Dendrites

[mete]

While you bladesmiths are beating up metal , metallurgists are growing things like this wonderful example of dendritic growth !! I'm trying to track down the details but it's apparently associated with metal whiskers.

 

[sunshadow]

is that tin?

-Page

 

[mete]

Here's the link www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1157131

 

[Nathan the Machinist]

Wow, now that's something you don't see everyday.

 

[Mark Williams]

Can you cut rope with it ?

 

[Matthew Gregory]

That's great, mete... thanks for sharing!

 

[J.S. Carter]

Can Horton hear anything in there? it looks like a "Who" village!

 

[traxxs]

That's too cool. I had to use it as my desktop background.

 

[mete]

The hard part is to braze those tiny balls on the end of each wire !!!

 

[fitzo]

We'd occasionally see some very pretty crystalline formations akin to this in lab chemicals. Bottles of reagents would sit undisturbed for years and, despite the low vapor pressures, would sometimes recrystallize some truly beautiful patterns like this descending from the top of the bottle.

This is a very cool pic of a metal salt. It'll adorn my desktop for awhile. Thank you very much for sharing both the pic and the abstract, mete.

 

[sunshadow]

that's amazing, thanks for sharing

-Page

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

In my lab days we grew some nice crystals. Like Fitzo said, many on their own by the reagents sitting unused and becoming saturated. I made a really fancy crystal cluster once.I can't remember what I was that I had to mix with it, but the main ingredient was lead arsenate. It grew unbelievable dendritic crystals.
Stacy

 

[David Wesner]

Is this a similar example of what a microscopic view of David Boyes "dendritic cobalt" blades might look like ?

Is this phenomena (dendrites)something that happens during casting vs. forging ?

What magnification is the image in your post mete ?

If this is a very high magnification image, I could see how this might make for an extremely aggressive "rope cutting", "micro-serrated" edge

 

[Larry Hensley]

that is cool

 

[mete]

David , the photo is very high magnification though I don't know how high. It's basic crystal growth whether that be in a liquid or vacuum. We see it in castings such as dendritic cast steel blades.Wootz starts out this way but the dendritic pattern is disorted due to forging. Some explaination and drawings here www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0131_mb/index.html

 

[David Wesner]

Thank you for that link mete :thumbup: :thumbup: Very helpful in furthering my understanding of the many technical topics you reference. Highly recommened reading !

 

[Doberman_Dave]

Thanks mete, for both the beautiful pic and link. It seems there's never a dull moment in metallurgy. The closer you look, the weirder it gets.

Dave

 

[Greg Obach]

sweet picture

here some dendrites on the bottom of one of my wootz ingots.. ... they look very wimpy compared to that wonderful picture

Greg