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.
But the nickel billet also failed very early. It’s possible that the other billets had stronger adhesion than the nickel billet but they just bent so much farther that bond was put under higher stresses
@@twister0800 It's due to the heat treating of the nickel and titanium at tempering temperatures. they are propagating a crack into the steel. The nickel billet is his best bet, he just needs to refine his heat treatment
Hey Alex, I'm a materials engineer. When we did a lab on solid state diffusion in uni, the diffusion was actually done by leaving the two metals in the furnace at temperature for 2 weeks to achieve proper diffusion. Pressing/hammering (like done in the video) would achieve better contact between the metals, but generally SSD is a far slower process than traditional forge welding. Hope this helps!
To get rid of the brittle intermetals between titanium and steel, niobium spacers are needed. To prevent the formation of a carbide layer between niobium and steel, pure iron or nickel must be placed.
The legend himself! Love your videos mate. Glad Alec has seen your comment! So, I’m expecting/hoping to see Nb spacers on the next video of this series :)
You missed two important metals. No. 1 is cobalt. It's know that Cobalt can bond very well with Titaniumcarbide and Titaniumnitrit. This is sometimes used to create carbide tipped tools. So it could be possible that Cobalt could bond with the Titanium. I think it could be better than nickel. The other one is Tantal. It's known that Tantalcarbide fuses with Titaniumcarbide in carbide tipped tools. So I think it's worth a shot to try this metal as well. It is also very deformable, so it could perform great when bending it. It also has a lower CTE than the other metals you tried.
@@Lukas.Cancelosi My comment was assumption based on facts. In his project things might behave completely different from what I expect. Only way to find out! Right?
I dont know anything about metallurg but based on melting points alone there are several metals between Fe and Ti (like Co Cobalt) and all of these could be valid contenders. Like manganese, beryllium, silicon, nickel, cobalt and palladium.
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
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!
Oh DEFINITELY. I didn't really understand the science behind it with just words but once the colored sticky notes come out, you bet I'll remember that in 15 years. I would love to do this stuff if it wasn't so damn expensive lmao
And that helped me with a curious experiment I'd been putting off because *I* didn't think my samples would handle mixing without delaminating...buuut now I have ideas, both interlayers AND "maybe I'll let mine cool in a hydraulic press" to see how that would affect it. His colored cards were very helpful, and were even literally inspiring to me.
The problem with TI ( I did destructive lab testing on TI for aircraft for 2 years) is ALPHA CASE. It VERY quickly forms an outside scale that is INCREDIBLY brittle. It will legit just snap if you bend it with heavy case. In most TI Aircraft shops, the Case is removed with a chemical acid 3 part process, to remove the scale at a micro level. The lab (me) would measure the scale and then it would be removed over a pre-measured set of time/thickness with 3 diff acid baths. This allowed the TI to be able to be welded in a TI box that's filled with argon and it also allowed for press forming of the TI at heat. Very very very interesting process. I love this series you've started. The last part was inspecting the TI under a blacklight for pitting across formed areas to ensure solidarity with the press form. It has to be IMPECCABLE, or its scrap. Which happens more often than you think. This is why AC parts are so so expensive.
Moreover, the tempering process requires industrial size kilns to properly temper at EXACT temperatures. You cant make mistakes, or it will turn into nothing and completely deform, then form MORE Alpha case. Its a ridiculously tricky metal, it gets tested through the lab at every step of the process, all the way to final. but its beautiful none the less. Send it Alec!
Curious question. In regards to the TI scrap, is it able to be melted down and recovered for reuse at all? Regardless of how lengthy or expensive the process would be.
Mate I wanted to say that I absolutely love your explanations in this video with those little paper mockups. They're so easy to understand, well explained, and beautifully visualised in a lovely style with "practical effects" (compared to, I don't know, After Effects or whatever most UA-camrs use for their graphics), which is something that I don't see too often on UA-cam. Kudos!
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.
21:54 Billet 4 2mm Nickel after hardening broke as one piece more so than all others. Pointing to a better bond imo. When thinking of rings of a tree, having a hard layer and a soft layer makes for a better overall material. I would take the sample to an edge and perform cut / durability testing.
That goes without considering the ratio of hardness over the quality of the bonding. It might have snapped instead of delaminate, but that doesn’t mean the actual bonding capacity to keep these materials together is stronger. The ratio of this over the sheer strength does show, but not necessarily the bonding strength
Putting a Edge on that billet leaves just one layer in contact, likely the steel in the middle. So sharpness and edge wear should be similar to a normal knife.
@@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.
Nickel had the best layer adhesion. The sample broke on half without delamination. Because of this, i suggest you nickel-plate the steel and the Titanium using electrochemistry. There will be a complete coverage of both metals and a very high surface quality.
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.
Playing and around and learning is one thing. But when you write down your processes and the results you get science. And with that, some companies will not show you what they did to get that result as they can make more money.
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.
Between this, and formation of Cu and Ag intermetallics, sounds very plausible. Those fractures don't so much look like bonding failures (natural surface or oxidized), but have the bright appearance of metallic failure. Seems like the bonding was good, but the strength of the bondline wasn't there. Some polished micrographs might show what combination of metals (or oxides) are in play here. (Does alpha case show on section, need a special etch, etc.?) Well, aside from the gold one, that looked like the gold just disappeared (into the Ti or Fe I guess) and there wasn't anything left to bond it together, heh.
@T3sl4 yea, the alpha case problem is very thin, just right on the surface, but it's brittle enough to start cracks that might become catastrophic. It's a big enough problem that for industrial heat treating, they will heat it in massive vacuum chambers using just infrared heating to avoid as much oxygen contamination as possible, and then they will still do the surface removal afterwards. You can make out alpha case with a microscope. It shows up as a whiter, shinier layer just below the oxide layer if you make a cross sectional cut. Etching would probably make it show up better though I'm not actually sure on that specifically. As for the gold, I'm guessing it's because it was super thin gold leaf but yea it was just GONE, haha
Yes! I am happy to see someone talking about this. I remember reading page after page of swordsmiths struggling with forging titanium blades due to this. Yes, while a knife isn't a sword, you don't want a hard brittle material. It breaks easily.
You will have a very hard time seeing alpha case on CP a titanium especially if the layer is not much more than 0.002” - 0.003” deep - which is a realistic number if you’re only heating this stuff to about 1750F or less for a short time. And the samples he is getting appear to be ground already, maybe pickled, so the layer is very thin like hundreds of thousands of an inch or less. It will form that fine layer almost instantly and wouldn’t be the source of the problem with joint dissimilar metals. Explosive cladding process is what is needed.
Hey Alec, I have a suggestion! You haven’t tried Aluminum. Apple uses solid state diffusion between Aluminum and Titanium in their new iPhones. Given Apple’s R&D budget, I’m sure they have verified that proper diffusion occurs between these two metals. Also, diffusion between metals is a process that takes a long time because the atoms need time to move through the very viscous metals. Diffusion only occurs fast in less viscous substances, which metal is not. You should be having the metals under heat for hours. And as for aluminum+steel, I’m not sure how well those diffuse together, you’d have to figure that one out. But great video btw, cheers! :)
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.
Honestly bending tests make little sense. The real and basically only question is "is it forgeable". Trying to shape those billets in much thinner blade stock and then sharpening will tell you all you need to know.
My work makes me have to bend flat pieces of titanium on a regular basis. I can attest to it's brittleness when bending. It absolutely has a braking point and will not sustain strength after bending in the same way as before. It is a lovely dream to have a sword that contains titanium, but alas it will probably not work ever due to titaniums properties. All the best luck to this genius dude, though! 👍🤓
@@albertweber1617 It doesn't serve a direct purpose but it is still an interesting and important part of understanding how these interlayered billets behave and fail. Sure for Alec's current purposes it's fine if it can handle forging and grinding, but attempting to understand a new technique or phenomenon more deeply than your current needs is how we begin to notice things and learn more and get better.
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.
The wavy layer patterns are a direct result of forging. I'm a metallurgical engineering in an open die forge shop with over 20 years of experience as well as a home shop blacksmith specializing in mokume. I have seen this behavior both on industrial and home shop projects. It has nothing to do with differences in CTE and everything to do with the friction between the work piece and the dies, the amount of metal under the die for any given blow and the depth of penetration of that blow. It happens with both hammers and presses and it happens with all metals, both those that are laminated and those that are not. It does not happen in metals that are processed by rolling only by press or hammer forging because the strain within the metal being deformed in that one blow or bite of the press is not uniform through the thickness. Rather, metal near the surface is affected by friction more than metal near the center of the cross section. This is why metal will bulge or barrel during forging operations, assuming you have enough power to make that happen.
What a waste of time, materiel and super workshop and machine tools. Coupled with extremely bad acting, muddled logic and crass presentation by a 14 year old. Thumbs down.
@grahamfoulkes7321 why on earth do you feel the need to come in here and insult someone that is using first hand experience to expand their knowledge, and by extension helping other people learn?
@grahamfoulkes7321 what? That's what happens when you smash something. The outside layers will be more affected than the inside. Even with a form it does not matter. Unless you smash everything flat to a point where you can't make a difference this will always happen.
Dude, your attitude is AMAZING! The metal deforms and messes up your hydrocutting machine, and instead of swearing (which most of us would do), you're like "Thats amazing!" You are also very informed and intelligent. We'll done.
A few things. First, good testing. Small sample sizes are okay for getting broad strokes figured out. Second, titanium is a strong metal but is not very ductile. It does not like to be deformed when it is cold. The 2mm copper worked so well because the copper stays soft and acts like a springy layer between the steel and titanium, and allows more movement. Another possible interlayer material would be vanadium. Vanadium is a common alloying element for both titanium and steel. It could be worth a try. For the purposes of a fancy knife it is likely that any of the copper layer options would be sufficient.
Great advice. I agree with vanadium as an interlayer. At my research lab a colleague is working exactly with that: diffusion welding steel and titanium by using a vanadium interlayer. I am unfortunately working in a different field so I cant say too much about that. But I bet there are a lot of research papers out there on this material combination.
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.
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!
Hi Alec, seen a few comments. Titanium is self passivating so do not have to worry about alpha case. Diffusion bonding is a time dependant process, your cycle heating and squishing has likely resulted in the start of bonding but sustained time is required to allow the diffusion of atoms. This process is usually carried out at temperature with a sustained pressure. Also consider your interlayer, copper and nickel form eutectics where silver and gold are intended as diffusion bridges/ catalysts . Eutectic bonding vs TLP, id also recommend using a high level of vacuum instead. The best test for diffusion bond joint strength is blunt trauma, hold the samples in a vice with the bond line being just above the jaws, then strike with a hammer. Brittle joints will fail in this testing, as-well as porous joints.
This sounds like good advice given what I know about the problems of welding/forging titanium and iron into an ductile alloy. Seems like some immediate tests that Alec could be doing is trying different "squish" rates for the hammering process. I'd love to see him working with vacuum and induction forging, but I don't think he has any equipment for that kind of thing in his shop so far.
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.
There's a spray welding technique that has many different metals I'm not a welder but they use it to build up worn parts, might be a better way to fuse the middle layer.
I’ve watched your videos for a long time, and gotta say this the most engaged I’ve been with them in years. Love seeing this whole new frontier play out, and love how you’re not just going at it Willy nilly, but systematically to really understand the process and be able to perfect it. As a viewer, that’s very satisfying-if it felt like you were simply not exploring stuff thoroughly or just saying “whatever” and leaving stuff up to random chance, that’d be much less satisfying
Nanoscale material scientist (simulations) here, so I'm probably not the best for suggestions. A few ideas: 1. You could increase the abrasiveness of the surfaces before merging together and heating them while clamped together. It could give chances for crystal formation, if the temperatures are near the melting point. Maybe not what you're looking for as an end product, but it would help you establish an experiment proof of intermolecular bonding structure (aka does Cu + Ti form a great bond, and a better one if given a more roughed up surface)? 2. Try making the sandwich layer between the Ti and Fe be a pre-made alloy. I would encourage you to use alloys that don't contain Ti & Fe first, but those could be options, too, as the adhering layer between the alloy and Ti or Fe doesn't necessarily have to produce TiFe (though if it has the lowest melting point, it's the most probable end product). 3. Crystallographic bonding (apologies, scientific terminology isn't my strong point): Consider using a point source heating approach to melt Titanium and Iron together, but only at a single point. Moving this point of heating a few millimeters an hour (or less), you could encourage the material to form other crystal growth structures that have better properties than the standard TiFe. This could improve the bonding when forged later, by pre-melting the interface together. Should that fail, consider the same technique, but using alternate metals or alloys. It's related to a technique I used in undergraduate research, using a furnace and focal points to heat HoMnO and DyMnO to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit create single grain growth. It's painfully slow, but encourages natural crystal formation. Bulk methods can be developed later.
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.
Differential hardening. Like using induction heating to heat the faces of gears so that they are hard, but leaving the core of the gear a less brittle phase?
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!
What if you added an ultrasonic wave generator (or one tuned to a specific wave size) to the metal handle during the whole process, with the aim of trying to cancel out the wave and prevent that waviness between materials? Or would that be impossible due to the different density of each material? Couldn't you try to find some wave frequency that attempts to minimize this effect as much as possible? -Ultrasonic waves might help in a few ways: They could potentially reduce internal stress between layers by creating more uniform molecular vibrations The mechanical agitation might help improve metallic bonding at the interface They could potentially help distribute heat more evenly across different material layers
Thank you for the complete science lesson today. As a middle school science teacher, you have given me tons of material to use for teaching my students about the scientific method, atoms, bonding, and so much more. I will be writing many lesson plans based on this 20 minute episode. Also, as luck would have it, our school is next door to a blacksmithing and machine school and museum. I foresee many classroom collaborations. Thank you.
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.
@MrBlobfisch NoI didn't suggest Platin, Thungsten, or Osmium. And they already used expensive metals as Gold and Silver. Manganese is pretty cheap compared to them
This is one of my favorite videos you have done in a long time. The explanations, props for them, and experimentation are all so good. The feeling watching this brings me back to your early days as you were taking us along in a journey to discover and learn together. Really looking forward to the future of Titanium Damascus!
Hi Alec, I have a few thoughts/suggestions: Regarding your interlayer: 1. Ni is the best choice of interlayer for the materials you've chosen. Period, no need to test that further, just don't use thick sheet nickel (ref. next items). 2. If you want to use Cu, which would be neat, give the Cu a thin electroless Ni plate first. 3. Ti-6Al-4V absolutely requires a Ni plating to be properly diffusion bonded, the importance of this should not be overlooked, even when using Ar. Regarding the Heat Treatment: 1. Stress relieve ~650°C for 4-8hrs. slow cool to ambient. 2. Solution/diffusion HT ~1050°C for ~2-3 hrs. Fast quench. (This is where the diffusion bonding occurs so a clean atmosphere is required, no thermally grown oxides are acceptable *glares at Al and Ti menacingly.) 3. Age ~500°C for 4-8hrs. slow cool to ambient. I don't think it needs to be said that atmospheric control over oxygen content during all stages of HT are the most important part of the process, but it is especially important during the diffusion HT. Ni plating will help massively, but without a vacuum furnace, you're at your own risk. Note: I converted to °C from °F (because, freedom), and rounded to the nearest whole number so I did not tolerance these temperatures. err on the side of cooler yet uniform temperature gradients.
Hey Alec, Jumping in on the comments of a few others here about your testing. Your method and approach is awesome and super thorough. This has been awesome to watch you learn! A thought for your testing is to include some "control" billets. I would perform these same tests with simpler billets, For example, one that is just titanium with interlayer, and another that is just steel with interlayer. It could help you identify if the interlayers bond better to steel or to titanium and if you need to mix your metal sandwiches. If nickel will bond to steel better and copper to titanium, berhaps a billet with Ti-Cu-Ni-Fe-Ni-Cu-Ti sandwiching would hold up better and let you use thinner interlayers. To note though, I don't know much about metals, just lab and control protocols.
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.
Hi! Loved the video and I have a suggestion. For any experiment you run you need a control group so you can compare your hypothesis. In this case I would create the following control group items: 1- A standard forged steel billet. 2 - A standard forged titanium billet. 3 - A Standard forged titanium and steel billet. These 3 have to be forged in the exact same way as the experimental cores. Running the tests on the three cores gives you a way to compare and therefore better understand what is going on with the experimental cores. Hope this suggestion helps. Also, regarding the Nickel Titanium hardened billet bend test. You called it a catastrophic failure, however, notice that contrary to the other test subjects, the surface bounding layer did not fail.
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?
As a STEM Teacher, love your explanation of Diffusion Bonding! Very visual and easy to understand. Your teaching game is on point! Keep on inspiring us, you genius beast!
@Alec Steele - If you want the titanium outer layer mainly for rust prevention, I suggest you fully form and heat treat the steel core, then plate it at _low blade temperature_ with titanium via vacuum sputtering. You can plate as thickly as you like, but it can be a slow process (or very slow), and much of the titanium will plate the chamber walls instead of the steel blade. The beauty of this approach is you can get a much better bond than is possible with electroplating. You don't need to worry about oxide coating on the sputtering source because it boils off and gets buried in the chamber wall deposits along with other impurities and gas molecules... BUT you have to start with a pretty good vacuum while keeping the target steel in a protected area as that initial purification goes on... Basically in a 'shadow' from the perspective of the sputtering source. It also helps to rotate the target (the blade) during sputtering onto it, for a more even coating. . The nano-blobs of hot titanium act like bullets in the vacuum, and will diffuse somewhat into the steel when they impact the blade. For deeper penetration you can do a simple form of ion implantation: you apply a slightly high voltage between the sputtering source and the target blade, like the several kilovolts from a microwave oven transformer... But that will also tend to heat the blade more than 'cold' sputtering would, depending on the current flow at the high voltage. You can mitigate the blade heating by only applying the high voltage in short pulses. You can get deeper ion implantation by using higher voltages, but usually at lower current... meaning slower plating. . I would not use Magnetron-based sputtering since the target is steel and magnetic fields can distort the flight paths of the sputtering ions. Instead, I would use the "boat" method, which involves resistively heating a strip of metal with a depression in it for the _material to be sputtered._ The strip is usually molybdenum and you pass many amps through the strip, which gets hot enough to bring your sputter material almost to a boil in the vacuum. The result is an invisible vapor of your sputter material, which flies off in all the directions that are on line-of-sight paths from within the 'boat. For ion implantation, put the target knife (anode) at a high negative voltage and put the boat at or near 'ground' potential so that it acts like the positive electrode (cathode). Apply DC power, just like the magnetron tube receives in a microwave oven, or like the picture tube receives in an old CRT.
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.
Hotter temperatures should lead to more diffusion / bonding between the dissimilar metals - more thermal energy for the atoms to diffuse The rate at which the billets are bent at 90 degrees can also affect whether or not they snap so being consistent is important for a proper comparison!
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!
I think you are spot on when you assumed the waves came from differential expansion/contraction. That shows there is a ton of residual internal stress at the layer interfaces. I'm no material expert, but if possible, I would suggest finding a bonding layer that has a CTE that is intermediate between steel and Titanium. This should leave you with the lowest amount of residual internal stress. Another potential option would be if there is a fairly soft metal that forms strong alloys with both Titanium or Iron. Soft metals are more malleable and are less likely to store large amounts of internal stress. Then if it forms strong alloys with the Titanium and steel during forging, it strengthens the initial bond. Again, I'm no materials expert or metallurgist, so I'm not sure if any of these potential combinations exist. Just trying to logically think through what the target properties would be that could reduce internal stresses and prevent the delamination from occurring.
Something i’ve been told becoming a machinist is to run the surface grinder with no coolant for a few minutes after use to purge the wheel. I believe it is bad for it if the coolant dries inside, making it off balance and more likely to explode
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
I thought this... and then I remembered the Forged in Fire Stress tests :-) lots of info. Scientifically though, We would need this for completeness I feel. Both Steel only and Titanium only to be thorough
I worked at a company that welds with explosives, you probably already know about this but I thought it was interesting to share. They welded a lot of combinations like copper and titanium, steel and titanium. They cut a lot of the titanium products with waterjets instead of saws or grinders. Wonderful content keep it up!
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.
@@Sivanotthe inter metal is the week link. Diffusion bonding is used in industry all the time for steel to titanium in high stress aeronautical parts.
That should work for a single layering, get in get out, don't let the materials diffuse across and grow that intermetallic layer. Fine for a Ti jacketed knife, not gonna be easy to make complicated weld patterns though. Likewise, even with a diffusion barrier, I wonder how much is possible until the barrier becomes thinned too much by forging, and disappears into the base metals, creating soft (when forging) and brittle (when cool) lenses of intermetallic along the interface. Or when slicing and restacking billets.
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.
Hi Alex, Long time subscriber, I followed you making the stiletto dagger back in the day. One thing you might want to look at is adding a raspberry pie file server with an SD card cable attachment on it. That way you can plug it into the laser cutter and don’t have to remove the SD card from the machine every time you want to drop a file onto the card. This saves wear and dust incursion into the SD card which is the weak point of any machine such as this in a workshop. This is used widely in 3-D printing (OctoPrint), is faster, super cost effective (
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.
Okay, I commented a few minutes ago to show my appreciation for the low tech explanation of forge welding, something I’ve NEVER really understood. I left that comment before I had watched the whole video. Been watching this channel for years and this is my favorite video. This experiment was fascinating. I didn’t ffwd a single minute. SO. COOL. Thank you Alec for being such an energetic and engaging teacher. Thank you Jamie (sp?) for the outstanding editing.
Titanium and steel are welded together in industry every day. One of the most popular ways is frictional spin welding. This process is used with great success in the Turbomachinery industry in which I used to work as a mechanical engineer. Diffusion and solution are prevented by ultra short heating times. And, oxide layers are removed and carried away by friction and spalling. To achieve your objectives I'd focus more on 1) better precision grinding of surfaces for greater intimate contact 2) cutting the layer outlines closer to the desired finished shape 3) use quick induction heating to minimize diffusion and solution of the two metals 4) And, remove oxide layers with compatible acids while protected by an inert atmosphere and foil shielding. You must keep in mind the two metals want to bond almost at room temperature save for the outer oxide layers which prevent bonding. I think you should start by experimenting with precisely ground surfaces cleaned with compatible acid(s) while atmospherically protected. Many metals will bond at room temperature just doing that. Forget the old furnace and traditional forging. For this job they're just stone knives and bear skins.
Anyone else think Alec would be fantastic as a host of maybe like a children’s scientific show or something?? At 18:24 his tone of voice and his enthusiasm makes him easy to listen! I could see him doing cool experiments while narrating easily.
I am a metallurgist for a large Aerospace company and work with Steel, Titanium and Nickel-base super alloy every day. Seeing the crack propagate in your Steel/Nickel/Titanium sample should really show you that your material was well-bonded on that sample. Your best bet moving forward would be to experiment with this a bit more, specifically, you should look at various grades of each metal and try to match heat treatments as best you can, otherwise you will be hardening your nickel while softening your steel, and as others have suggested, alpha case on your titanium is detrimental, though you should just be able to machine it off. It may be worth looking into a Maraging Steel (Martensitic Aging) to accommodate for the material differences. I would definitely do a look across on heat treatments for varying grades of each metal, then go back and decide on bonding compatibility, and finally cost. When I have some time I might follow-up this comment with some suggestions!
Just a little suggestion . . . for an "intermediate" layer, the material should have a CTE between that of steel and that of titanium, in order to be more compatible with both. And if it's got a good amount of ductility/elongation, that would also help with resistance to the stack of materials tearing apart from one another. Here's another suggestion: Use, as an "intermediate" layer, a very thin layer that has been deposited by electroplating (instead of just manually placing a relatively thick layer of metal). An electroplated layer could be less than a thousandth of an inch thick. Great, interesting video. Thanks for posting it.
+1 for showing a montage of the leveling and calibration process w/ the grinding wheel while explaining what was going on, and then not wasting my time by showing the entire thing again but slower like many other channels would do
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
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!
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
At 20:30 would have been good time to mention that copper, which you're using as an intermediate layer, does the exact opposite of steel when heated and then quenched. Steel becomes extremely hard and brittle and copper becomes extremely soft and malleable .Maybe the tempering needs to occur sooner than later for the laminates to hold? Tyrell Knifewoks does great copper and Damascus blades. I learned the difference between heating and quenching steel vs copper from That Works. The information is out there in the vast space of the internet. I'm happy you're a part of it.
Yes, heating then “quenching” copper is meant to anneal it (soften it). Basically if you bend a copper wire too much it snaps due to work hardening. Annealing resets the stress in its structure. Which you’re right is the opposite of steel in terms of net hardness outcome 😊
Alec, it's a real pleasure to watch you practice practical science! And, as others have mentioned, it feels like getting a scientific education in in physics, metallurgy in addition to blacksmithery. (Don't know if that's a word, but it should be!) The whole thing is FASCINATING! You'd make an exceptional teacher, as you can teach even the things you don't know yet! Many, unfortunately, have trouble teaching even when they're following someone else's plan, and they have all the answers laid out for them. An unfortunate result of our civilization's even more unfortunate distain for those who teach. You know, the basis for such statements as: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." The arrogant blather of a sociopath who can only recognize value in money, not people, not information, not wisdom, and certainly not in society (beyond being a tool used to extract money [aka power] from others). I will certainly subscribe to your channel! Something uncommon for me, as I have always felt fully capable of finding worthwhile content just from searching for it. Besides, it leaves you as largely a mystery to the algorithm, which is rarely helpful, except for presenting other videos as choices to watch next, after watching your most recent one. And that's the way I like it. Plus, the algo for advertising things to me has never been able to advertise to me things that I'd actually be interested in buying, it's most relevant offerings only ever being things my most recent purchases. It's mildly amusing to find that the thing you've JUST bought being advertised to you, at the same price, you just bought it for, and from the place you JUST purchased it from! Mildly amusing, but pretty irritating. Especially when you've been allowing the advertisers access to your data!
1. Either try overlapping strips of interlayer to create a grid pattern or drill out holes from a single sheet making a Swiss cheesed interlayer with holes (Provides area for excessive interlayer expansion to push into / reduces the total volume of material that has to expand) 2. Try keeping a “C” Clamp on even during heating phase before the 1st Forge Press. Maybe check and tighten on interval(every 200°C increase) instead of just the beginning. 3. Try flushing atmosphere with Argon or Nitrogen (of heating chamber AND/OR the layer assembly stage if logical). Keep a small continual purge going of surrounding atmosphere of Tempering Oven during 1st Heating for Forging Press (minimize potential opportunity of oxides forming during heat up) 4. Try Push the heat for the forging press temp to 150°C shy of each tests Interlayer Material Melt Temp. 5. Possibly try using the shortest necessary heat up time to minimize potential opportunity for increasing total oxidation OR going straight into the pneumatic hammer blows right from the start.
I'm surprised at interesting and entertaining I found this. This isn't my background at all but, I'm hooked. I can't wait for the follow up. Well done man!
Hey, you are better at science than most PhDs that I know, trust me, I am a Professor. We just have more complex equipament, but regarding the brains and creativity... man, you just beat most of the academic comunity by a landslide. I think the fact you love what you do may have a great part on this.
In case you have not come across explosion welding, some 40 odd years ago, there was a company in Colorado that was laminating a wide variety of dissimilar/incompatible metals using explosives. The pressure of the explosion did the welding. All kinds of shape charges were used and pipe as well as plate were welded together, as I recall. Perhaps other shapes as well.
If it weren't so expensive, I would strongly recommend Palladium, as it has a comparable melting point to both Titanium, and steel, has around the same coefficient of thermal expansion as steel, and easily forms alloys with Titanium, and with steel, which suggests that the molecules have an easier time interspersing into each other. . The bright side is that is about half the price of gold, and it only oxidizes around 800 C, which shouldn't be an issue as it is flushed with argon when heated.
Absolutely love your experiment! There is a Japanese jewelry technique called Mokume Gane. It translates to "wood grain metal". Plates of karat gold alloys, sterling silver, white gold, palladium etc. are stacked and fluxed with boric acid / borax then pressed tightly together with clamps. The entire assembly is placed in the forge and held at a high temperature for as long as is reasonably possible. This achieves a high adhesion between the precious metal alloys. There is research to suggest that the high mobility of copper atoms is responsible for most of the adhesion between the alloy layers. Pressure is held on those layers during the forging. This is very important as the layers will not adhere correctly without it. The flux chemically attacks and removes any metal oxides present a moves them to the outside edges of the billet thust leaving a clean oxide free surface to weld under pressure in the forge. You also have another difficulty present in that the crystal grain size of the iron ( and possibly the titanium ) are likely to grow when being held a high temperature for a long time. This will make them brittle. It may be possible to achieve better bends in your laminations by using a torch and a rosebud tip. Here's to your success🎉. Good luck!
I did some reading and one thing I noticed is when bonding the billet needs be at least 850 c, and isn't hammered but is pressed and held under pressure, copper seems to be the best material, maybe rather than hammering it during the heat cycle try pressing it and holding it in the press under pressure for a minutes or 2 and then re heating, also keeping it hot while in the press would probably also help but I'm not sure if that's possible or reasonable with your setup. A completely different idea I had was to maybe collaborate with a chemist on this project who understands how the molecular bond works and can help you develop a method that's reliable, it's definitely already being done from what I've read so you should be able to get workable results.
Even tho I don't know much about that stuff, I find it amazing to have regular people making all those tests, it's probably thanks to dedicated testers like you that some day crazy things will be found.
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.
I would second that, although my metallurgy knowledge is 8 years past at this point. Best adhesion with the least ductility.
But the nickel billet also failed very early. It’s possible that the other billets had stronger adhesion than the nickel billet but they just bent so much farther that bond was put under higher stresses
@@twister0800 It's due to the heat treating of the nickel and titanium at tempering temperatures. they are propagating a crack into the steel. The nickel billet is his best bet, he just needs to refine his heat treatment
@@twister0800this is a very good point
Also worth noting the nickel will be more food safe than the copper
Hey Alex, I'm a materials engineer. When we did a lab on solid state diffusion in uni, the diffusion was actually done by leaving the two metals in the furnace at temperature for 2 weeks to achieve proper diffusion. Pressing/hammering (like done in the video) would achieve better contact between the metals, but generally SSD is a far slower process than traditional forge welding. Hope this helps!
Does plating result in any diffusion?
yes, i think a time component could help a lot
@@Imaboss8ball you need heat for lattice diffusion. At least .3 Tm (in K!)
How interesting!
yep, diffusion is a slow process.
To get rid of the brittle intermetals between titanium and steel, niobium spacers are needed. To prevent the formation of a carbide layer between niobium and steel, pure iron or nickel must be placed.
The legend himself! Love your videos mate.
Glad Alec has seen your comment! So, I’m expecting/hoping to see Nb spacers on the next video of this series :)
У мастера есть степень в металлургии? :)
Legend
Seeing Shurap comment is like seeing a Mythical creature in the wild 😂😅.
I'm going to presume this chap knows what he's talking about. Given over a million people regularly watch what he does.
You missed two important metals.
No. 1 is cobalt. It's know that Cobalt can bond very well with Titaniumcarbide and Titaniumnitrit. This is sometimes used to create carbide tipped tools. So it could be possible that Cobalt could bond with the Titanium. I think it could be better than nickel.
The other one is Tantal. It's known that Tantalcarbide fuses with Titaniumcarbide in carbide tipped tools. So I think it's worth a shot to try this metal as well. It is also very deformable, so it could perform great when bending it. It also has a lower CTE than the other metals you tried.
Not to mention zinc, a bit brittle and melts fast itself but alloys well with just about everything.
Would be cool to see an attempt.
But if we’re going off documented metallurgy, molybdenum, zirconium, other refactory metals like you said seem to work better if a bit pricey.
@@Lukas.Cancelosi My comment was assumption based on facts. In his project things might behave completely different from what I expect.
Only way to find out! Right?
I dont know anything about metallurg but based on melting points alone there are several metals between Fe and Ti (like Co Cobalt) and all of these could be valid contenders. Like manganese, beryllium, silicon, nickel, cobalt and palladium.
It is known!
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
He's so scientific for real. I'd love to actually learn from him.
I feel a thesis occurring... :-)
I feel like this is something Destin from Smarter Every Day would love to get involved in.
He needs engineering and metallurgy specialist. I agree.
Dr Steele has a nice ring to it 😉
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!
Oh DEFINITELY. I didn't really understand the science behind it with just words but once the colored sticky notes come out, you bet I'll remember that in 15 years. I would love to do this stuff if it wasn't so damn expensive lmao
And that helped me with a curious experiment I'd been putting off because *I* didn't think my samples would handle mixing without delaminating...buuut now I have ideas, both interlayers AND "maybe I'll let mine cool in a hydraulic press" to see how that would affect it. His colored cards were very helpful, and were even literally inspiring to me.
Reminds me of the explanation at the end of HBO's Chernobyl series
The problem with TI ( I did destructive lab testing on TI for aircraft for 2 years) is ALPHA CASE. It VERY quickly forms an outside scale that is INCREDIBLY brittle. It will legit just snap if you bend it with heavy case. In most TI Aircraft shops, the Case is removed with a chemical acid 3 part process, to remove the scale at a micro level. The lab (me) would measure the scale and then it would be removed over a pre-measured set of time/thickness with 3 diff acid baths. This allowed the TI to be able to be welded in a TI box that's filled with argon and it also allowed for press forming of the TI at heat. Very very very interesting process. I love this series you've started. The last part was inspecting the TI under a blacklight for pitting across formed areas to ensure solidarity with the press form. It has to be IMPECCABLE, or its scrap. Which happens more often than you think. This is why AC parts are so so expensive.
Moreover, the tempering process requires industrial size kilns to properly temper at EXACT temperatures. You cant make mistakes, or it will turn into nothing and completely deform, then form MORE Alpha case. Its a ridiculously tricky metal, it gets tested through the lab at every step of the process, all the way to final. but its beautiful none the less. Send it Alec!
Curious question. In regards to the TI scrap, is it able to be melted down and recovered for reuse at all? Regardless of how lengthy or expensive the process would be.
Titanium hates being heated without shielding gas. I learned the hard way.
@@AJ_Sparten1337Very hard, it spits metal everywhere, it needs shielding gas or a vacuum to melt.
@ absolutely correct. Argon is key.
Mate I wanted to say that I absolutely love your explanations in this video with those little paper mockups. They're so easy to understand, well explained, and beautifully visualised in a lovely style with "practical effects" (compared to, I don't know, After Effects or whatever most UA-camrs use for their graphics), which is something that I don't see too often on UA-cam.
Kudos!
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.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
I'll just grab this comment; cause he's right. Science, Theories, testing - this is FANTASTIC.
Agreed. I love this type of stuff.
Agreed. I learned some things
Agreed, I was hooked after the visual use of sticky notes gave me a better understanding
21:54 Billet 4 2mm Nickel after hardening broke as one piece more so than all others. Pointing to a better bond imo. When thinking of rings of a tree, having a hard layer and a soft layer makes for a better overall material. I would take the sample to an edge and perform cut / durability testing.
Additionally, it snapped very easily AFTER quenching and tempering. This would lead me to believe that a slow quench could have a significant impact.
That goes without considering the ratio of hardness over the quality of the bonding. It might have snapped instead of delaminate, but that doesn’t mean the actual bonding capacity to keep these materials together is stronger. The ratio of this over the sheer strength does show, but not necessarily the bonding strength
Putting a Edge on that billet leaves just one layer in contact, likely the steel in the middle.
So sharpness and edge wear should be similar to a normal knife.
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.
“That machine is going to make your workload a shear delight-unless things get out of hand and it’s sheer chaos!”
Mvt is more like what you should call it most valuable tool 🤣
Nickel had the best layer adhesion. The sample broke on half without delamination. Because of this, i suggest you nickel-plate the steel and the Titanium using electrochemistry. There will be a complete coverage of both metals and a very high surface quality.
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
I’m actually really enjoying this this series.
It feels part science education show, part blacksmith show and it’s a nice change of pace.
Playing and around and learning is one thing.
But when you write down your processes and the results you get science.
And with that, some companies will not show you what they did to get that result as they can make more money.
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.
Between this, and formation of Cu and Ag intermetallics, sounds very plausible. Those fractures don't so much look like bonding failures (natural surface or oxidized), but have the bright appearance of metallic failure. Seems like the bonding was good, but the strength of the bondline wasn't there. Some polished micrographs might show what combination of metals (or oxides) are in play here. (Does alpha case show on section, need a special etch, etc.?)
Well, aside from the gold one, that looked like the gold just disappeared (into the Ti or Fe I guess) and there wasn't anything left to bond it together, heh.
@T3sl4 yea, the alpha case problem is very thin, just right on the surface, but it's brittle enough to start cracks that might become catastrophic. It's a big enough problem that for industrial heat treating, they will heat it in massive vacuum chambers using just infrared heating to avoid as much oxygen contamination as possible, and then they will still do the surface removal afterwards.
You can make out alpha case with a microscope. It shows up as a whiter, shinier layer just below the oxide layer if you make a cross sectional cut. Etching would probably make it show up better though I'm not actually sure on that specifically.
As for the gold, I'm guessing it's because it was super thin gold leaf but yea it was just GONE, haha
Yes! I am happy to see someone talking about this. I remember reading page after page of swordsmiths struggling with forging titanium blades due to this. Yes, while a knife isn't a sword, you don't want a hard brittle material. It breaks easily.
You will have a very hard time seeing alpha case on CP a titanium especially if the layer is not much more than 0.002” - 0.003” deep - which is a realistic number if you’re only heating this stuff to about 1750F or less for a short time. And the samples he is getting appear to be ground already, maybe pickled, so the layer is very thin like hundreds of thousands of an inch or less. It will form that fine layer almost instantly and wouldn’t be the source of the problem with joint dissimilar metals. Explosive cladding process is what is needed.
@@jonquinn11 Yeah, titanium and explosives, it'll make a good YT video! For science!
Hey Alec, I have a suggestion! You haven’t tried Aluminum. Apple uses solid state diffusion between Aluminum and Titanium in their new iPhones. Given Apple’s R&D budget, I’m sure they have verified that proper diffusion occurs between these two metals. Also, diffusion between metals is a process that takes a long time because the atoms need time to move through the very viscous metals. Diffusion only occurs fast in less viscous substances, which metal is not. You should be having the metals under heat for hours. And as for aluminum+steel, I’m not sure how well those diffuse together, you’d have to figure that one out. But great video btw, cheers! :)
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!!!
Honestly bending tests make little sense. The real and basically only question is "is it forgeable". Trying to shape those billets in much thinner blade stock and then sharpening will tell you all you need to know.
My work makes me have to bend flat pieces of titanium on a regular basis. I can attest to it's brittleness when bending. It absolutely has a braking point and will not sustain strength after bending in the same way as before. It is a lovely dream to have a sword that contains titanium, but alas it will probably not work ever due to titaniums properties. All the best luck to this genius dude, though! 👍🤓
We got an engineer talking to scientists here xD@@albertweber1617
@@albertweber1617 It doesn't serve a direct purpose but it is still an interesting and important part of understanding how these interlayered billets behave and fail. Sure for Alec's current purposes it's fine if it can handle forging and grinding, but attempting to understand a new technique or phenomenon more deeply than your current needs is how we begin to notice things and learn more and get better.
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.
@@U014B Obviously it'd be the outerlayers since thats the intermediate layers between steel and titanium?
The wavy layer patterns are a direct result of forging. I'm a metallurgical engineering in an open die forge shop with over 20 years of experience as well as a home shop blacksmith specializing in mokume. I have seen this behavior both on industrial and home shop projects. It has nothing to do with differences in CTE and everything to do with the friction between the work piece and the dies, the amount of metal under the die for any given blow and the depth of penetration of that blow. It happens with both hammers and presses and it happens with all metals, both those that are laminated and those that are not. It does not happen in metals that are processed by rolling only by press or hammer forging because the strain within the metal being deformed in that one blow or bite of the press is not uniform through the thickness. Rather, metal near the surface is affected by friction more than metal near the center of the cross section. This is why metal will bulge or barrel during forging operations, assuming you have enough power to make that happen.
What a waste of time, materiel and super workshop and machine tools. Coupled with extremely bad acting, muddled logic and crass presentation by a 14 year old. Thumbs down.
@grahamfoulkes7321 why on earth do you feel the need to come in here and insult someone that is using first hand experience to expand their knowledge, and by extension helping other people learn?
@grahamfoulkes7321 what? That's what happens when you smash something. The outside layers will be more affected than the inside. Even with a form it does not matter. Unless you smash everything flat to a point where you can't make a difference this will always happen.
Dude, your attitude is AMAZING! The metal deforms and messes up your hydrocutting machine, and instead of swearing (which most of us would do), you're like "Thats amazing!"
You are also very informed and intelligent. We'll done.
A few things. First, good testing. Small sample sizes are okay for getting broad strokes figured out.
Second, titanium is a strong metal but is not very ductile. It does not like to be deformed when it is cold. The 2mm copper worked so well because the copper stays soft and acts like a springy layer between the steel and titanium, and allows more movement.
Another possible interlayer material would be vanadium. Vanadium is a common alloying element for both titanium and steel. It could be worth a try.
For the purposes of a fancy knife it is likely that any of the copper layer options would be sufficient.
Great advice. I agree with vanadium as an interlayer. At my research lab a colleague is working exactly with that: diffusion welding steel and titanium by using a vanadium interlayer. I am unfortunately working in a different field so I cant say too much about that. But I bet there are a lot of research papers out there on this material combination.
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.
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!
Materials science UA-cam is my favorite cozy time place but there aren't many of you guys. Just wanna say thanks for keeping it nerdy
Hi Alec, seen a few comments. Titanium is self passivating so do not have to worry about alpha case. Diffusion bonding is a time dependant process, your cycle heating and squishing has likely resulted in the start of bonding but sustained time is required to allow the diffusion of atoms. This process is usually carried out at temperature with a sustained pressure. Also consider your interlayer, copper and nickel form eutectics where silver and gold are intended as diffusion bridges/ catalysts . Eutectic bonding vs TLP, id also recommend using a high level of vacuum instead. The best test for diffusion bond joint strength is blunt trauma, hold the samples in a vice with the bond line being just above the jaws, then strike with a hammer. Brittle joints will fail in this testing, as-well as porous joints.
This sounds like good advice given what I know about the problems of welding/forging titanium and iron into an ductile alloy. Seems like some immediate tests that Alec could be doing is trying different "squish" rates for the hammering process.
I'd love to see him working with vacuum and induction forging, but I don't think he has any equipment for that kind of thing in his shop so far.
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 🙏🏻
This! I was thinking this, like the brazing rods I use at work!
Love my Demeyere proline and atlantis.
There's a spray welding technique that has many different metals I'm not a welder but they use it to build up worn parts, might be a better way to fuse the middle layer.
I’ve watched your videos for a long time, and gotta say this the most engaged I’ve been with them in years. Love seeing this whole new frontier play out, and love how you’re not just going at it Willy nilly, but systematically to really understand the process and be able to perfect it. As a viewer, that’s very satisfying-if it felt like you were simply not exploring stuff thoroughly or just saying “whatever” and leaving stuff up to random chance, that’d be much less satisfying
Nanoscale material scientist (simulations) here, so I'm probably not the best for suggestions. A few ideas:
1. You could increase the abrasiveness of the surfaces before merging together and heating them while clamped together. It could give chances for crystal formation, if the temperatures are near the melting point. Maybe not what you're looking for as an end product, but it would help you establish an experiment proof of intermolecular bonding structure (aka does Cu + Ti form a great bond, and a better one if given a more roughed up surface)?
2. Try making the sandwich layer between the Ti and Fe be a pre-made alloy. I would encourage you to use alloys that don't contain Ti & Fe first, but those could be options, too, as the adhering layer between the alloy and Ti or Fe doesn't necessarily have to produce TiFe (though if it has the lowest melting point, it's the most probable end product).
3. Crystallographic bonding (apologies, scientific terminology isn't my strong point): Consider using a point source heating approach to melt Titanium and Iron together, but only at a single point. Moving this point of heating a few millimeters an hour (or less), you could encourage the material to form other crystal growth structures that have better properties than the standard TiFe. This could improve the bonding when forged later, by pre-melting the interface together. Should that fail, consider the same technique, but using alternate metals or alloys. It's related to a technique I used in undergraduate research, using a furnace and focal points to heat HoMnO and DyMnO to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit create single grain growth. It's painfully slow, but encourages natural crystal formation. Bulk methods can be developed later.
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.
Differential hardening. Like using induction heating to heat the faces of gears so that they are hard, but leaving the core of the gear a less brittle phase?
yes, that may interfere less with the internal structure
Good suggestions I think.
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.
The film-making was pretty great on this video!
Yes, it was _golden_ ! ;-P
What if you added an ultrasonic wave generator (or one tuned to a specific wave size) to the metal handle during the whole process, with the aim of trying to cancel out the wave and prevent that waviness between materials? Or would that be impossible due to the different density of each material? Couldn't you try to find some wave frequency that attempts to minimize this effect as much as possible?
-Ultrasonic waves might help in a few ways:
They could potentially reduce internal stress between layers by creating more uniform molecular vibrations
The mechanical agitation might help improve metallic bonding at the interface
They could potentially help distribute heat more evenly across different material layers
Thank you for the complete science lesson today. As a middle school science teacher, you have given me tons of material to use for teaching my students about the scientific method, atoms, bonding, and so much more. I will be writing many lesson plans based on this 20 minute episode. Also, as luck would have it, our school is next door to a blacksmithing and machine school and museum. I foresee many classroom collaborations. Thank you.
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! Coz the temps are low.
@MrBlobfisch
NoI didn't suggest Platin, Thungsten, or Osmium. And they already used expensive metals as Gold and Silver. Manganese is pretty cheap compared to them
As I stated higher niobium foil of 0,02 mm is the right material for that concept of a blade. Hopefully Alec gonna see my comment.
This is one of my favorite videos you have done in a long time. The explanations, props for them, and experimentation are all so good. The feeling watching this brings me back to your early days as you were taking us along in a journey to discover and learn together. Really looking forward to the future of Titanium Damascus!
Hi Alec,
I have a few thoughts/suggestions:
Regarding your interlayer:
1. Ni is the best choice of interlayer for the materials you've chosen. Period, no need to test that further, just don't use thick sheet nickel (ref. next items).
2. If you want to use Cu, which would be neat, give the Cu a thin electroless Ni plate first.
3. Ti-6Al-4V absolutely requires a Ni plating to be properly diffusion bonded, the importance of this should not be overlooked, even when using Ar.
Regarding the Heat Treatment:
1. Stress relieve ~650°C for 4-8hrs. slow cool to ambient.
2. Solution/diffusion HT ~1050°C for ~2-3 hrs. Fast quench. (This is where the diffusion bonding occurs so a clean atmosphere is required, no thermally grown oxides are acceptable *glares at Al and Ti menacingly.)
3. Age ~500°C for 4-8hrs. slow cool to ambient.
I don't think it needs to be said that atmospheric control over oxygen content during all stages of HT are the most important part of the process, but it is especially important during the diffusion HT. Ni plating will help massively, but without a vacuum furnace, you're at your own risk.
Note: I converted to °C from °F (because, freedom), and rounded to the nearest whole number so I did not tolerance these temperatures. err on the side of cooler yet uniform temperature gradients.
Hey Alec,
Jumping in on the comments of a few others here about your testing. Your method and approach is awesome and super thorough. This has been awesome to watch you learn!
A thought for your testing is to include some "control" billets. I would perform these same tests with simpler billets, For example, one that is just titanium with interlayer, and another that is just steel with interlayer. It could help you identify if the interlayers bond better to steel or to titanium and if you need to mix your metal sandwiches. If nickel will bond to steel better and copper to titanium, berhaps a billet with Ti-Cu-Ni-Fe-Ni-Cu-Ti sandwiching would hold up better and let you use thinner interlayers.
To note though, I don't know much about metals, just lab and control protocols.
I was think the same exact thing, would help get a feel for each materials quirks and how they work in alec's "Lab" environment
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.
Hi! Loved the video and I have a suggestion. For any experiment you run you need a control group so you can compare your hypothesis. In this case I would create the following control group items: 1- A standard forged steel billet. 2 - A standard forged titanium billet. 3 - A Standard forged titanium and steel billet.
These 3 have to be forged in the exact same way as the experimental cores.
Running the tests on the three cores gives you a way to compare and therefore better understand what is going on with the experimental cores.
Hope this suggestion helps.
Also, regarding the Nickel Titanium hardened billet bend test. You called it a catastrophic failure, however, notice that contrary to the other test subjects, the surface bounding layer did not fail.
I must say this is exciting but not quite as exciting as a possible Alec Stash that I see growing! The world needs this!
😂😂😂
@@AlecSteele The Steele Stache must happen.
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?
As a STEM Teacher, love your explanation of Diffusion Bonding! Very visual and easy to understand. Your teaching game is on point! Keep on inspiring us, you genius beast!
@Alec Steele - If you want the titanium outer layer mainly for rust prevention, I suggest you fully form and heat treat the steel core, then plate it at _low blade temperature_ with titanium via vacuum sputtering. You can plate as thickly as you like, but it can be a slow process (or very slow), and much of the titanium will plate the chamber walls instead of the steel blade. The beauty of this approach is you can get a much better bond than is possible with electroplating. You don't need to worry about oxide coating on the sputtering source because it boils off and gets buried in the chamber wall deposits along with other impurities and gas molecules... BUT you have to start with a pretty good vacuum while keeping the target steel in a protected area as that initial purification goes on... Basically in a 'shadow' from the perspective of the sputtering source. It also helps to rotate the target (the blade) during sputtering onto it, for a more even coating.
.
The nano-blobs of hot titanium act like bullets in the vacuum, and will diffuse somewhat into the steel when they impact the blade. For deeper penetration you can do a simple form of ion implantation: you apply a slightly high voltage between the sputtering source and the target blade, like the several kilovolts from a microwave oven transformer... But that will also tend to heat the blade more than 'cold' sputtering would, depending on the current flow at the high voltage. You can mitigate the blade heating by only applying the high voltage in short pulses. You can get deeper ion implantation by using higher voltages, but usually at lower current... meaning slower plating.
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I would not use Magnetron-based sputtering since the target is steel and magnetic fields can distort the flight paths of the sputtering ions. Instead, I would use the "boat" method, which involves resistively heating a strip of metal with a depression in it for the _material to be sputtered._ The strip is usually molybdenum and you pass many amps through the strip, which gets hot enough to bring your sputter material almost to a boil in the vacuum. The result is an invisible vapor of your sputter material, which flies off in all the directions that are on line-of-sight paths from within the 'boat. For ion implantation, put the target knife (anode) at a high negative voltage and put the boat at or near 'ground' potential so that it acts like the positive electrode (cathode). Apply DC power, just like the magnetron tube receives in a microwave oven, or like the picture tube receives in an old CRT.
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 !!!
Hotter temperatures should lead to more diffusion / bonding between the dissimilar metals - more thermal energy for the atoms to diffuse
The rate at which the billets are bent at 90 degrees can also affect whether or not they snap so being consistent is important for a proper comparison!
I think this might just become my favourite series. This mixture of experimenting and fiddeling with materials / equipment is just perfect :D
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!
I think you are spot on when you assumed the waves came from differential expansion/contraction. That shows there is a ton of residual internal stress at the layer interfaces. I'm no material expert, but if possible, I would suggest finding a bonding layer that has a CTE that is intermediate between steel and Titanium. This should leave you with the lowest amount of residual internal stress.
Another potential option would be if there is a fairly soft metal that forms strong alloys with both Titanium or Iron. Soft metals are more malleable and are less likely to store large amounts of internal stress. Then if it forms strong alloys with the Titanium and steel during forging, it strengthens the initial bond.
Again, I'm no materials expert or metallurgist, so I'm not sure if any of these potential combinations exist. Just trying to logically think through what the target properties would be that could reduce internal stresses and prevent the delamination from occurring.
Something i’ve been told becoming a machinist is to run the surface grinder with no coolant for a few minutes after use to purge the wheel. I believe it is bad for it if the coolant dries inside, making it off balance and more likely to explode
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
I thought this... and then I remembered the Forged in Fire Stress tests :-) lots of info.
Scientifically though, We would need this for completeness I feel. Both Steel only and Titanium only to be thorough
watching the quench in the acrylic tube was so satisfying 🤤
I worked at a company that welds with explosives, you probably already know about this but I thought it was interesting to share. They welded a lot of combinations like copper and titanium, steel and titanium. They cut a lot of the titanium products with waterjets instead of saws or grinders. Wonderful content keep it up!
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.
But would about the formed material that binds them together being incredibly weak? How much testing did you do for the strength of the bond?
Yes!!! In industry we used a single welding press at high pressure until the part got to around 250c with pre heated press faces.
@@Sivanotthe inter metal is the week link. Diffusion bonding is used in industry all the time for steel to titanium in high stress aeronautical parts.
That should work for a single layering, get in get out, don't let the materials diffuse across and grow that intermetallic layer. Fine for a Ti jacketed knife, not gonna be easy to make complicated weld patterns though.
Likewise, even with a diffusion barrier, I wonder how much is possible until the barrier becomes thinned too much by forging, and disappears into the base metals, creating soft (when forging) and brittle (when cool) lenses of intermetallic along the interface. Or when slicing and restacking billets.
@@Sivanot bend test and hammered chisel on both sides of the jacket survived both.
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.
I'm fairly certain cobalt is quite toxic in some forms and could be dangerous
@SuperEpicCookies not as the metal, cobalt tool steel is commonplace.
I was going to suggest using vanadium, zirconium, molybdenum, or tantalum as well.
Hi Alex,
Long time subscriber, I followed you making the stiletto dagger back in the day.
One thing you might want to look at is adding a raspberry pie file server with an SD card cable attachment on it. That way you can plug it into the laser cutter and don’t have to remove the SD card from the machine every time you want to drop a file onto the card. This saves wear and dust incursion into the SD card which is the weak point of any machine such as this in a workshop. This is used widely in 3-D printing (OctoPrint), is faster, super cost effective (
Maybe a wild increase in difficulty, but it might be worth trying an air-hardening steel to avoid problems in the quench
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.
Okay, I commented a few minutes ago to show my appreciation for the low tech explanation of forge welding, something I’ve NEVER really understood. I left that comment before I had watched the whole video. Been watching this channel for years and this is my favorite video. This experiment was fascinating. I didn’t ffwd a single minute. SO. COOL. Thank you Alec for being such an energetic and engaging teacher. Thank you Jamie (sp?) for the outstanding editing.
Titanium and steel are welded together in industry every day. One of the most popular ways is frictional spin welding. This process is used with great success in the Turbomachinery industry in which I used to work as a mechanical engineer. Diffusion and solution are prevented by ultra short heating times. And, oxide layers are removed and carried away by friction and spalling. To achieve your objectives I'd focus more on 1) better precision grinding of surfaces for greater intimate contact 2) cutting the layer outlines closer to the desired finished shape 3) use quick induction heating to minimize diffusion and solution of the two metals 4) And, remove oxide layers with compatible acids while protected by an inert atmosphere and foil shielding. You must keep in mind the two metals want to bond almost at room temperature save for the outer oxide layers which prevent bonding. I think you should start by experimenting with precisely ground surfaces cleaned with compatible acid(s) while atmospherically protected. Many metals will bond at room temperature just doing that. Forget the old furnace and traditional forging. For this job they're just stone knives and bear skins.
Anyone else think Alec would be fantastic as a host of maybe like a children’s scientific show or something?? At 18:24 his tone of voice and his enthusiasm makes him easy to listen! I could see him doing cool experiments while narrating easily.
I am a metallurgist for a large Aerospace company and work with Steel, Titanium and Nickel-base super alloy every day. Seeing the crack propagate in your Steel/Nickel/Titanium sample should really show you that your material was well-bonded on that sample. Your best bet moving forward would be to experiment with this a bit more, specifically, you should look at various grades of each metal and try to match heat treatments as best you can, otherwise you will be hardening your nickel while softening your steel, and as others have suggested, alpha case on your titanium is detrimental, though you should just be able to machine it off. It may be worth looking into a Maraging Steel (Martensitic Aging) to accommodate for the material differences.
I would definitely do a look across on heat treatments for varying grades of each metal, then go back and decide on bonding compatibility, and finally cost. When I have some time I might follow-up this comment with some suggestions!
One the best visual explanations ive ever seen on diffusion bonding
Just a little suggestion . . . for an "intermediate" layer, the material should have a CTE between
that of steel and that of titanium, in order to be more compatible with both. And if it's got a good
amount of ductility/elongation, that would also help with resistance to the stack of materials
tearing apart from one another. Here's another suggestion: Use, as an "intermediate" layer, a
very thin layer that has been deposited by electroplating (instead of just manually placing a relatively thick layer of metal). An electroplated layer could be less than a thousandth of an
inch thick. Great, interesting video. Thanks for posting it.
3:02 He spoke!!!!! THE ONE PIECE IS REAL!!!!!!!☠️☠️☠️🦜🦜🦜🦜🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
THE ONE PIECE!!!!!! THE ONE PIECE IS REAAAAALLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!
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...
Cant wait to see a titanium-copper-steel damascus mosaic knife.
Spoilers 😒
+1 for showing a montage of the leveling and calibration process w/ the grinding wheel while explaining what was going on, and then not wasting my time by showing the entire thing again but slower like many other channels would do
Ahhh perfect weekend now with a brew ☕
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!!
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!
Alex turning into a mad scientist is awesome! I'm happy you're pushing the limits of blacksmithing! Please document your work and publish a paper!
0:14 tickles you? 😮
His underwear sponsor likes to see him squirm 😊
In all the right kind of ways 😏
He is P Diddy
He's gonna make... uhhhh.. cylinders.
@mitaskeledzija6269 He is P Damascus.. completely different party's 🎉 👉👌
17:32 - Nano? I hardly micro!
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
I dont think thatll work as he needs to keep a positive pressure or air will get in. its not airtight.
I dont know what’s more fascinating, the video itself of scrolling through reading everyone’s thoughts and theories on it all. How fantastic!
Handling goldleaf is an art form all to itself.
18:09 why don't you put titanium in the middle and steel in the outer side. I am an illiterate in forging though..
It's so the potential knife has a steel edge. The titanium is too brittle.
Titanium isn't actually that hard compared to knife steels, it's not great for a cutting edge
With most things titanium I just assume the soviets figured it out 50 years ago 😆
At 20:30 would have been good time to mention that copper, which you're using as an intermediate layer, does the exact opposite of steel when heated and then quenched. Steel becomes extremely hard and brittle and copper becomes extremely soft and malleable .Maybe the tempering needs to occur sooner than later for the laminates to hold? Tyrell Knifewoks does great copper and Damascus blades. I learned the difference between heating and quenching steel vs copper from That Works. The information is out there in the vast space of the internet. I'm happy you're a part of it.
I don’t know anything about quenching metals but, assuming that you’re correct, does add a certain level of complexity to the overall test.
Yes, heating then “quenching” copper is meant to anneal it (soften it). Basically if you bend a copper wire too much it snaps due to work hardening. Annealing resets the stress in its structure. Which you’re right is the opposite of steel in terms of net hardness outcome 😊
Alex could narrate paint drying and I'd be totally captivated. It's just a plus that he's narrating his groundbreaking smithing
Notice!Interlayer eat carbon from steel and become fragile carbide, use slice of pure iron!
Ну да. 😊
It's the alloy of titanium and iron that is fragile
Keep the titanium stuff coming please loving it ❤
21:44 Failure, Bond Failure.
Alec, it's a real pleasure to watch you practice practical science! And, as others have mentioned, it feels like getting a scientific education in in physics, metallurgy in addition to blacksmithery. (Don't know if that's a word, but it should be!) The whole thing is FASCINATING! You'd make an exceptional teacher, as you can teach even the things you don't know yet! Many, unfortunately, have trouble teaching even when they're following someone else's plan, and they have all the answers laid out for them. An unfortunate result of our civilization's even more unfortunate distain for those who teach. You know, the basis for such statements as: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." The arrogant blather of a sociopath who can only recognize value in money, not people, not information, not wisdom, and certainly not in society (beyond being a tool used to extract money [aka power] from others).
I will certainly subscribe to your channel! Something uncommon for me, as I have always felt fully capable of finding worthwhile content just from searching for it.
Besides, it leaves you as largely a mystery to the algorithm, which is rarely helpful, except for presenting other videos as choices to watch next, after watching your most recent one. And that's the way I like it. Plus, the algo for advertising things to me has never been able to advertise to me things that I'd actually be interested in buying, it's most relevant offerings only ever being things my most recent purchases. It's mildly amusing to find that the thing you've JUST bought being advertised to you, at the same price, you just bought it for, and from the place you JUST purchased it from! Mildly amusing, but pretty irritating. Especially when you've been allowing the advertisers access to your data!
this series is too good
1. Either try overlapping strips of interlayer to create a grid pattern or drill out holes from a single sheet making a Swiss cheesed interlayer with holes (Provides area for excessive interlayer expansion to push into / reduces the total volume of material that has to expand)
2. Try keeping a “C” Clamp on even during heating phase before the 1st Forge Press. Maybe check and tighten on interval(every 200°C increase) instead of just the beginning.
3. Try flushing atmosphere with Argon or Nitrogen (of heating chamber AND/OR the layer assembly stage if logical). Keep a small continual purge going of surrounding atmosphere of Tempering Oven during 1st Heating for Forging Press (minimize potential opportunity of oxides forming during heat up)
4. Try Push the heat for the forging press temp to 150°C shy of each tests Interlayer Material Melt Temp.
5. Possibly try using the shortest necessary heat up time to minimize potential opportunity for increasing total oxidation OR going straight into the pneumatic hammer blows right from the start.
Yes Alec Steele vs Titanium Round 4 is on, BRING ON ROUND 5! any bets on whos gonna win round 4???
My money's on Popple winning!
I'm surprised at interesting and entertaining I found this. This isn't my background at all but, I'm hooked. I can't wait for the follow up. Well done man!
Im 16 and I've always wanted to forge a blade. Your videos entertain me so much. You're doing great mate❤
5:16 the blacksmiths lunchables 😂😂
17:38 those look like micrometers, not nanometers.
Correct. The values written on the cards are correct. He just incorrectly said "nano" instead of "micro"
Hey, you are better at science than most PhDs that I know, trust me, I am a Professor. We just have more complex equipament, but regarding the brains and creativity... man, you just beat most of the academic comunity by a landslide. I think the fact you love what you do may have a great part on this.
Hello friends!
Hello!
Hello!
Hey man
Hi
Sup
Keep up the awesome and interesting content i would love to have a workshop like yours one day💜🥰💜🥰💜
In case you have not come across explosion welding, some 40 odd years ago, there was a company in Colorado that was laminating a wide variety of dissimilar/incompatible metals using explosives. The pressure of the explosion did the welding. All kinds of shape charges were used and pipe as well as plate were welded together, as I recall. Perhaps other shapes as well.
If it weren't so expensive, I would strongly recommend Palladium, as it has a comparable melting point to both Titanium, and steel, has around the same coefficient of thermal expansion as steel, and easily forms alloys with Titanium, and with steel, which suggests that the molecules have an easier time interspersing into each other. . The bright side is that is about half the price of gold, and it only oxidizes around 800 C, which shouldn't be an issue as it is flushed with argon when heated.
Absolutely love your experiment! There is a Japanese jewelry technique called Mokume Gane. It translates to "wood grain metal". Plates of karat gold alloys, sterling silver, white gold, palladium etc. are stacked and fluxed with boric acid / borax then pressed tightly together with clamps. The entire assembly is placed in the forge and held at a high temperature for as long as is reasonably possible. This achieves a high adhesion between the precious metal alloys. There is research to suggest that the high mobility of copper atoms is responsible for most of the adhesion between the alloy layers. Pressure is held on those layers during the forging. This is very important as the layers will not adhere correctly without it. The flux chemically attacks and removes any metal oxides present a moves them to the outside edges of the billet thust leaving a clean oxide free surface to weld under pressure in the forge. You also have another difficulty present in that the crystal grain size of the iron ( and possibly the titanium ) are likely to grow when being held a high temperature for a long time. This will make them brittle. It may be possible to achieve better bends in your laminations by using a torch and a rosebud tip. Here's to your success🎉. Good luck!
I did some reading and one thing I noticed is when bonding the billet needs be at least 850 c, and isn't hammered but is pressed and held under pressure, copper seems to be the best material, maybe rather than hammering it during the heat cycle try pressing it and holding it in the press under pressure for a minutes or 2 and then re heating, also keeping it hot while in the press would probably also help but I'm not sure if that's possible or reasonable with your setup. A completely different idea I had was to maybe collaborate with a chemist on this project who understands how the molecular bond works and can help you develop a method that's reliable, it's definitely already being done from what I've read so you should be able to get workable results.
Even tho I don't know much about that stuff, I find it amazing to have regular people making all those tests, it's probably thanks to dedicated testers like you that some day crazy things will be found.
Alec you are making metallurgy so easily accessible with these series it is amazing!
Keep up this amazing content and your fantastic personality ! :D