Quartz tubing

[Mark]

It sure would be nice if someone could come across some thin-walled quartz tubing and make a small pulsejet out of it. Thin quartz can be heated red hot and dipped in water without cracking, it has such a low coefficient of expansion. I saw this on eBay but it's way too expensive. Imagine watching your pulsejet at night, watching the combustion and light show -- a new kind of lighting.

http://cgi.aol.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... eName=WDVW

I also saw this wonderous presentation of quartz in my searching. I just have to laugh. I can almost sense the healing power and energy.

http://cgi.aol.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... otohosting

Mark

[Mike Kirney]

http://cgi.aol.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... eName=WDVW
Mark

Maybe you could ask the guy to split you off a 20 lb. bunch of tubes. A hundred bucks would still be worth his while I would think, and would provide you with enough playthings to get a little reckless ;-} . Really, those things seem bargain priced at five bucks a pound. All my favourite cuts of beef cost at least twice that much in the grocery store and do not hold up to prolonged heating nearly as well.

[Bruno Ogorelec]

Quartz does not leave cholesterol deposits in your blood vessels, either.

[JetSet]

But quartz just doesnt taste the same ;-)

[Blapto]

I don't believe that this would work. I'm an amethyst.

[Mark]

Perhaps this would do?

http://www.yourgemologist.com/apatite.html

Mark

[larry cottrill]

Note that quartz tubing, even in very small sizes, cannot be bent or worked with with an ordinary air/fuel burner, like a Bunsen burner. You need an oxygen-driven flame, although natural gas will work as fuel. Quartz has to be bright red hot, almost yellow hot, to form it.

L Cottrill

[Mike Kirney]

What about the redoubtable and polyvalent acetylene torch, Larry? Would the hottest commerically available flame do the trick? I've never bent any quartz so I don't know. Quartz is a great electrical resistor so maybe an induction or straight resistance set up would work. Personnally, I like my silica crystals medium to well done (about 8 min a side on med-high heat), with a bit of HP and a pickle on the side. I don't do it in the microwave because I find it dries out and becomes very hard to chew.

[Al Belli]

Quartz may be bent using an acetylene torch with a very large "heating" style tip. You must wear gas welders goggles to reduce the glare to a point where You can see the work properly. Professional glassblowers use cobalt glass filters, which are a deep blue color, to reduce the bright yellow/orange flare that obstructs seeing the work clearly. A shield is used to protect Your face from the radiated heat, which can be very uncomfortable, especially when working larger parts. You must plug the tube so that You can "puff" air into the tube ( by mouth ), through a rubber tube inserted into one of the plugs, to keep the tube's shape from collapsing as it is bent. That's why it is called "glassblowing". Uniformity in heating is very important, and the work is rotated by hand in order to produce this uniform heating. A simple roller stand is used to support the cold part of the tube to assist in rotation.

Al Belli

[Mark]

1650 C or 3180 F according to this melting point reference for quartz or thereabouts.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/SaiLee.shtml

Mark

[paul skinner]

You must plug the tube so that You can "puff" air into the tube ( by mouth ), through a rubber tube inserted into one of the plugs, to keep the tube's shape from collapsing as it is bent.
Al Belli

I guess it would be a mistake to hiccup right about then. :-)

I can't imagine blowing into a super heated tube of molten glass. Gives me the shivers just thinking of the screw ups.

[Mike Kirney]

So the guy's auction ended yesterday with no bids. Now is the perfect time to ask him to split it up into smaller lots and then low-ball him on the price. I would suggest offering him 80 bucks on a 20 lb. pack of tubes to start. He will almost certainly take any reasonable offer at this point. If he still wants 5 bucks a pound, so what? It's still a good deal. He might even sell you the whole lot for 500 bucks. I had one guy come down $1500 on a steam engine this way, and I bought a steam turbine for $400 bucks off the opening bid this way too. That last guy forgot to charge me GST ;-} , so that's another 100 bucks I saved there too. I'm thinking of working another guy on his steam turbine too. He had it for $8000 CDN in his first auction and then $5000 in the second one, but still no bids. I might come in at $3000, I dunno. I have to drive 400 miles to pick it up, so I might be a real *sshole and start way down in the basement at $1500. Of course you must stipulate that the transaction will take place using E-Bay to inspire confidence in the seller, and abide by the auction rules. I was gonna e-mail the quartz tubes guy yesterday, but I really don't know what I would do with those things if I got them, so I put it off. The item is still in my watchlist though.

[nick_new_zealand]

I think you'll find steriliser UV lamps are made of thin walled quartz tubing, regular glass will block the uv light so as far as I know they use a quartz tube. I know halogen lamps are also quartz to handle the heat. good luck getting it to resist the vibration and pressures of a pulse jet though.

[Mark]

I dropped a piece of quartz tubing from a height of about 3 feet accidentally onto my tile floor yesterday. The quartz was 25mm wide and about 100mm long. It broke into a bunch of little pieces but an inch or so of it still remained as a tube, although it had cracks running through it. How sad.
I wish I had a company to cut lengths of my quartz tubing for me, I can do it on my diamond saw but it slings a lot of oil and I would like to have super smooth neat cuts.