Does the metal from hard drives have a high nickel content?
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- Опубліковано 10 лис 2018
- Here is the link to wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu-metal
PLEASE READ Sometimes overkill comment about testing metal from hard drives below. It confirms what I have already found out that it is not a high nickel content alloy. - Наука та технологія
I have just done a few XRF (X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis) screenings with a Niton XL3t. As you and many commenters already suspected the surface has been treated with something and does not have the same composition as the core. The surface indeed have higher concentrations of nickel however the layer is very thin. The core consists of over 99.5% iron. As for any test method there are advantages and disadvantages. Without going into detail XRF screening is more accurate or at least easier to do on homogenous material. In other words, on material that is composed in the same ratio throughout. If the test piece is layered with different compositions the reading will be difficult to interpret as the radiation travels different depths though different materials and even more affecting is the way the sensor can pick up electrons that has been “knocked off” by the radiation emitted from the test device and traveling “back” to the sensor “through” different materials or layers. So, I made test pieces by milling away half a millimeter on every side of my samples in order to remove the top layer and getting to what is most likely homogenous material. Here is a reading on the core on one of my milled test piece: Cr 0.045%, Mn 0.276% , Fe 99.51%, Cu 0.061%, Mo 0.007%. For reference I also did some measurements directly on some untreated samples where I only had removed the magnets and got results like: Fe 17.75%, Co 0.948%, Ni 81,22%, Bi 0.042%. Since these later readings are made on a non-homogenous material the readings cannot be expected to let us know the exact ratio what the composition of the top layer consists of. It can be seen as an indicator of what is in the material. As expected measurements on different spots show a slightly different reading. Most likely this is due to the way the sensor pics up electrons rather from the plating/coating whatever it is being uneven.
My test samples comes out of a Western Digital WD800JD 80GB 3.5" drive. Since I also have access to one of those simple chemo nickel tests which has 1% dimethylglyoxime I rubbed some on an untreated surface and some on the milled test piece. As expected the test indicated presence of nickel on the untreated piece but none on the milled piece. Greetings from Sweden / Robin
This deserves so many up-votes, but I only have the one.
Thank you for your detailed reply! It confirms what my tests have shown, not a high nickel alloy. It is amazing how many websites say that it is a high content nickel alloy when it is not. They must copy of each other and never check that it is correct
Can't you just turn it sideways or are the layers not really your average layers but like an ogres layers I guess an onion layered yeah thats rough but what material out there (other than wood) is layered like that oh that would be all an onion i just realized and all just wood lol I kill myself. Lmfao I need to get back in my lane 🤣
nickel 99 welding rod can sometimes be found used for a reasonable price. I got 10 kilo's for $35.00 Kanuckistanian. Your video's are very informative. Thank you for your efforts.
Cody (channel name is Cody's Lab) has an XRF tester which should be able to do the analysis. I'm sure he can find a sample locally.
I second that
3rd
beat me to it. I'd think Cody would love to help out.. he's a decent dude.
just posted a request over at what looks like Cody's facebook page. facebook.com/CodysLab/ hopefully he's in a position to be able to assist.
@@beastrabban Thats not Codys FB page. Its one of the many fan or look-a-like pages.
Just recently got into casting metal and you and your olfoundry man are the only two I trust know what they're doing, didn't take me long to see the difference in y'alls work and everyone else on here, keep up the awesome work sir your videos are much appreciated.
Thank you luckygen you do a wonderful service to us do it yourselfers. Much appreciated
Thank you, very interesting results. I was very surprised with the results! I always learn from you.
Really like your videos. There are no other UA-cam Channel Creators that I’ve found that Melt Iron and make casting on a regular basis. Always looking forward to new videos.
Great video. You can check if the part is Nickel plated with a 2 part Spot test Kit.
I really enjoyed the follow-up. Thanks for your videos.
I'll throw this at you. The metal parts in the hard drive are encasing magnets in a linear motor arrangement. They are most likely part of the magnetic flux return path. In other words they help direct the magnetic force in the right area as well as hold the magnets in place. I was thinking about this as I watched the first video. I design audio equipment among other things and part of that designing is the design of loudspeakers. As in woofers and tweeters. I just spent a month hunched over a laptop and working with a magnetics software package working on a few woofer designs. I'd be almost 100% certain of the pieces you are testing are low carbon steel now that I have seen both the grind sparking and the rust. A low carbon steel is useful as a magnetic return path. As the carbon in the iron goes up it becomes less useful as a magnetic return material.
Thanks for your honestly luckygen 1001. You are in a class of two gentlemen that I watch and learn from in the videos you do about casting. The other is a fellow countryman of yours. The majority of the UA-cam people trying to cast metal are mostly lemmings following after bad practices popularized and repeated thousands of times. You channel is the real deal.
When I saw how rusty the piece of metal from the hard drive was I knew I needed to make another video. It was not easy to say that what I said in my last video was incorrect. Looking through the comments so many have links to sites where they say it is mu metal or permalloy but this is where I like to go further than quoting from a website, doing some real world tests to get to the bottom of this myth.
I admire honestly a lot more than craftiness or misinformation. @@luckygen1001
You developed loud speakers oh boy do I have a design flaw not so flawed challenge build for you as we know subwoofer sound or pound waves can be harnessed and thrown towards an object or an entire perimeter of a whole structure mounted or mobile like a car or an entire house I seen a guy take off the cone or whatever and he put an articulating fan on a very extremely slow speed spinning module as the fan has to spin very slow as the waves form like an artificial static pound wave barrier that concentrates the entire force in a direct straight line towards an object when on contact can do some pretty serious irreversible stuff to a sub structure like a home or house it will resonate itself into a single concentration of force that once hits the object can rattle all the weak parts of the bindings holding it together completely obsolete by crankung up the sub power and simply the fan speed directly in front in the middle of the subwoofer built in just turn fan speed up high and using a certain frequency with the music and already using powerful ohms destroy I wonder if u could then add a microwave and laser contraption to create a star wars force field like barrier as a solar panel and the right satellite dish can collect suns rays as electricity turn the electricity to microwaves and with simple high power laser those microwaves will follow the entire straight line the laser is pointed as to transfer electricity microwaves and heat all in a bundle across extreme distances through tough environments no matter how cold or dry I think that intensifies it across distances at the speed of light I just wonder what resonating sound barrier waves that scattter and intrude building perimeters would do..........has anyone else recently thought up of a cooler multiple weaponized device lately just think what a wireless employee device would do...........
You can also just press it to some one who has a nickel allergy and see if they swell up
Great video and impatient to see the next one !!!!!
Kind regards
Very interesting! Keen to see what the hive mind comes up with in this one !
Hi There, I had to find a source of pure nickel years ago for making test points for ignition systems. That had me foxed for a while until I noticed that cast iron welding rods can be purchased as 99% pure. They are not cheap but they are a source of known purity nickel. The rods at that time were about 50p each but probably about 2GBP now. I now live in Canada and they are about $2.50 per rod.
Jantz in USA sells nickle powder in its knife making supply as well as 1084 and 1095 powder steel. Do they ship abroad I dont know.
Love your videos, If you look carefully the magnet on the hard drive is mounted on a piece of silicium iron alloy... that is the reason you get rust. "The magnet is actually in our days a incredibly thin insert mounted on the piece of silicium iron alloy.... thanks for your hard work..
Just came here from Paul's garage
Nice follow up video, keep up the good work
EAsiest way to find out. Go to a metal recycling center near you. Every center here in the US, due to recycling becoming so popular and big business. Has a handheld XR spectrometer. I have used them many MANY times. Just go over there with some of the samples and ask them to shoot them to see what they are. I have never been turned down unless they don't have one. Thats only been one location I have been to.
I wonder if the scrap yards in Australia have them and will they test something for me?
@@luckygen1001 I would bet at least one of them does.
@@luckygen1001 The Australian 5, 10 and 20 cent coins apparently have 25% nickel. I'm not saying you should deface currency, but just an interesting fact ;) Each weighs twice as much as the previous one, so their monetary value per mass of nickel is fairly similar. Nickel-straps meant for for spot-welding lithium-cells might be an alternative too - you'd just need ~46g of the stuff, rt?
Thank you for your comment, coinage alloys contain too much copper and when added to cast iron it tends to sink to the bottom of the crucible as it is heavier that iron.
Please can i see casting stainless. Casting steel.
Great videos.
Inboard powered boats typically have monel prop shafts.
There are a few parts from hard disks that "Could" be MU-metal, the cover of certain drives that are not Aluminium, and also on some other devices like RF cages on cell phones those aren't aluminium and don't respond strongly to a strong magnet, to be tested for confirmation...
I just found your video, and I'm fairly sure the piece from inside the hard drive isn't mu-metal. Several reasons why I say that.
1. I have worked with actual mu-metal, it is a fairly soft material. Ductility is comparable to pure tin. You can bend a thick tin bar by hand, same with mu-metal. If those pieces cannot be bent without pliers, then it's unlikely that they are mu-metal.
2. The real mu-metal is very expensive, thus it's used sparsely and only where it's actually needed for its special properties. if you think pure nickel is expensive, then you haven't seen what mu-metal costs. The high cost is not just due to its composition, but the manufacturing process is complex because of the very special and long heat treatment that this alloy needs to achieve maximum magnetic permeability. It is used for shielding of components from magnetic fields (I use it to shield photomultipliers in gamma radiation detection equipment). I personally think it's very unlikely that hard drive manufacturers would use this high cost material in a place where it's not needed (like completing the magnetic circuit of a HDD actuator). In such a place a more common material like high silicon steel would be more cost effective.
Like other commenters said, you probably got grey cast iron after added the hard drive pieces to it because of the extra silicon they contained.
Those pieces in the hard drive are hard to bend with pliers. Also they have been plated with nickel so why plate something that is nickel in the first place.
@@luckygen1001 That's my estimate too. OTOH you can get pure nickel on ebay for about $50 per kilogram if you're willing to wait 3-4 weeks for it to be shipped from China.
I think you should ask Cody from the channel Cody's lab who has an X-ray spectrometer. Also the chanel "Edge Precision" deals with a a lot of inconel machining so maybe he could hook you up with some chips or drops.
Great educational content. Thanks for sharing.
Joe
Welcome to my channel.
Would nichrome wire be a compatible alloy for making nickel iron? Would be a chore to salvage a quantity from burned out water heater elements. Scrap elements from electric kiln would be a good source though.
It would make cast iron very hard because of the Cr content.
some crt monitors may have mu-metal shielding around parts of the crt
Does it retain magnetism may be a stalloy like the transformer lamination.
Just a point on Mumetal. The concept is that it is 'magnetically soft' meaning when used in a transformer it easily reverses magnetic polarity when subjected to the AC field. If it didn't, like a hard steel, energy would be dissipated and there would be a lot of heating losses and poor efficiency of the transformer.
However, in a HDD, the magnetic field between the two plates is static, not fluctuating, so there should be no need for Mumetal.
(the small coil is reacting within a static magnetic field)
Also, since Mumetal is expensive any laminations today are Silicon steel.
A possible source could be turbocharger rotors (Inconel) but they are usually around 52% Nickel. Not sure if the higher melting point would prove a problem or not with dissolving? Also Inconel 600 has around 72% Nickel and it may be possible to source some welding rods.
Do you know what else is in those rotors because other elements can make cast iron very hard.
@@luckygen1001 . I cannot be certain but if you Google Inconel 718 or Inconel X750 it will give you an idea of the general constituents.
Way OT. Your oil burner. Do you have a video on its design or construction.
G'day Lucky what about a few 20 cent coins 25% nickel or through an old spanner in the works Cr-V what would Chromium - Vanadiun do to your cast iron ?
You could have those pieces assayed.
You could also look up a chemical test that can be done within your capablities.
Mu metal has a curie point of 788 deg. F. That should be just starting dark red in a dark place when it is no longer attracted to a magnet. When I saw your video I ran out and destroyed a hard drive. My samples glowed bright and were still magnetic. I am hoping that maybe older hard drives might have it. I will keep looking. Thanks for the videos.
Maybe try Alibaba suppliers for sources of pure nickle ingot or powder? They usually speak good english and while its pricey at about 25-30 dollars a kilo If you only buy a bit at a time that's still rather cheap in the big picture
the hard drive bracket wquld have been plated.
iron cladding a magnet is a cheap way to increase the field strength not much of a surprise if you think about it, mue metal would be used to shield a signal this seems unnecessary as mue metal is not cheap.
Sorry. I forgot to paste in the second address.
www.ebay.com/itm/Nickel-Plating-Chips-Anodes-Falconbridge-Nickel-D-Crowns-Inco-S-Rounds-/201984486160?_ul=CL
I expect there are pother similar sources of the nickel electrode material.
it could have been plated silicon steel... your good results could have resulted from the added silicon?
Yeah, chrome plated silicon steel
sounded just perfect to me
The strength if a magnet in proportional to the mass of the part attracted. 👍cheers
Master plates for old vinyl records were nickel. I have an XRF and will keep an eye out for you.
The hard drive pole pieces are probably Swedish soft iron, which has no nickel content.
www.tenmet.co.uk/product-range/17/maximag
It might have soft in the name, but it is anything but easy to cut. Try a hacksaw on the pole pieces and prepare for an aching arm.
Malcolm
Central electrodes of spark plugs are made of high nickel alloy and copper. But not at all some are iridium alloys as i know.
Do you have any part numbers to identify which is which?
i ve had a look on web but turned out so some recourses say standard ones (cold type) nickel coated copper core others refer as nickel steel alloy. Most Bosch old and new spark plugs are consist precious metals.. You may have a look and try some test on the shell and electrodes sir
How did last week cast machine??
What scrap can you find in a junk yard that has nickel?
Permalloy is 80 % nickle and 20% Iron. It is used in transfomer laminations and Is known as soft iron.
Ok seeing since not many people were able to comment idk haven't read them yet to compare my knowledge but so far the majority of any battery thats non lithium ion are good source for nickel that would be all disposable batteries mainly and car batteries and check all those tire balance weights I never pass one up on the ground ever since I seen a guy years ago when nickel was alot less at the yard this guy had a five gal bucket almost full barely could even lift it fetch almost 400 bucks so yeah no I do not pass one up if im driving ill be the jackass to stop my car in the middle of the road for one lol I've noticed alot of electronics castings old school castings toys or tools or etc check those again the electronics I think the metal hinges not the monitor long bolt on brackets but the actual little hinges in laptops are nickel and many more components are in some electronics as I take them apart for scrap and sometimes they were in the rain rusted but you can notice a good chance what doesn't rust especially with the color and again low magnetic force umm costume jewelry costume jewelry is another big one I think you'll find lots of nickel or nickel alloys stainless steel if you wanna get an electrolysis machine on a bigger scale all stainless steel is 10 percent nickel and we know how heavy stainless steel accumulates even steel as well as exhaust systems on cars or in general as well again need a bigger scale electrolysis method just grab a tub and use for those slow guys for the slow crowd your pocket no I joke your piggy bank lmfao no ok 🤣 it may just be a little smart to look up nickel ores as I found out my house is sitting on a GD INTRAVENIOUS HIGH LEVEL INTESITY SCREAMING RICH PLATINUM AND GROUP METAL PROPERTY my half retarded mother who needs the money won't let me dig up her husband's parking space where the monstrosity is as the vein is slowly opening and his parking space is already almost obsolete for his little poor Honda screaming help maybe the earth will eat it and burp up a platinum one lol what about heating elements are those nickel or not I can't remember off the top of my head but yeah thats what I can add to this now to read comments to see what I don't know and feel gmfree to criticize me it only betters my knowledge and learning experience I don't know it all so I take no offense your just teaching me better stuff I don't know why bozos get offended learning something new thanks guys.
The hard drive metal should be high permeability silicon steel with chrome plating
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_steel
I get my nickel from Ni99 welding rods. These are SMAW, what you have to do is remove the flux from the outside. VF
Ask Cody from Cody's lab he has a tester. Could you use tig filler wire? Maybe 316?
316 suggests it is stainless steel? if it is it will make cast iron very hard.
@@luckygen1001 yeah its a stainless. There are 99% nickel rods used for fixing cast iron but also expensive.
The connection strips in lithion ion batterys are pure nickel, perhaps one of these youtubers who are in to building powerpacks , they scrap laptop batterys , i can imagine the old strips get thrown away..
Just thought of it Sir. If the computer hard drive is not Mumetal, how good is the rare earth magnet actually rare ??? Thanks, VF
I was going to suggest to find someone with a portable X-ray fluorescence tester, but Kevin remembered Cody, which is probably the fastest alternative to get some answers. Now I'm curious too :-)
Just an add-on - You may get MU-metal from toroidal transformer cores.
Have a look: magneticshields.co.uk/images/pdf/toroidalcores.pdf
I do have a toroidal core from a transformer I opened up to see what it looked like.
This dude is a boss
There must be something you can get that has nickel in it that you can use.
What about the disc parts of hard drives, the shiny part that looks like a small CD?
They're weakly magnetic and soft metal. If there's any nickel in a hard drive, that disc would be the most likely place.
No, the disc platters are made of aluminum coated with a magnetic powder. They contain no nickel.
Nickel 99 welding rod
Cool test! Here's my post from last week: (Beside battery-straps, as I mentioned earlier, some coinage may also contain Nickel: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_Canadian_dollar )
Hi luckygen1001, I doubt if the metal you got is actually mu-metal. Here's why:
The parts you use are the so-called "back-irons" of a HDD's voice-coil actuator. The back irons are intended to short out the north ans south poles on the unused-sides of the rare-earth magnets that produce the actuating field. As such, a high permeability is NOT essential; a high SATURATION flux-density is. The relative permeability of mu-metal is ~100'000 whereas the relative permeability of regular iron and soft-magnetic steel is ~5'000. Both are extremely high compared to the relative permeability of air: ~1. Moral of the story: Permeability isn't a deciding factor here. The real decider is the saturation flux-density . Iron saturates around 1.5T (the magnets can easily generate this in the thinner cross-section of the back-iron) whereas mu-metal saturates at ~ 100mT. Real mu-metal would saturate and would be utterly useless to short out the magnetic flux on the back. Ergo, any (properly designed) HDD VCM back-irons shall not be made of mu-metal. Can you confirm that the metal you use DOES actually contain 70+% nickel? A reliable source of almost pure nickel is battery-connecting straps-material for lithium batteries. Cheers!
Hi, would you like to do some casting for me? It is for a 1906 motorcycle engine parts.
Kind regards
I only pour castings for myself.
@@luckygen1001 All right
Thank you very much
What about coins? I know older us coins have a high nickel content. Spacificly silver coins 1965-around 1985
Coinage alloys contain about 25% nickel and the rest is copper. Using that amount will add too much copper to the cast iron.
Have already researched coins (US). The nickle (5 cent) is an alloy containing 75% nickel, 25% copper. The only difference being coinage minted during ww 2 when silver was added. Don't know if the Aussie banks will but my bank here in the states will exchange currency at n/c. A lot of differing opinions about melting coins here but from what I can gather as long as the melt is not being used in making other coins the treasury doesn't care. Have seen quite a few people on YT melting zinc pennies.
Some canadian nickels (5 cent pieces) are 99% nickel
You can always buy nickel alloy welding rods
I have some cast iron welding rods, I am sure that they have a high nickel content as I have used them before.
There are Nickel rods that are 96% Ni, but they expensive. Probably 150£/kg.
@@luckygen1001 I used nickel welding rods to weld cast iron. But I don't know the cost for the rods at today's price
nicrome wire but I guess chromium would make it too hard
The most common nichrome contains slightly less than 80% nickel and about 20% chromium. Accordingly, in the iron will be 0.25% chromium. I don't understand the cast iron, but it seems to me a good option.
Here is a suggestion for a source of material containing nickel that may be suitable for addition to cast iron.
What about alnico, the magnet material?
There will be alnico magnets in the magneto flywheel of every older small two and four stroke engine. There will also be alnico magnets in many other older devices. The composition of alnico apparently varies somewhat. Wikipedia gives the following ranges. “…typically 8-12% Al, 15-26% Ni, 5-24% Co, up to 6% Cu, up to 1% Ti, and the balance is Fe.”
Could the cobalt could be a bonus additive in the cast iron?
Another magnet material with even higher nickel would permalloy or supermalloy.
Supermalloy is composed of nickel (75%), iron (20%), and molybdenum (5%). However, these materials are probably rarer than alnico.
The problem of the added material sinking to the bottom that you mentioned in respect to copper will probably also be a problem with pure nickel because of its high specific gravity. You may have the reverse problem with alnico because its SG varies from 6.9 to 7.3 so it will tend to float on the iron.
Cobalt is a powerful carbide stabilizer so it has to be kept low if adding to cast iron. Finding scrap nickel alloys is proving to more difficult that I thought, one viewer suggested a nickel plating supplier. I looked the website and they have sacrificial nickel anodes ( nickel S ). Apparently it has a high sulphur content which can make cast iron very brittle and hard. So I am still looking.
@@luckygen1001 When you say that the nickel anode material has a high high sulphur content, how high is high? If the sulphur content in the nickel was a percent or so, would that matter given that you would only be aiming for a nickel content in the cast iron of 1%? This website is quoting sulphur contents in nickel S anode material of just 0.03%. www.carteralloys.com/nickel-anodes.html
A one percent addition of that material to the CI would only add 0.0003% sulphur. As I understand it, sulphur contents of up to about 0.07% is tolerable in grey iron.
Also pursuant to the suggestion about the battery connecting strips, I found this site offering that material as new stock. The quoted price of US$80/kg works out to be about A$111,000/t. (As noted previously, the nickel content in new monel boat nails works out at about A$70,000/t. So the monel nails would be a cheaper source of nickel if you can tolerate the copper.)
www.tobmachine.com/Nickel-strip-for-battery-tab_p137.html
I forgot that adding 1% nickel the sulphur content will go up only a small amount. That plating website seems to be the cheapest for me living in Australia janekits.com.au/product-category/anodes/
Hello when you say “old” two strokes what is considered old or a example of a common engine that may be in US scrap yards
@@niceglass6484 I haven’t dismantled any small IC engines that are younger than about 30 years old, so I don’t know what sort of magnets are now being used in their magnetos. Alnico magnets were not confined to two stroke engines, rather they were used in anything that had a magneto ignition, including aircraft engines. Alnico magnets are distinguishable by the shiny metallic appearance of the base material which is very hard.The alnico magnets were typically cast in integrally in the aluminium flywheel of the engine. It’s possible that magneto makers have started using ferrite magnets, which is a black ceramic or rare earth magnets which always seem to be plated. (The plating used may indeed be nickel.) As Luckygen1001 probably only needed to add a few percent of nickel at most to his cast iron, I thought that the small quantity available in the alnico magneto magnets in small IC engines was a possible source. However, he put the kybosh on that idea because one of the other components of alnico is cobalt, which he said was a no-no in cast iron. The same goes for the copper content in alnico. I later realised that probably the most convenient way to access a small quantity of relatively pure nickel is to buy nickel welding rods, which are made for welding cast iron. My local big shed hardware store, Bunnings, has a pack of 25 nickel rods selling for A$44.98, which would contain about 0.41 kg (0.91 lb) of 98% pure nickel. That works out to about US$70,000 per tonne. The current nickel price as a bulk commodity is about US$21,000 per tonne, so $70k is not an extortionate price for a small quantity retailing nearby. I don’t know what is your interest in sourcing nickel. For adding to cast iron in foundry work, I expect that 98% pure would be more than satisfactory but it may not be good enough for nickel electroplating, although that is no my field. Cheers
Here is a simple test for nickel that I came across when I was trying to find a cheap way to test what type of aluminum alloy I had. Thought this would help you. www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/test-iron-nickel.html
If you know of a cheap way to test find out what type aluminum before melting please share. Thank you.
Cnadian nickels 1946 to 1985 99.9 % Ni
Canadian nickels are nowhere to be seen in Australia.
American quarter dollar coins should be monel metal.
They are zinc with a plating to look like nickel.
Too bad
Maybe Cody would test one for you, he's got a fancy XRF machine. ua-cam.com/video/1eN40-olHM8/v-deo.html
Metal Shipper.com metal suppler
NEVER TRUST WIKIPEDIA AT ALL.
Or rather trust it with a grain of salt (eg. cross reference information).
Wikipedia is a reasonable starting point, but you always have to check the information. If it's a good page, they'll have plenty of references that you can check at the local library.