I dont know what to think

[mixedgas]

One either slick or sick website.

Enjoy the works of Dr Earnest Glitch, and note T.A. Edison is the reason for the founding of OSHA and the EPA:

Bizzare:

http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/

Steve

[Retina Burn]

Nice! TY Steve ^^^^^

[300EVIL]

WOW! Fun reading! I'll be glued to this for hours.
Thanks Steve.

[dsli_jon]

Hey Steve-

One either slick or sick website.

Awesome! Thanks for the post... Great reading, and some crazy stuff...

...I especially liked THIS page, reads a page ripped straight from the annals of the 'ProDjLaserLabs Diaries...' ... poor Hodges...

..Ok BACK TO WERK, Jon!!!!
j

[drlava]

Hey Steve-



Awesome! Thanks for the post... Great reading, and some crazy stuff...

...I especially liked THIS page, reads a page ripped straight from the annals of the 'ProDjLaserLabs Diaries...' ... poor Hodges...

..Ok BACK TO WERK, Jon!!!!
j

He poisoned his assistant with mercury, fired a laser in his eye, burned him with electrical shock, burned off his scrotum, then fired him because he was sick and blind. Science has come a long way

thanks Steve

edit: I had to edit this to add to the list of assaults.. amazing!

[mixedgas]

As a former "Research Associate", I feel a great deal of empathy for Hodges...

Been There, Done That, Got the Tee Shirt, and a few small scars ....

Like the day the boss went to Lehman's Old Time Hardware in Kidron, Ohio and bought a huge kerosene lamp as a mid IR source... He grew up on a farm with them... He had not ran one in say 30 years... I walk in a few seconds after the matches struck.. Lets just say I like my class BC extinguishers to be SLIGHTLY OVERSIZED

Then there was the Grad student who walked into the machine shop one day... I'm eating my lunch with the machinist.... (Yes, I my know eating in the shop is a violation, but the shop is cleaner then the fac/staff lunchroom) "Hey, how do I get this copper pipe onto this regulator??? He's holding 20 feet of 1/4th inch copper and a oxygen regulator.. The machinist puts down his lunch and heads for a cabinet... I chime in and ask if he knows there is a 200 psi limit on copper.. "No, I didn't know that." OK. What gas are you using?. Answer: "I already changed the tank fitting on the regulator, I just need to hook up the copper" . Sensing evasion, I again ask... I get back "Oh, just Fluorine". "Does your professor know this?.... Yes"

Rubber regulator diaphragm, copper pipe, and 600 PSI of fluorine... What a Genius....... How the heck did he ever get a BS in Chemical Engineering???

And you guys wonder why I'm paranoid... 8 years of the best safety record in the building...

Steve

[buffo]

When I was in prototype training in the Navy (this comes after Nuc school), one of the last things we did before we graduated was to spend a couple weeks in the shop working with various tools. (This is where I first learned the difference between a Phillips and a Reed & Prince screwdriver.)

Anyway, one of the projects we had to complete was a test pipe that consisted of a piece of 1/4 inch copper tubing joined to a piece of 1/4 inch stainless tubing. Each tube end used a different type of fitting to give us some practice with the various types. We had a 37 degree flare, a 45 degree flare and a common compression fitting with a stainless ferrule. We also had to bend the copper tubing through 90 degrees using a tubing bender. The end of the stainless tubing had a compression fitting cap on it so you could loosen it to fill it with water and then tighten it up for a hydrostatic pressure test.

The final project had to hold 1000 psi for 10 minutes without leaking. (Not a big challenge.) But then we would hydro the assemblies until they failed, just for the hell of it. Believe it or not, they didn't start to fail until around 4500 psi, and some of them didn't fail until over 6500 psi! (Mine ruptured rather explosively at 6700 psi.) The record for the lab was just under 7100 psi.

So while copper may only be rated for low pressure, it's actually a lot stronger than it looks. With small diameter tubing, you can get away with insane pressures. I have no doubt that standard 1/4 inch copper will handle 3000 psi more or less indefinitely. (Assuming you don't have any cycling that would work-harden the material over time.)

Adam

[mixedgas]

Agreed...

I've overstressed the daylights out of 1/4" copper, running it at 750'c and 350 PSI. It fails at the connections or bends when you do that. Usually a longitudinal crack, or it cracks all the way around, right at a fitting. The failures are where any eutectic is formed with a softer metal, zinc, tin, nickel, lead... Often it would break right at the Swagelok ferrule when ran that hot. Learned to avoid brazing it, and we thermal cycled the hell out of it.
But when you have a low budget and need 100 Ft of pipe for a heat exchanger, what else are you gonna do...

What would have been spectacular, is the copper fire with the runaway fluorine... I think I'm glad I did not witness that...

I should mention this was A. In a lab, and B. Was experimental, not production status. The copper was used in a stainless steel enclosure heated to the point of glowing, to create hot process air. Once the hot air was proven to work,we were given budget for a proper air heater. That air heater pushed the limits, as it monitored the conductivity of the heating element at the zero crossings, and would back off on the current if it sensed A. No wire to air heat transfer, B. The wire starting to melt (yes, that word was starting, the wire in the heater had a pronounced tempco change before meltdown happened. As long as the system had a time constant just longer then 16.6 milliseconds, this worked. Please don't ask why I needed 450'C air at 60-350 PSI... Please also understand the second that air passed through any nozzle or constriction, it nearly instantly cooled off...

Steve

Steve

[buffo]

Cool stuff, Steve!

Yeah, the copper tubing on our little rigs always failed at the 90 degree bend where it had been work-hardened slightly by the tubing bender. And yeah, it was almost always a longitudinal crack.

Adam