! The peices are maby too small but maby edge quenching could work? Then you would keep all the great adherense at the spine left. My two pence 😊❤
Alec love the videos I used to work in a sheet metal shop you can use tin snips to notch the ends of you sheet where you want it to be cut before putting it in your shear red handles for on side green for the other you push it through pull it back until the notch gets caught on the edge of the shear then cut it it's much easier then trying to line up marks with the edge of the shear also having a backstop for your shear to cut a bunch on one cut is a life saver you just apply pressure and let the machine jog along
Wow, this is amazing. I've been watching your career grow from your first little shop, american time and now this! incredible work sir, I can see you've got plans with your new skills and equipment. The very best of luck to you, I can't wait to see what you create.
One thing that may explain some of the brittle failures in the outer titanium is a phenomenon called alpha case. When titanium is heated above around 700 C, the oxide layer on the surface can dissolve deeper into the metal. These oxygen atoms get mechanically wedged inside the titanium structure and makes it brittle and prone to cracking like you're seeing here. In industrial situations where they want to avoid this, they use strong acids (usually a mix of Nitric and HF acids, which are nasty), or heavily cooled grinding to strip the outer layer of titanium after any heating raises it above 700 C. You may need to try messing with a surface removal procedure if you want to make it as strong as possible. The alpha case layer is usually only a couple thousandths of an inch (~10 micrometers) thick, so its not a ton of material that needs removing.
Instead of hardening all of the layers perhaps you could apply some current through the steel layer directly using leads attached to an electrical source
At 20:30 it would have been good to mention that copper, which you're using as an intermediate layer, does the exact opposite of steel when heated and then quenched.
Metal Tensile Test. The bending test is great to test the inter-metallic bonds in shear, tension, and compression at the same time. However, it would be interesting to see one of the samples response to pure tensile deformation and failure.
what about Tin, Aluminum, Brass? was curious if you didnt use these due to the lower melting points; which is why i assume the gold leaf failed, is that it just melted/vaporized at the higher forge temps
I am no metallurgist but it seems like most of your failures during bending were not caused by poor lamination, but rather by the varying tensile properties of the 3 different metals. I noticed on the one that did not break, the titanium section was extremely thin at the bend point. If it were me I would focus on getting a consistent thickness with the copper and nickel interlayers and then test how the thickness of the titanium and steel layers affects it. I look forward to seeing how this progresses! Also, slight point of concern, do you see any potential issues with galvanic corrosion?
Absolutely brilliant video! You explain the science, the theoretical part, and then you test it. Perfect! And the post-it as visual aids was brilliant! I loved this!
We need a steel and titanium Damascus sword! It would be cool too if the edge steel was blackened with an acid etch so you got the sunset purple blue and yellow along the core of the blade and black along the edge
I am no blacksmith or metallurgist but as a man of broad science man I love this video and how you explain everything!!!! One thing that came to my mind was. What if you let all the billets cool down under high pressure? As you said metals contract at different rates when they cool down.
Make the blade as normal and cut a groove into it, inlay other metal then make holes thought it and pin with same metal pins. Heat the pins and hammer forge welding the pins to same inlaid metal. Grind it all down and you should have a very solid seamless bond.
Your content is amazing! I enjoy watching Titanium Fabrication especially where it's not catching on fire. Very cool! I know that TiFe is garbage from your video. It's interesting that it didn't show the C that would be in there from it being from Steel. Right? Because Steel is an Iron-Carbon Alloy, not just Fe by itself. You're also trying to make Damascus with all of these different metals. I know that there is a high-entropy allow made out of Titanium-Iron-Nickel that has really interesting mechanical properties. Just throwing it out there. Keeping doing what you do, it is fun to watch!
Hey, just to warn you of a bias you may have had when bend testing the hardenend samples. Billet 4, with the nickel, although it split appart, it did in a single place, and so no delamination, showing that it has the best layer adhesion from all the samples. So yeah, it failed more than the others, but for the others, when the outside layer cracked, it releases a large amount of the tension on the other layers, so they don't break that easely. For me what that test concluded is that the nickel billet has the best layer adhesion, and so is less prone to any kind of damages when under use, because a big unified piece is stronger than an piece that may break by layers. I'm not a professionnal on the subject, so I of course may be wrong.
This project is AWESOME! 1. I think your explanation for the curves has quite some merits. You could put this to he test by compensating the lengths of the pieces according to their thermal expansion rate 2. I second trying vanadium... but you might have to try moer layers... Ti6Al4V, Vandium, Copper, Steel, Copper, Vandium, Ti6Al4V 3. Oil might not be the right medium for the heat treating. Try water 4. Try other Titanium alloys. Ti-6Al-6V-2Sn (Cu+Fe) or Ti-2.5Cu might yield bette rresults. 5. YYou could also try to only harden the edge of the blade by quenching (in water) and chilling the rest of the blade with cold air.
Ideas, observations etc. - i think that copper also acts like a "lubricant" between layers (it is elastic enough to allow steel/titanium layers "work" in different speeds) - try some chemical or galvanic method to cover steel/titanium with interlayers first (and then add extra interlayer for the thickness) - combine in steps: first combine interlayer+steel+interlayer and titanium+interlayer, then together titanium+interlayer to interlayer+steel+interlayer to interlayer+titanium - and for the lols let them cool in the magnetic field (just don't get the magnets to hot)
I wonder if putting positive/ negative grooves in each of the materials could help with your stress testing. (So that they stack like lego blocks). Could work by increasing the surface area, and I would think it would help with materials gripping eachother during your bend test. Either milling grooves or maybe acid etching with an enamel mask of some kind? I would imagine the walls and bottoms of the grooved would still want as close to perfect of a surface finish as possible so maybe not etchIng but it's an idea. Also the lower temperatures referenced in the papers you mentioned may have been because of thermal expansion. My suspicion is that the extreme temperatures reached for quench hardening will cause delaminations. Maybe finding alloys that have closer coefficients of thermal expansion? Or instead of quenching in oil, what about having some aluminum billets on the hydraulic press to apply constant pressure as it's cooling to prevent the delamination? Just some random thoughts I had, best of luck and I look forward to the rest of this saga
The one that survived was down to the thickness of the copper being able to cope with the compression. Is there a dirty gas mix that would introduce a bonding layer.
I absolutely LOVE the more scientific episodes like this and that was a WONDERFUL demonstration and explanation of what and why you're doing what you're doing here!
For titanium in the aerospace industry, tensile and bend tests are typically the gold standards for determining effectiveness of a material in service. Plus, a tensile test will get you a great idea of the shear strength of your bonded layers.
Wouldn't your goal blade be almost like a Cu-mai style of knife? To my understanding (which is little) you basically braze the steel together with the copper. I wonder if you bring the oven to near copper melting temps then 'braze/forge weld' them together, it could work. Steel cladded Cu-mai has a really strong tensile bond, so it may be similar??
The waves remind me of how different rocks can deform due to different stress properties at different temperature and pressures. An extreme is something called boudans, or little sausage links, when a stronger, less ductile material is pinched off by a softer material.
Three-iish things. First: maybe try sharpening and grinding tests if you want to make knife or tools (also damascus has unique sharpening properties at times). Maybe try bonding surface roughened metal pieces or powder metal in between (logic is more area of contact per volume for bonding to occur and also when shrinkage or expansion occurs, it may have more place to do so without cracking). Maybe you could roughen both metals first, electroplate with copper or nickel so the surface is smooth again, and then press them together.
Instead of a hard bend, it would be interesting to hit the pieces from the side with a hammer. That's closer to the sort of stress a weapon would get than grabbing in a vice and bending.
For the Goldleaf: you can pick it up a little easier with a soft brush or something like that. anything else and as youve seen it just adheres to it. An interesting test for the samples would be an impact test.
I think that an useful expertiment, would be making tiny plates of titanium alloys and testing it regarding the ductibility and tensile strength. An small "seasoning" of other elements could also improve the bonds, since for steel making it dont take a high amount of other metals to improve the characteristics of the alloy.
The important takeaway here is that the titanium layer is failing at the bend. No matter how good the joint if the pure titanium can’t handle the elastic forces it will fracture and that fracture will spread until it reaches the interlayer and then the fracture will move along the border causing the delaminating. The reason billet 3 bent is because the thick copper deformed itself inside the layer to allow the titanium to bend without breaking. This has nothing to do with the joint. What you need to pay attention to is if the joint fails before the titanium breaks, because you cannot change the elastic breaking point of titanium with any joint no matter how strong.
Alec this is amazing. I´m so hyped to see what is to come. Tho I would love for you to measure out forces when stresstesting, like tourqe on the bending stress test. I think you will profit from documenting this properly from the get go and will also help others who want to try their hand at titanium-steel forge welding.
Random ideas. Just like using borax when forging steel (which is used to remove oxygen, i know) why not use a powdered rock with deformation properties and thermal deformation between steel and titanium for it to absorb the changes. Most likely will not work. But if it does, it may accept deformation until it creates nano cracks and eventually shatters after multiple deformation (also the heat treatment can be a problem) If you want to apply the idea of a metal with a heat deformation between titanium and steel ... bad news, most pure metal are rare and expensive. (scandium Sc 10.2 µm/mC° / Yttrium Y 10.6 µm/mC°) In the end, why not go for a alloy that can bound with steel AND titanium on both sides, creating a new alloy between the 3 layers and giving it both flexibility and strengh ? My best bet would be on aluminium/aluminium alloys with both know alloys of titanium (Ti-6Al-7Nb) and steel (FeAl) in the industry.
I’m a student studying to become a chem major and I love how the art of smithing melds with the science of chemistry in this project it’s just so fascinating
it’d be interesting to see some of the remaining blanks drawn out to knife thickness… would those bonds even survive or might they get better? also curious to see some other interlayers like brass or something spicy like magnesium ;¬)
What if you include a bit of acid between the layers to preemptively eat away the oxide and slightly dissolve them, ensuring a smooth transition layer?
18:24 it’s cool to see the shop testing methods to see how strong the materials are. Seeing how much work you put in to get to this point, it would be cool for you to run a Ultimate Tensile test to display the stress/strain curve of the final material you developed since you can also measure relative strengths to other materials.
Alex, your show is perhaps the most entertaining metallurgic class I might ever see. I’m not sure what year of an engineering education I’d offer your class too but I can’t see any student not wanting to become involved with metallurgy
Titanium, you know, was first identified in 1791 by Rev. William Gregor, a British clergyman and amateur geologist, while examining black sand from the banks of the River Menaccan in Cornwall, England. Gregor discovered an unknown element in the mineral ilmenite and named it menachanite after the river. Only later, in 1795, the element was renamed titanium by the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who independently rediscovered it and chose the name in reference to the Titans of Greek mythology. By the way, good on you for Movembering. I still believe in bonding titanium-nitinol-nickle-nickle-steel-steel. Though, tricky.
I'm wondering if you add another interlayer. Say chrome plating, you use copper, then Nickle, then chrome. So find a material that sticks to titanium the best and put it against the titanium. Then find a material that sticks to the steel the best and put it against the steel. Then maybe those 2 materials will stick to eachother, or maybe another material between them that they both stick well to. Instead of 3 materials you are using 4 or 5 to achieve the bond.
Bump the forging heat up to 900/925 and see if it bonds better. a longer heat may also help. I have a friend who has a Ti/Co/Fe fusion(his is a liquid fusion of the three) and it still gets some neat coloring. Don't ask me how he does it he won't tell me or show me (I tried) but it is strong as all hell. but my thoughts about bringing up the temp for longer may give just a little stronger bond.
As stated in the initial vid.. if you can pull of proper knife steel with titanium that does not delaminate it you can make some very, very pricy bushcrafty knives. That said, then you run into different challenges like delamination over time/use.. galvanic corrosion, warping, heat treatment vs annealing and delamination again. It would be very cool to make a proper knife with this. Not necessarily to use it and be the next best thing but just for the sake of science.
Hi @Alec Steele, I'm a physicist and a very bad amateur blade smith. I have a bachelor degree in physics, and I'm currently studying a master’s degree in material physics and everything I will comment is only based in my intuition and could probably be absolutely wrong, I would like to know your thoughts. Firstly, your videos are amazing, and I am a big fan. In the physical part, I think the bonding of the materials are very dependent on the interlayer material and less about the thickness, but its mechanical properties the thickness have a very important role. Let me explain myself, starting from the fact that I never studied in depth diffusion bonding, diffusion in solid materials as far as I know remains on the superficial layers of the materials. When the material thickness surpasses this thickness, the interlayer material in the middle will not be related to the materials outside, then having no effect on the bonding strength. Then in the mechanical tests (on bending), the deformation of the interlayer material (in the case of the copper that is clearly softer) change the distribution of stress creating highly different mechanical results. Then, I think that the test regarding the hardening is very difficult since changing the temperature affects strongly the internal structure of metals and alloys so maybe thinking about a differential hardening once it have a bevel may be useful. Regarding the next experiments I would try a shear stress, a force parallel to the sheets of metal. This in-plane stress I think it would effect directly to the bonding structure checking its strength. I also think that in a blade the most normal type of stress is this one. In order to perform this test I can think of only two options but I do not have a lot of imagination so someone may find a better way. The first one is clamping the sample to the vise only in the bottom layer and try to strike the top part (all the test with the same energy on the strike. The other way is to clap it the same way but instead of striking it, to clamp the top layer and do a twisting motion following the axis perpendicular to the plane, in this case the behaviour of the material at both ends, “could be approximated” as a parallel stress force. I don’t know if this will be helpful, I hope so, and remember that this is my opinion and could not be true. Since my English is not that good if you have any questions, I will try to answer them and I can try to ask my teachers. Thank you for doing such great videos.
wondering why haven't you tried to do Ti - Al - Steel? Al-Steel is very well know thing and used alot in the marine industry, Ti-Al makes it as flexible as Al, so the whole thing together should actually be Ti glued to Steel with Al
I think this is your best technical video yet. You have had some good and funny videos, especially when Jamie scares you, but this is just great education.
Alec, if you have trouble with heat loss (which im sure is a thing you'll experience), try putting some insulation on the dies as well as preheating them. We did that for inconel & titanium forging (big aerospace stuff) at my shop.
I subbed, show me the stuff.
The next set of projects you do, are gonna be wild. Imagine a broad sword with titanium Damascus. 🤯🤯
Yeah, I wonder how much of the delamination/fracturing is due to cold joints. Most of them seem to be on the outer layers.
As someone who doesn't work with metal at all, but thoroughly enjoys the videos, those visuals with the colored cards about diffusion bonding were amazing!
5:41 @Alec Steele Super fast thought without even seeing how the interlayer experiments turn out, you could try electroplating either your titanium or steel pieces with one of the interlayer metal candidates to achieve the thinnest layer possible.
I came to the comments to say the same thing but you beat me to it 😀. Considering all the multiple series of forging required for damascus, trying to use plates of interlayer material for each forging would cause problems with adding more and more interlayer material into the damascus with each forging. At least with plating you are only adding a small amount of material each time.
it's a good idea, but seeing how thicker interlayer performed better, I don't think it's going to work.
@@cognitoidI would think that they don’t need to worry about adding interlayers during the additional forging steps, if they keep the titanium on the outside of the billet. Then you’d simply have titanium touching titanium, rather than the titanium touching steel. Additionally, the plan Alec described is a San Mai style knife, where you have a single layer of high-carbon steel surrounded by two (or more) layers of a different metal, like a taco, rather than repeatedly stacked and folded Damascus (which would be more like lasagna for a food analogy)
If the thinner layers of copper had done better or even similarly to the thick ones I might agree, but it seemed like the opposite. Going back to what Alec said near the beginning: you need the interlayer to be thick enough to prevent intermixing of the steel and titanium, and especially with the warping from unequal thermal expansion I don't think an electroplated layer would be able to do that.
@@danilooliveira6580 He could still add a sheet of copper, then that way in combo with the electroplating, instead of trying to bond titanium to copper in the forge, all the forge would need to do is bond copper to copper.
5:11 no vanadium? It’s one of the material referenced in the comments and it’s on the Wikipedia page for vanadium as a common intermediary for cladding steel and titanium.
I second this. Also Zirconium is a prime candidate being very chemically similar to Titanium, and Molybdenum and Tantalum are known for their high bond strength to Titanium.
Experimenting with further known Zinc Alloys (like Inconel and Monel) and Aluminium as used in Aerospace are other good candidates.
Finally, using 316L Stainless Steel should also give better results bonding to the interlayer, even Titanium itself, due to it's chemical composition - it's used in some biomedical applications with Titanium. I'm not sure how exact the temperature and pressure control would need to be for this practically, however.
Moly was my thought
Vanadium seems like a very good candidate, especially if paired with a high vanadium alloy of titanium (like titanium 6AL 4V) for the outer cladding.
VANADIUUUUUUM!!!!
I second the repeat test with a vanadium interlayer
The shear seems to be slowly becoming an mvp of the shop. Seeing it in action several times in every video. Must be saving SO much time
I am LOVING having the shear!
@@AlecSteele next purchase: some sheep. You already have the shear so Mrs. Steele can knit you some sweaters for the winter... 😅
@@AlecSteele As for ideas to try...... a more gentle flex test.
If you've seen forged in Fire, Dave Baker loves doing a test where he does a little flex to one side, then returns to the center before flexing the other way. Yeah this would be a pretty quick way to test bonding and in the show... he's had blades just... separate into layers. A success would have it flew both ways and return to straight with no de-lam.
Fair play Alec, your communication skills are top notch! Explaining these pretty complex processes in such a clear and easy to understand way is not an easy task, but you really manage it well. Even an absolute wooden head like myself can understand!
I'd give Cobalt a try. It bonds well with Steel and with Titanium. So this could be interesting. Manganese could work too and isn't as toxic as Cobalt. Another thing I'd try is Vanadium, which mixes great with Iron and could work with Titanium too.
Are you just suggesting the most expensive metals? :D
@@MrBlobfisch
well, he already went for gold in his first try...., so to be fair.
Also trying out brass would be interesting!
Alec! Time to partner with a university! Your approach is that of a phD student and your workshop just turned into the best available metallurgy lab!
I love your content, keep on enjoying what you do and share it with us... Thanks a lot
The film-making was pretty great on this video!
Yes, it was _golden_ ! ;-P
The video had a nice research paper like fibe, I am sure many people enjoy and appreciate these types of educational videos. It is also very nice that the people in the comment section share their knowledge as well, nicely done Alec and comment section!
@@ZK-im6er IMO Alex has one of the most helpful comment sections out of any UA-camr ive seen. Nothing but knowledge.
I completed my frist titanium to steel bond in December after almost 6 months of trying. I did not use a interlayer. You are over working it. Set the weld in one press and your done. That is what I found out that worked for me.
Point of interest for the inert atmosphere, if possible, can you alternate between a vacuum and Ar? Think of it as rinsing the surfaces free from oxygen. 3 rinses should be quite good.
Worked with highly reactive compounds in a glove-box and when introducing something it had to be rinsed in the prechamber
One the best visual explanations ive ever seen on diffusion bonding
Try using copper and silver together. In our pots and pans at Demeyere we use a multi layer core with silverdust and copper to fuse the layeres of aluminium and steel together 😊 could be interesting to see.
That’s so cool! Do you think they would be interested in doing a tour of their manufacturing? It will be easier to reach me on IG dm 🙏🏻
Both iron (carbon steel!)and Ti form carbides so maybe try brushing graphite powder between the plates. Also try Mn, V, Cr and Co metals from the first Transition Metal series if you can get them in sheet form. Stainless steels contain both Chromium and Nickel so something like marine grade 316SS might be worth a go too in place of your current grade of steel.
Alec, I would be very curious to see you try making a metal matrix composite using diffusion bonding. Not only would I be curious to see if you could achieve a damascus effect with carbon fibers and steel/titanium but also I wonder if the pure carbon layers would function well as an an interlayre because of their high flexibility and incredible tensile strength. Eitherway I think that exploring metal matrix composites would be a cool avenue to explore in the world of forging exotic aerospace materials.
Loving the scientific process! The one thing missing is a control, it would be cool to see how normal laminated steel reacts to the bend and future tests. Awesome video as always
Maybe a wild increase in difficulty, but it might be worth trying an air-hardening steel to avoid problems in the quench
Hmmmm. Could try hardening just the edge of the san mai when you get to it? Maybe with a torch or with clay on the spine of the blade. Curious...
Great test results, could try forge welding at slightly hotter temperatures with the next batch and see if that has any impact on bond strength. Also be interesting to stress test regular 1084/15n20 Damascus in the same billet size for comparison.
Both great ideas !!!
Loving these new videos, the format is perfect, I just love sitting down for 30 mins on a sunday afternoon to watch my favorite youtuber fix machines and make stuff.
I was going to suggest using vanadium, zirconium, molybdenum, or tantalum as well.
watching the quench in the acrylic tube was so satisfying 🤤
one of the best experiments ive seen on youtube. thank u alec for your work. been following since 2017
I think impact resistance between the layers would be a good test for an edged tool. It would be interesting to see if sudden acceleration could sheer/pop the layers apart. Obviously I'm not expecting a big chopper for the finished piece, but even a kitchen knife takes thousands of little impacts against a chopping board
Have you considered getting(a workshopversion) of those "closed environment" boxes they use in laboratories and sometimes for ultra-clean room for eg data-recovery where you have to take a hdd apart. Its basically a closed aqarium without water, where arm-sized holes has been drilled and closed again with a giant arm-sized glove.
So you can work with stuff in an ultra-controlled environment.
You could use it for eg stacking of these metal-plates in an oxygen-free environment, an argon enriched environment, co2 enriched or what have we.'
Youd be 100 % in control of what types of air/gasses you allow to touch the surface..
??
Cant wait to see a titanium-copper-steel damascus mosaic knife.
Again, the camera work around that shear is INCREDIBLE! I'm also really enjoying the nature of these experimental videos, they're very entertaining AND informative!
Oh my godness what an incredible video Alec, I have seen your channel several years ago, but this level is amazing. The way of explanation, the scientific way....amazing. Congratulations!!!! Eve I'm not a blacksmith the way you explain all is very sticky for looking. Thank you!!!!
It's so great seeing such constructive comments from the community
Might as well forge weld the left over bits together to see how they hold up to additional forge welding since you'll have to do that for an end product Damascus.
Maybe take a steel that airhardens? Kinda avoid the problem of quenching altogether.
Question 2: Can you forge this stuff?
Question 3: Bonding time, you did 10 minutes. Does the bond grow stronger with more time at temperature? Should be, right? Give it time to form a stronger bonding layer
Alec, your enthusiasm is as delightful as it is contagious! looking forward to the next one!
Hey Alec, loved the experiment you've been doing, I applaud you for that 👍🏻 maybe it's because of the steel core you're using. Maybe you can try using AEB-L/Nickel stainless as Damascus instead?
Seeing that those need a different form of hardening and tempering you might succeed in creating yourself a functioning billet
Notice!Interlayer eat carbon from steel and become fragile carbide, use slice of pure iron!
Ну да. 😊
I don't know much about metallurgy. But maybe you could electro plate the titanium with copper, grind off the sides you don't need. Then that way the electroplating might do a better job at bonding the titanium to a layer of copper, then when you weld it together with a copper plate, You are just essentially welding a copper plate to more copper.
Best episode ever!!! A perfect blend of work and science in the pursuit of art!
Gotta faq around to find out!
Great Stuff!
Maybe using an air hardening steele can solve the problem?
My thoughts exactly!
Excellent work! Love this series!
The peices are maby too small but maby edge quenching could work? Then you would keep all the great adherense at the spine left.
My two pence 😊❤
Might consider trying one of the platinum group metals, ruthenium being the cheapest one. Rhenium might also be worth a shot.
Alec love the videos I used to work in a sheet metal shop you can use tin snips to notch the ends of you sheet where you want it to be cut before putting it in your shear red handles for on side green for the other you push it through pull it back until the notch gets caught on the edge of the shear then cut it it's much easier then trying to line up marks with the edge of the shear also having a backstop for your shear to cut a bunch on one cut is a life saver you just apply pressure and let the machine jog along
Awesome tip thank you!
Wow, this is amazing. I've been watching your career grow from your first little shop, american time and now this! incredible work sir, I can see you've got plans with your new skills and equipment. The very best of luck to you, I can't wait to see what you create.
One thing that may explain some of the brittle failures in the outer titanium is a phenomenon called alpha case. When titanium is heated above around 700 C, the oxide layer on the surface can dissolve deeper into the metal. These oxygen atoms get mechanically wedged inside the titanium structure and makes it brittle and prone to cracking like you're seeing here. In industrial situations where they want to avoid this, they use strong acids (usually a mix of Nitric and HF acids, which are nasty), or heavily cooled grinding to strip the outer layer of titanium after any heating raises it above 700 C.
You may need to try messing with a surface removal procedure if you want to make it as strong as possible. The alpha case layer is usually only a couple thousandths of an inch (~10 micrometers) thick, so its not a ton of material that needs removing.
Instead of hardening all of the layers perhaps you could apply some current through the steel layer directly using leads attached to an electrical source
At 20:30 it would have been good to mention that copper, which you're using as an intermediate layer, does the exact opposite of steel when heated and then quenched.
Metal Tensile Test. The bending test is great to test the inter-metallic bonds in shear, tension, and compression at the same time. However, it would be interesting to see one of the samples response to pure tensile deformation and failure.
what about Tin, Aluminum, Brass? was curious if you didnt use these due to the lower melting points; which is why i assume the gold leaf failed, is that it just melted/vaporized at the higher forge temps
I am no metallurgist but it seems like most of your failures during bending were not caused by poor lamination, but rather by the varying tensile properties of the 3 different metals. I noticed on the one that did not break, the titanium section was extremely thin at the bend point. If it were me I would focus on getting a consistent thickness with the copper and nickel interlayers and then test how the thickness of the titanium and steel layers affects it.
I look forward to seeing how this progresses!
Also, slight point of concern, do you see any potential issues with galvanic corrosion?
This is very cool. I like the concept of the steel core coupled with the Damascus titanium finish.
Absolutely brilliant video! You explain the science, the theoretical part, and then you test it. Perfect! And the post-it as visual aids was brilliant! I loved this!
I love how you pivoted to actually looking into the scientific basis of what you are doing makes it alot more interesting imo 😊
so cool how you are already able to use your new machines, the defenetly improved the workshop👏
We need a steel and titanium Damascus sword! It would be cool too if the edge steel was blackened with an acid etch so you got the sunset purple blue and yellow along the core of the blade and black along the edge
It would be wild!!
I am no blacksmith or metallurgist but as a man of broad science man I love this video and how you explain everything!!!!
One thing that came to my mind was. What if you let all the billets cool down under high pressure? As you said metals contract at different rates when they cool down.
Make the blade as normal and cut a groove into it, inlay other metal then make holes thought it and pin with same metal pins. Heat the pins and hammer forge welding the pins to same inlaid metal. Grind it all down and you should have a very solid seamless bond.
I would look into the composition of Titanium brazing rods. And maybe brazing the layers together first might be also an option.
Your content is amazing! I enjoy watching Titanium Fabrication especially where it's not catching on fire. Very cool!
I know that TiFe is garbage from your video. It's interesting that it didn't show the C that would be in there from it being from Steel.
Right? Because Steel is an Iron-Carbon Alloy, not just Fe by itself.
You're also trying to make Damascus with all of these different metals.
I know that there is a high-entropy allow made out of Titanium-Iron-Nickel that has really interesting mechanical properties.
Just throwing it out there. Keeping doing what you do, it is fun to watch!
Hey, just to warn you of a bias you may have had when bend testing the hardenend samples. Billet 4, with the nickel, although it split appart, it did in a single place, and so no delamination, showing that it has the best layer adhesion from all the samples. So yeah, it failed more than the others, but for the others, when the outside layer cracked, it releases a large amount of the tension on the other layers, so they don't break that easely. For me what that test concluded is that the nickel billet has the best layer adhesion, and so is less prone to any kind of damages when under use, because a big unified piece is stronger than an piece that may break by layers. I'm not a professionnal on the subject, so I of course may be wrong.
This project is AWESOME!
1. I think your explanation for the curves has quite some merits. You could put this to he test by compensating the lengths of the pieces according to their thermal expansion rate
2. I second trying vanadium... but you might have to try moer layers... Ti6Al4V, Vandium, Copper, Steel, Copper, Vandium, Ti6Al4V
3. Oil might not be the right medium for the heat treating. Try water
4. Try other Titanium alloys. Ti-6Al-6V-2Sn (Cu+Fe) or Ti-2.5Cu might yield bette rresults.
5. YYou could also try to only harden the edge of the blade by quenching (in water) and chilling the rest of the blade with cold air.
Ideas, observations etc.
- i think that copper also acts like a "lubricant" between layers (it is elastic enough to allow steel/titanium layers "work" in different speeds)
- try some chemical or galvanic method to cover steel/titanium with interlayers first (and then add extra interlayer for the thickness)
- combine in steps: first combine interlayer+steel+interlayer and titanium+interlayer, then together titanium+interlayer to interlayer+steel+interlayer to interlayer+titanium
- and for the lols let them cool in the magnetic field (just don't get the magnets to hot)
I wonder if putting positive/ negative grooves in each of the materials could help with your stress testing. (So that they stack like lego blocks).
Could work by increasing the surface area, and I would think it would help with materials gripping eachother during your bend test.
Either milling grooves or maybe acid etching with an enamel mask of some kind? I would imagine the walls and bottoms of the grooved would still want as close to perfect of a surface finish as possible so maybe not etchIng but it's an idea.
Also the lower temperatures referenced in the papers you mentioned may have been because of thermal expansion.
My suspicion is that the extreme temperatures reached for quench hardening will cause delaminations. Maybe finding alloys that have closer coefficients of thermal expansion?
Or instead of quenching in oil, what about having some aluminum billets on the hydraulic press to apply constant pressure as it's cooling to prevent the delamination?
Just some random thoughts I had, best of luck and I look forward to the rest of this saga
this series is too good
The one that survived was down to the thickness of the copper being able to cope with the compression.
Is there a dirty gas mix that would introduce a bonding layer.
I absolutely LOVE the more scientific episodes like this and that was a WONDERFUL demonstration and explanation of what and why you're doing what you're doing here!
For titanium in the aerospace industry, tensile and bend tests are typically the gold standards for determining effectiveness of a material in service. Plus, a tensile test will get you a great idea of the shear strength of your bonded layers.
hugely impressive video - love the complications and explanations / demonstrations - thank you for a massively entertaining video
Wouldn't your goal blade be almost like a Cu-mai style of knife? To my understanding (which is little) you basically braze the steel together with the copper. I wonder if you bring the oven to near copper melting temps then 'braze/forge weld' them together, it could work. Steel cladded Cu-mai has a really strong tensile bond, so it may be similar??
The waves remind me of how different rocks can deform due to different stress properties at different temperature and pressures. An extreme is something called boudans, or little sausage links, when a stronger, less ductile material is pinched off by a softer material.
Three-iish things. First: maybe try sharpening and grinding tests if you want to make knife or tools (also damascus has unique sharpening properties at times). Maybe try bonding surface roughened metal pieces or powder metal in between (logic is more area of contact per volume for bonding to occur and also when shrinkage or expansion occurs, it may have more place to do so without cracking). Maybe you could roughen both metals first, electroplate with copper or nickel so the surface is smooth again, and then press them together.
Have you tried using an aluminum interlayer? From what I can find steel and aluminum can both alloy with it and produce a metal that isn't brittle
Aluminium has too low a melting point to be used in this process it would seem.
Love how you make all the use of all those new machines you got. Looking forward to seeing all crazy stuff you can make with them
Ahhh perfect weekend now with a brew ☕
Really starting to love the sheet cutter
Instead of a hard bend, it would be interesting to hit the pieces from the side with a hammer. That's closer to the sort of stress a weapon would get than grabbing in a vice and bending.
Wonder if you left all the samples at 800f for say 6-10 hours. Certain amount of shock going from room temp to temp.
For the Goldleaf: you can pick it up a little easier with a soft brush or something like that. anything else and as youve seen it just adheres to it.
An interesting test for the samples would be an impact test.
I think that an useful expertiment, would be making tiny plates of titanium alloys and testing it regarding the ductibility and tensile strength. An small "seasoning" of other elements could also improve the bonds, since for steel making it dont take a high amount of other metals to improve the characteristics of the alloy.
The important takeaway here is that the titanium layer is failing at the bend. No matter how good the joint if the pure titanium can’t handle the elastic forces it will fracture and that fracture will spread until it reaches the interlayer and then the fracture will move along the border causing the delaminating. The reason billet 3 bent is because the thick copper deformed itself inside the layer to allow the titanium to bend without breaking. This has nothing to do with the joint. What you need to pay attention to is if the joint fails before the titanium breaks, because you cannot change the elastic breaking point of titanium with any joint no matter how strong.
Fantastic input thank you for this!!!
Alec this is amazing. I´m so hyped to see what is to come.
Tho I would love for you to measure out forces when stresstesting, like tourqe on the bending stress test.
I think you will profit from documenting this properly from the get go and will also help others who want to try their hand at titanium-steel forge welding.
That's a very SWEET documentary and quite professional at that
Random ideas.
Just like using borax when forging steel (which is used to remove oxygen, i know) why not use a powdered rock with deformation properties and thermal deformation between steel and titanium for it to absorb the changes.
Most likely will not work. But if it does, it may accept deformation until it creates nano cracks and eventually shatters after multiple deformation (also the heat treatment can be a problem)
If you want to apply the idea of a metal with a heat deformation between titanium and steel ... bad news, most pure metal are rare and expensive. (scandium Sc 10.2 µm/mC° / Yttrium Y 10.6 µm/mC°)
In the end, why not go for a alloy that can bound with steel AND titanium on both sides, creating a new alloy between the 3 layers and giving it both flexibility and strengh ?
My best bet would be on aluminium/aluminium alloys with both know alloys of titanium (Ti-6Al-7Nb) and steel (FeAl) in the industry.
This is amazing to put the forge in this form , more scientif way , with researsh , informations and experiment. Would love to see a lot more of this
I love this, it's like alchemy with the end goal of crafting legendary blades
I think this might just become my favourite series. This mixture of experimenting and fiddeling with materials / equipment is just perfect :D
I’m a student studying to become a chem major and I love how the art of smithing melds with the science of chemistry in this project it’s just so fascinating
Former chemistry major here - that was a fantastic explanation and illustration of diffusion bonding and the problem of intermetallic TiFe.
it’d be interesting to see some of the remaining blanks drawn out to knife thickness… would those bonds even survive or might they get better? also curious to see some other interlayers like brass or something spicy like magnesium ;¬)
What if you include a bit of acid between the layers to preemptively eat away the oxide and slightly dissolve them, ensuring a smooth transition layer?
This has quickly become one of my favourite YT channels and I only found out about it two months ago. Great stuff.
18:24 it’s cool to see the shop testing methods to see how strong the materials are. Seeing how much work you put in to get to this point, it would be cool for you to run a Ultimate Tensile test to display the stress/strain curve of the final material you developed since you can also measure relative strengths to other materials.
Alex, your show is perhaps the most entertaining metallurgic class I might ever see. I’m not sure what year of an engineering education I’d offer your class too but I can’t see any student not wanting to become involved with metallurgy
Titanium, you know, was first identified in 1791 by Rev. William Gregor, a British clergyman and amateur geologist, while examining black sand from the banks of the River Menaccan in Cornwall, England. Gregor discovered an unknown element in the mineral ilmenite and named it menachanite after the river. Only later, in 1795, the element was renamed titanium by the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who independently rediscovered it and chose the name in reference to the Titans of Greek mythology.
By the way, good on you for Movembering.
I still believe in bonding titanium-nitinol-nickle-nickle-steel-steel. Though, tricky.
I'm wondering if you add another interlayer. Say chrome plating, you use copper, then Nickle, then chrome. So find a material that sticks to titanium the best and put it against the titanium. Then find a material that sticks to the steel the best and put it against the steel. Then maybe those 2 materials will stick to eachother, or maybe another material between them that they both stick well to. Instead of 3 materials you are using 4 or 5 to achieve the bond.
Bump the forging heat up to 900/925 and see if it bonds better. a longer heat may also help. I have a friend who has a Ti/Co/Fe fusion(his is a liquid fusion of the three) and it still gets some neat coloring. Don't ask me how he does it he won't tell me or show me (I tried) but it is strong as all hell. but my thoughts about bringing up the temp for longer may give just a little stronger bond.
As stated in the initial vid.. if you can pull of proper knife steel with titanium that does not delaminate it you can make some very, very pricy bushcrafty knives. That said, then you run into different challenges like delamination over time/use.. galvanic corrosion, warping, heat treatment vs annealing and delamination again. It would be very cool to make a proper knife with this. Not necessarily to use it and be the next best thing but just for the sake of science.
I love this video. It was really good! It was educational and a high level video editing!
Cheers for having all of that cool equipment and fascinating experiment idea there. One might say you were on The cutting edge" metallurgy. 👍
Hi @Alec Steele, I'm a physicist and a very bad amateur blade smith. I have a bachelor degree in physics, and I'm currently studying a master’s degree in material physics and everything I will comment is only based in my intuition and could probably be absolutely wrong, I would like to know your thoughts.
Firstly, your videos are amazing, and I am a big fan. In the physical part, I think the bonding of the materials are very dependent on the interlayer material and less about the thickness, but its mechanical properties the thickness have a very important role. Let me explain myself, starting from the fact that I never studied in depth diffusion bonding, diffusion in solid materials as far as I know remains on the superficial layers of the materials. When the material thickness surpasses this thickness, the interlayer material in the middle will not be related to the materials outside, then having no effect on the bonding strength. Then in the mechanical tests (on bending), the deformation of the interlayer material (in the case of the copper that is clearly softer) change the distribution of stress creating highly different mechanical results.
Then, I think that the test regarding the hardening is very difficult since changing the temperature affects strongly the internal structure of metals and alloys so maybe thinking about a differential hardening once it have a bevel may be useful.
Regarding the next experiments I would try a shear stress, a force parallel to the sheets of metal. This in-plane stress I think it would effect directly to the bonding structure checking its strength. I also think that in a blade the most normal type of stress is this one. In order to perform this test I can think of only two options but I do not have a lot of imagination so someone may find a better way. The first one is clamping the sample to the vise only in the bottom layer and try to strike the top part (all the test with the same energy on the strike. The other way is to clap it the same way but instead of striking it, to clamp the top layer and do a twisting motion following the axis perpendicular to the plane, in this case the behaviour of the material at both ends, “could be approximated” as a parallel stress force.
I don’t know if this will be helpful, I hope so, and remember that this is my opinion and could not be true. Since my English is not that good if you have any questions, I will try to answer them and I can try to ask my teachers. Thank you for doing such great videos.
wondering why haven't you tried to do Ti - Al - Steel? Al-Steel is very well know thing and used alot in the marine industry, Ti-Al makes it as flexible as Al, so the whole thing together should actually be Ti glued to Steel with Al