Odds and ends

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tufty
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by tufty » Fri Oct 27, 2017 7:00 am

WRT the 5mm hole, it might be that they're trying to meet some ridiculous tight tolerance (either specified by you, or "default") rather than having trouble actually making a hole. I can see it being properly hard to meet, say, a radial tolerance of ±0.01mm in glass. Did you ask what the problem was?

Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:46 pm

I pointed out that the hole should be round and not irregular, you know how irregular holes in jam jar lids don't often work as well especially on smaller forms. I bought a few of their quartz nails as they're called and the holes where the sections connect are choked down and irregular. I can see on my jam jar it looks like they used a simple diamond plug hole cutter, the edges are sharp and then they probably flame polished it ever so briefly afterward.
Perhaps the problem is they're trying to cut the hole on a lathe which is what I tried with this top I bought long ago for a crucible. Any wobble or out of round or as the cutter reaches the end of the cut the glass will easily crack it if you go too fast or apply any kind of pressure. Here's my failure again, it started out a tiny crack and grew to this sitting on my desk after several hours, like a small crack in a windshield that grows over time. I almost had it but my mini lathe chuck didn't stay tight and I couldn't over-tighten the jaws on the quartz lid, tape over it too to keep it from being scratched. I've noticed on soft fragile/flexible aluminum parts the jaws tend to loosen as I'm cutting something and I have to re-tighten the jaws a few times during a cut. Either that or deform the aluminum. The very last of the cut I was applying a feather-light pressure to the drill bit in the tailstock of my lathe - turning the wheel moving the bit forward that is.
My failure ...
download/file.php?id=15358&mode=view
I was so close to finishing when this happened.
download/file.php?id=15357&mode=view
Here's that first one they made again I said was OK but had a concern about and they went ahead and made a better one for me which was nice.
download/file.php?id=15354&mode=view

Probably a simple hole just prodded through with a properly sized pointed poker would be good enough but I couldn't be sure how they would turn out if it got too sloppy on the quality control or blobby on one side of the hole. One thing I've learned is that even little variations often have some effect. It could even be that a rounded hole made from a poker works better than a neat hole in some cases. I'm not sure but maybe the second manufacturer I approached is with the same company, and they just get clients. Both make those quartz nails. A third company wanted to give me large discounts on the nails in quantity but I have no use for those and it was just because I bought a few. They even sent an extra free one one time. It was an unsolicited offer.

Probably if you were to drill your own holes it would be a good idea to flame polish them anyway to seal up all the micro rough spots in the glass. I've wet sanded some end cuts of quartz tubing after diamond sawing them and that makes the rough cuts better looking too.
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by tufty » Sat Oct 28, 2017 5:11 pm

If I was trying to do that...

First off, I'd make up an expanding arbor, if I were trying to pierce the bottom of a "jar" that I could get into, or contracting chuck to hold the outside. Make the thing from aluminium disks / rings, say 10mm thick and under (or over) sized by something like 0.05mm, separated by 4 or 5 mm rubber disk / rings. Clamping by pulling the aluminium parts together via bolts (or in the case of the arbor, a drawbar), workholding given by the rubber expanding laterally as it is compressed lengthwise. Controllable, non-scratchy workholding.

Rather than "drilling", I'd use a toolpost grinder with a dental burr / diamond id grinder, lots and lots of rpm running against the lathe's rotation, with a lot of water based coolant / lube / flush. Not gonna be good for the lathe, you'd need to do a really good cleanup afterwards to get rid of all the nasty abrasive leftover glass grit. Unless it's a chinese lathe of course, in which case nasty abrasive grit in all the slideways is going to make it feel "factory fresh" :)

Then flame seal as you suggest.

It's doable, I'd think, but a lot of effort to do it right.

Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Mon Oct 30, 2017 1:02 am

Glass is fun stuff. I'm not really into hassling with it and prefer to have stuff made or cut for me. With my 12 inch diamond saw I once got a grainy particle of glass in my eye. From then on I wear goggles. Also a fragment/chip/sliver somehow cut a tiny slice in the tip of my big toe wearing Birkenstock sandals. And a tiny fragment I couldn't see stayed in there for about a week causing pain until finally it was rejected by my healing skin cells. Then there is a ton of oil to clean off the piece you are cutting inside and out just cutting some tubing.

Cutting Oils for Rock Saws
"The oils have a very small amount of mist or fumes that goes into the air and if you breathe the fumes it will cause you to have lung trouble. You can wear a mask that can protect you from the fumes."

It's funny to see sparks when cutting my quartz tubing. I use a fan on high to blow any vapor away from me and I use the saw outdoors.
"In using these products you have to consider the flash point of the oil you use. As you cut quartz or other hard material there is a steady stream of sparks (of flame) from the rock you are cutting and those sparks can cause a fire to start if the flash point in the oil is too high."
http://www.wasatchgemsociety.com/conten ... -rock-saws

This label
https://www.etsy.com/listing/243035394/ ... gJyxvD_BwE
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:40 am

The past couple of weeks I've ordered some small borosilicate vials and containers. Maybe for some jam jar jet applications they would hold up fine or for more than one trial. After all we've seen ordinary jam jars occasionally last about a minute and borosilicate has even better thermal properties. This clip I happened upon today shows a boro beaker albeit deforming, melting some aluminum. A quartz beaker wouldn't melt or produce the orange coloration in the flame. Of course you can melt ordinary glass this way but it's best to start heating common soda glass slowly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-MXNdcqrQs
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Fri Nov 03, 2017 12:55 am

Just some odd shapes that probably wouldn't jam as is but it's tempting to think about making something heart-shaped or looping that would.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dfjCCzJFU9s/S ... auRed6.jpg
http://grandcoeurbigheart.blogspot.com/
http://the-strange-decanter.blogspot.com/

And a tiny snorkeler?
https://www.etsy.com/listing/93877460/m ... t_detail=1
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Wed Nov 08, 2017 2:59 pm

So I bought a 750 ml borosilicate storage jar with a thick bamboo lid and silicone gasket. It ought to hold up for some experiments but jars of that size can really kick or go bang if you don't keep the lid on tight or if the hole is too small. And if you ignite the jar from the inside as opposed to the outside the flame propagation does different things too of course, one being more energetic. If you put a water jacket around borosilicate jars or vessels, they might in some cases have an even better chance of not cracking over soda lime glass.

In other news the fused quartz 27 mm X 57 mm X 5 mm hole has arrived. I'll get around to testing it soon. The quartz is somewhat hazy in places, although the photo doesn't show it from this angle - just an aesthetic annoyance I guess.

"Contamination in almost any form is detrimental. Alkaline solutions, salts, or vapors are particularly deleterious. Handling of fused quartz with the bare hands deposits sufficient alkali from perspiration to leave clearly defined fingerprints upon devitrification. Drops of water allowed to stand on the surface will collect enough contamination from the air to promote devitrified spots and water marks. Surface contamination affects devitrification in two ways. First, the contaminant promotes nucleation of the cristobalite. Second, it acts as a flux to enhance the cristobalite to (high) tridymite transformation. Under some conditions, the tridymite devitrification will grow deeply and rapidly into the interior of the fused quartz. Heating fused quartz to elevated temperatures (ca. 2000 øC) causes the SiO2 to undergo dissociation or sublimation. This is generally considered to be: SiO2 -> SiO + 1/2 O2. Consequently, when flame-working fused quartz, there is a band of haze or smoke which forms just outside the intensely heated region. This haze presumably forms because the SiO recombines with oxygen from the air (and perhaps water) and condenses as extremely small particles of amorphous SiO2. The haze can be removed from the surface by a gentle heating in the oxy-hydrogen flame. The dissociation is greatly enhanced when the heating of fused quartz is carried out in reducing conditions. For example, the proximity or contact with graphite during heating will cause rapid dissociation of the SiO2." (Near the bottom of the long page)
http://www.quartz.com/gedata.html

And this helpful tidbit from the sciencemadness.org forum
"So long as you have oxygen as part of the torch setup, quartz can be worked just like boro in a flame....you just need more of it. Bigger torch tips and more flame than what you would use for the same job in boro. The real trick with quartz is the right eyeware, welders tinted glasses can be used so long as it's a heavier tint. Quartz goes white hot at working temperature and the glare is intense. The only other trick with working with quartz it getting used to it's toffee like consistency. It's sticky and firm, and slow to work."

"Actually once you have got the hang of working under these conditions, the advantage is that it's hard to crack due to lack of annealing, which is all but guaranteed with soda glass, and a crap shoot with boro."

"A final word on quartz is that the finished job is messy, you end up with with a white coating of SiO2 as nano spheres over the area being worked. There's a trick to removing it with a flame, but again, it's slow."
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:39 pm

Here you can see some of the haze but from other angles, even more is apparent. The hole is nicely formed. The shape sort of reminds me of one of the many typical vacuum tubes you'd see in the back of an old television set or something.

Quartz resonator - ha
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-X-Tube-Quart ... SwOdpXxwIh

"Kovar (trademark of CRS Holdings, inc., Delaware[1]) is a nickel–cobalt ferrous alloy compositionally identical to Fernico 1, designed to have substantially the same thermal expansion characteristics as borosilicate glass (~5 × 10−6 /K between 30 and 200 °C, to ~10 × 10−6 /K at 800 °C) in order to allow a tight mechanical joint between the two materials over a range of temperatures. It finds application in electroplated conductors entering glass envelopes of electronic parts such as vacuum tubes (valves), X-ray and microwave tubes and some lightbulbs."
"Kovar was invented to meet the need for a reliable glass-to-metal seal, which is required in electronic devices such as light bulbs, vacuum tubes, cathode ray tubes, and in vacuum systems in chemistry and other scientific research. Most metals cannot seal to glass because their coefficient of thermal expansion is not the same as glass, so as the joint cools after fabrication the stresses due to the differential expansion rates of the glass and metal cause the joint to crack."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kovar
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:28 pm

I was trying to think of something the little quartz vial could do, say to cause motion in bees or hummingbirds, a little kinetic art diorama of some sort. There's several designs of fidget spinners, they could spin up under the power of these tiny quartz jets, but nothing really enthralling has come to mind yet ... just a simple wire thrift store stand and a Christmas ornament, right up there with the carrot car of half-baked ideas.
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Sun Nov 12, 2017 2:08 am

Tidbits
That's 2732 degrees Fahrenheit ...
"The main reason we are asked to build such items from quartz is the greatly improved thermal shock characteristics of quartz over any other type of glass. Fast acting, high heat releasing reactions that will crack Pyrex® or other glassware do not even stress a similar vessel made of pure quartz. For instance a thin walled quartz beaker can be heated to over 1,500°C and then plunged into room-temperature water, without cracking. Don't try that with any other type of glass!"
http://www.wacomquartz.com/labapp.htm
http://www.wacomquartz.com/weld.htm
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Mon Nov 13, 2017 7:35 pm

Revisiting the Gatlin gun today and after a few false starts and staccato short revs it finally stabilized for a minute after putting the proper amount of fuel in the tank. The yard hose was used to cool it between starts because if it's hot the fuel/air ratio gets thrown off even after you air it out with the foot air pump.
Jam Jar Jet Snorkeler Via Bathroom Brush Holder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-EoSOfaplo
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Thu Nov 16, 2017 1:11 am

So I bought some borosiicate bottles in the 80,100, and 150 ml sizes. They're the "diameter of 47 mm series" from China. The borosilicate glass seems to have more clarity or sparkle over ordinary soda lime glass, you notice it when holding one in your hand, but the difference is subtle. From some angles the bottles seem to be larger than they are if you don't have something to reference them against, probably the typical jam jar gingham pattern lids play a part. Anyway, I'm hoping there's a chance they'll hold up to the heat for moderate running times.

There's a difficulty to overcome, the spongy gasket material under the lid is likely to melt quickly and smoke, so with the disk of plastic removed, the aluminum cap will no longer makes an airtight/watertight seal and that hampers the vitality I've found with some smaller borosilicate vials. And when you shake a gasketless bottle or vial, alcohol leaks around the threading when preparing to start it. Lastly, the gingham pattern will eventually fade or become less presentable but the borosilicate itself may hang in there and other homemade lid or snorkel designs might be mounted to the bottles in some fashionable way.

This first photo off of eBay shows how the perspective of size messes with your head, here with the 100 and 150 ml offerings. I put the two same sizes in my hand and it looks quite similar to the eBay photo - Gulliver's Travels Jam Jar Jets.
"It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. He himself claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it". Whatever the case, the bottles at times can seem larger or perhaps even smaller than they actually are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Fri Nov 17, 2017 9:36 pm

In other news I'm hoping to take an introductory 3 hour lampworking class and then I can rent the room by the hour by myself. Maybe if I can get some extra dark glasses instead of the didymium ones the art studio has I can do some of my quartz tubing too. I wish they had a lathe for the glass though to hold a piece while working it. What odd shape might I come up with? I don't know if I'll like making stuff once the newness, drawbacks, or my limitations set in or if I'll tire of this hobby but I'm giving it a chance.

Borosilicate
Lampworkers can use borosilicate glass, a very hard glass requiring greater heat. Borosilicate originated as laboratory glass, but it has recently become available in color to the studio artist from a number of companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampworking

Didymium safety glasses protect your eyes from harmful UV rays and sodium flare, both of which are associated with torch work when bead making and silver soldering. Sodium flare is emitted by soft glass as well as borosilicate glass (pyrex) during torch work, but borosilicate releases IR in addition to UV and sodium flare.
http://blog.phillips-safety.com/didymiu ... y-glasses/
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:57 am

So I got around to videoing a piglet snorkeler with the larger diameter snorkel I had mentioned in previous posts. Traditionally it ran on a 1 inch diameter intake/exhaust. To recount, one day when it wasn't much above freezing outside, the 1.25 inch configuration was really rocking big time. It's uncanny how fast and forcefully it can breathe in and out through the snorkel in ideal conditions. You can get an idea on video but to see it live impresses the senses more. For no moving parts and such simplicity, the speed of the air and hot gases seems almost magical. I should video it at dusk, just to see how long the mostly invisible methanol flame is ejecting into the air.

Here's an old photo of the 1 inch diameter snorkel that started a fire during a run. The 1 inch diameter snorkel is more forgiving/less fussy and easier to sustain in less than ideal conditions.
download/file.php?id=2246

Jam Jar Jet Snorkeler Throwing Some Air
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7tGX_5B_Jk

I also tried a 1.75 inch mandrel bent 180 degree J- bend exhaust pipe on the piglet today but to no avail. It looked kind of cute but the larger diameter of the J-bend was too large for the piglet tank to drive it and/or it didn't like the 180 degree abrupt bend. Both possible configurations were tried. It was a pipe I had bought for another experiment. I recall Lockwood used a more gradual 180. https://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/images/valveless1.jpg

The dimensions of my exhaust pipe snorkel which coincidentally looks something like a snorkel or J-shaped.
Bend Angle: 180 degrees
Bend Radius (in): 2.500 in. Material: Steel
Leg 1 Length (in): 15.000 in. Outside Diameter (in): 1.750 in.
Leg 2 Length (in): 3.000 in.

Tidbits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPowtSM5mPI#t=55s
"Turning the exhaust too quickly"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPowtSM5mPI#t=5m49s
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Fri Nov 24, 2017 5:24 pm

This is the failed J-bend arrangement. It may be that not only the diameter could be too large and/or the bend too sharp but also the length too long as well.
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