I'm starting to lose track of how many times I've seen something on this channel that I would have thought was flat out unrealistic for anyone to be able to pull off in a home lab/shop. genuinely amazed
@@JustinKoenigSilica Money is common enough, that's not a problem. It's much worse, this crap takes time, effort and dedication. Most people doing similar stuff just do it for work and never bother making educational youtube videos out of it.
Really interesting stuff. I'm surprised your ultrasonic iron worked so easily just bolting stuff to the front of the transducer. When I've played with them they seemed really finicky about tuning and I think I burnt out two of those ebay driver boards. I guess being so overpowered means they don't have to be performing optimally to get the job done.
Thanks! My driver board is finnicky too. I think it helps that there isn't much mass connected to it, and I'm not pushing hard, so it doesn't have much mechanical load. If I build another rev of the iron, I'd use a smaller driver, and a more controllable circuit. I like your new channel logo!
Unrelated, but kind of crazy, I've been watching both of you since I was in middle school. I'm a senior in aerospace engineering in college now. Both of you have had a positive impact on my life
I just made a similar post above before reading yours here. My company owned two ultrasonic impact grinders and two ultrasonic rotary drilling/milling machines and all of the diamond tooling had to be tuned to a nodal point for the given mass and length of the tool or it would put too much stress on the transducer and the tools would not perform. We machined ceramics and other very hard materials using all diamond tooling. You did not want to burn out a transducer as, even back in the 80's, they cost about $30,000 each. I enjoy watching your videos and always learn something from them.
We've got some ultrasonic press machines at work, used for sealing and joining stuff, primarily plastic. One time, one machine had a bolt fracture on the booster, and it made such a horrible screech that could be heard outside the building, with the doors closed, over 50 feet away! Ear protection is a must! Granted, these machines are about 900W each. They're indeed picky about the dimensions of the tooling, it has to be tuned, otherwise you risk damaging the horn (transducer) or having poor efficiency.
I worked for the company which developed much of this ultrasonic joining technology, not requiring solder, which was then taken over by EWI. If you'd like to pursue this further and have specific technical questions feel free to reach out.
It's not so much to avoid the email, it's just usually expensive when a company says contact for pricing so he made his own to save money and because he can
@@jakobfindlay4136 on the contrary, if you have even the most basic appearance of a business or a promising application, many places will gladly send you engineering samples and have an engineer reach out to you to help you design your process.
haha most dont know that this crappy behavior was standart in the >2000's , usually if a company didn't list price you could not afford it xD also totally unpractical. Its a method from the 1970's where it was normal to order over physical mail.
@@gasfiltered This is very true and sometimes you can be pretty open about the fact that you're only looking for a few pieces for proof of concept. Years ago I, and a few other people, got a handful of JFETs as samples for projects which seemed to arouse enough interest in the DIY community for smaller distributors to begin stocking.
Amazing process, and as opposed to most of Ben's projects, I've got almost everything, just need a bit of cerium. I do a lot of alloying, have vacuum pumps, induction furnaces, ultrasonics. Really right up my alley, somehow I never heard of this process. Thanks.
Great comment, and I don't think many think about what sets Ben's channel apart: there are no mid-video commercial interruptions; Ben is genuinely excited about what he is doing and that shows, and he loves sharing information; nothing is dumbed-down. I consider Tom Scott, Captain Disallusion, Tech Ingredients and Technology Connections to be in that same camp.
I used "YT Comment Finder" to find comments about "LED" because I suspected I am not the only one who is intrigued by the reason why the LED blinks. I found more than 12 times this question was asked. It is really a very helpful tool that I will use from now on.
I just used a comment finder too, searching for "LED" in all caps, only to find that the retraded Google Chrome does not have case-sensitive search... You need an extension or external tool for every basic little thing nowadays.
i don't know anything about stir welding, and i know it is different than this, but this video is making me realize it would be great to learn about it from your channel! thanks again for another great video.
I had that exact "solder-ate-the-tip" phenomena on a cheap-ass solderstation. Happened with lead-free solder and a really hot temperature (the solderstation temp regulator was exceptionally useless). Felt like it was similar to what gallium does to aluminium.
The reason you are eroding the tip of the solder is the ultra power of the transducer is way overboard in power. Second the solder is really reactive with the tip causing lot of erosion. Happy New Year too.
This is an Amazing process. It was used to bond the SR71 windows (Quartz) to its structure (Titanium Alloy) and it worked fantastically well, keeping it air tight at high temperatures (>350°C) at supersonic flows (> Mach 3.2)
This is a pretty amazing project. Nitinol on pcb gave me all sorts of ideas for a Carl Bugeja-type project. Someone just needs to find a distributor for the solder, i ain't got time for alchemy. Did you per chance try using the 'soldering iron' for ultrasonic welding of plastics? Might be a nice secondary use.
My fathers uncle, whatever you call that in english... Tried to weld a glass bottle to a piece of metal. I never heard if he ended up succeeding, but he tried a lot, again and again. Didn't give up. Told my teacher about that story (i was studying blacksmith) and he said it was impossible to weld glass to metal no matter what. Well i guess it's possible, just in a really weird way xD Really cool video! And interesting. I just repaired my stainless steel watch with a ts100 soldering iron and lead free solder ;) Spent quite some time to find some this weird liquid that makes it possible to solder stainless steel. That stuff works, but seems pretty corrosive if you don't clean it off. Got it from a hobby shop that specializes in those small train models. Guess they use that stuff to solder train tracks together? But hey 10$ for the liquid, 130$ to get the watch repaired in a shop with fancy tools... Yep i'm happy :)
Tees active soldering alloys are very interesting! I like the idea of playing around myself but I don't have the equipment to do small batches! I imagine a tin lead silver gallium alloy would stick quite well
I’m so amazed when I’m searching online for a rear part that I need for my project and offer comes up with ready made of my whole project for way cheaper than it’ll cost me to
thank you so much, i love your channel keep upthe good work ! it is so funny that how you casually mentiond complicated and high tech phrase and techniques.
I have been knife making for just under 10 years. I have lots of tools surrounding this profession. One of the end-game processes is to pattern weld titanium in a way that traditional "damascus" or more accurately "pattern welded steel" is made. The problem with titanium- as you know- it oxidizes very quickly. In practice, when you get titanium to forging temperatures (for titanium its on the higher end) it oxidizes and scale is quickly created- crusting off and making it very difficult to proceed. Friends have theories that you could use an induction forge in an argon environment. But this would require having your press inside that environment I believe. Ive also heard you could encase the titanium in molten glass that has a similar expansion coefficient, which sounds more like how it might be done. Im not a chemist nor did I do really well when i was in grade school a million years ago. I would like to try this out as I am a very decent knife maker and would like to expand and practice making pattern welded titanium. I would be happy to send you enough material and a sample of pattern welded titanium if you are interested in attempting to figure this out. But im not sure you have press. Also it does occur to me you have no interest in pattern welded titanium. Thanks for taking the time!
Now this is what is what i like someone given thing ago! you'd know what i'd like to see is you using a slightly smaller stainless steal rod woth either a element at the end or a heater like a blower that starts at the hand peice but also use a enclosed reflecter where the sonic resainates then travels down the tube to the tip being a pointed tip or a dish like tip an see how that works use the heat or just the transducer so you can weld things abit more where particles are a bit more displaced then forming a solided mass! would like to see that with plastic's too.
Very interesting! Can you tin a surface with active solder, then use regular solder to connect to the tinned area? Perhaps you could use PWM to decrease the ultrasonic power? Is your soldering tip made of aluminium? Gallium would dissolve it (although maybe not when alloyed). ITO would normally be bonded to by first masking and using PVD to add Ti-Au bonding pads. That's how we did it, anyway.
to get whats going on with the tip erosion id look up ultrasonic drilling. it is what is causing the erosion. there is a video by someone cant remember the name but explains it very well.
Very interesting your always applying science from one side of the spectrum to the other. Extremely educational. I think either the frequency and or the power might be able to be adjusted for better results. But the power I think is too high.
About the destruction of the tip of the cheap soldering iron. Cheap soldering tips are often made of iron with a coating of a zinc alloy. Iron and zinc can be absorbed into the solder. And the ultrasonic speeds the process up.
The threaded rod that goes into the horn is the same thread type as the ones in normal bicycle axle shafts. Any regular shimano will thread in. Really nice cause you then have access to cheap threaded tube for those (for the quick release axles).
Interesting note on pure In solder, it's often used in high vacuum or cryogenic systems. I've seen a rope of In pushed around a vacuum system to seal it.
The corrosion you see of the tip, is likely a result of the quality of the tip, and using it with an unleaded solder. I bought a cheap soldering iron a couple of years ago, and used it with lead free solder. The solder combined with the tip almost immediately, leaving it concave (although, in my case, shiny) where the solder had been in contact with the tip. Needless to say, I don't waste money on cheap tips and/or soldering irons anymore.
... also... As it's ultrasonic, and in contact with a solder designed to work with oxides, I suppose you'd need a tip made from an inert metal, that can also resist the mechanical wear from the vibrations
Electrical passthroughs for high vacuum or cryogenic applications tend to be very expensive. You could probably use this to connect an insulator into piping, then a solid metal wire inside that for sensing. It looks like regular glass and titanium have similar coefficients of thermal expansion (at least at room temperature), so you might be able to make a decent passthrough that stays leaktight down to cryogenic temperatures.
Super interesting! As usual amazing work. I have one question, you mentioned that this is a messy process that won't produce nice looking joints like electrical soldering. I wonder if the use of a flux of some kind could be used, not to facilitate the joint but rather to improve the cosmetics? You mentioned a few real world examples, I wouldn't want to open up my snazzy new product and find ugly solders like that.
Well, i don't know if someone has spotted it before. But at 12.30 minute, Zn is not zirconium but zinc. So no zirconium in the commercially available solder.
WOW. I learned something new. Would this process work with no heat at all? Can you do solder mask techniques similar to doing silkscreen on low temperature plastics?
Does it bond to Boron Nitride? If not, you could try using it as a tip to avoid corrosion. It's very thermally conductive. McMaster has machinable rods.
Impressive & Interesting! But why would you need to fuse metal to not metal? Traditional soldering is for electrical continuity. But non-metals aren't conductive. So what are the use cases?
Have you thought about doing a video of joining metals similar to soldering but without heat or anything but just being in a complete vacuum and bonding 2 metals on a molecular level.. similar to what sometimes happens in space on shuttles and the ISS
How about battery welding? Can this process be used as an alternative to the spot welding used to bond tabs to li-ion cells? Standard soldering requires too much heat to get a good bond, so tabs are spot welded to li-ion cells. That process creates more heat than soldering, but localizes the heat to a small area for such a short amount of time that it won't heat the cell enough to cause damage. If this ultrasonic process can bond those tabs to cells at temperatures low enough to not damage the cell, I would definitely want to give it a try!
It's not like you can't make ultrasonic pads, rather than a probe. It's also not like you can't have slightly ferro-magnetic compounds as your bonding agent, in an alternating magnetic field to mix/ electro-stitch them. Polymer-metallic bonds and alloys? With incredibly interesting phase-boundaries?
So if the mixture of solder can bond to and "tin" the glass, could you come back over it with a standard mixture or another solder that would bond to that and leave a shiny surface? Maybe there would be a way to apply both layers at the same time.
Tip of the iron erodes because of the lead-free solder - it dissolves copper. I have same problem with regular soldering after trying to switch to lead-free solder. It is especially annoying if you are using transformer soldering "guns" wchich use just normal solid electric copper wire as a tip. With leaded solder they work fine, with lead-free erosion is very quick and you have to change wire very often.
Can you use standard solder on top of the "active solder"? So can you "prep" the surface with the active solder and then work with traditional solder from that point on? If that is possible the soldering may be able to have a cleaner, and easier, solder joint.
Might not be too hard to modify the ultrasonic driver to reduce the power. In a pinch just putting a power resistor in series with the transducer would probably work.
