I use a thermite reaction to produce the heat and metal needed to make something out of iron. Help me make videos by donating here: / codyslab Follow me on Facebook: / codydonreeder SubReddit: / codyslab Twitter: / codyslab
Know what I love about Cody? I have been watching for at least a decade and while the video quality has improved he’s never fallen into the over-the-top RU-vid editing and production team that everyone else seems to get into. It’s still just a man filming his passion and sharing it with the world.
Honestly same. I've watched him from since i was in Highschool. It's been over a decade now and I'm now a board certified lab scientist and I still enjoy his content. I hope he never changes
I just watch to see if by sheer chance alone he ever gets something to work, or gets an above 5% yield of anything, by sheer accident. Surely he'll get lucky eventually. They don't call him professor bumblefsck for nothing.
It's also really fun to see cody saying "i'm not gonna do it that way because it doesnt work" and proceeds to show a clip of the thing he said doest work, going wrong. Love it! haha
The fact that you got anything, let alone a skillet-shaped item is downright amazing. One thing I will say regarding cast iron, from having done a few braze jobs on it, is the fact that it needs to cool SLOWLY, and dumping a bunch of water on it likely did not help any residual stresses it had inside.
exactly. I would suggest cody to add some Brass like a very small amoutn for example 1kg to 10 kg ratio. The Brass may eleminate this problem with the Casting process since its a very Malleable metal from the Getgo, it can help endure the stress during the cooling. cody should also heat the molds a little too like atleast 200 degree celsius. A common problem in Casting in a cold Mould is the Cold Joint Problem which caused by pressure and temperature difference of the two substances. Its similar to putting very hot water in a normal glass. The crystalline structure cannot endure the rapid fluctation in temperature and hence will be very fragile. In case of metals, cooling the metal as slowly as possible gives it large and malleable crystal lattice that is key to metal strength and flexiblity.
For future attempts - Prior to the early 20th century, cast iron pans were bottom gated, meaning the iron was poured through a flue leading to the bottom of the pan, with the pan upside down and horizontal in the mold. Older pans will have a visible gate mark, as they didn't have the ability to machine it smooth. Eventually they became side gated, and the iron was poured in through a gate at the top of one of the side walls. Modern pans will still have rough machining marks around the side walls where the gate was ground away. You'd probably have better luck with the bottom gate. The cooking surface of the pan would be formed first, with the iron then flowing down to fill the walls and handle. As it backfills the thickness of the pan is built up. At least by my basic understanding of casting.
@@tz8785that's also my doubt. He may actually be making steel not actually cast iron. Major issue is the much higher temperature and difficulty to cast steel. Adding carbon will definitely reduce melting temperature and increase fluidity.
Cody is the mad scientist of our generation. Nonchalantly tapping a thermite volcano to pour molten iron into a mold made of old bee boxes is the most Cody thing I’ve seen. Well played sir.
Preheat your crucibles to a soft red glow. This’ll help prevent the iron from skinning on top. Also hit it with a small handful of borax before you pour. Cleans the metal.
I know next to nothing about metalworking, but I think the aluminum in the mix might also be making the skin problem worse as I've never really heard of an iron-aluminum alloy nor do I think they'd mix well together.
I think the sand ended up acting like a flux at those high temps, causing the skin problem as it cooled just a hair too quickly. I also suggested borax lol
I've paused at 17:00, to share my appreciation of the sound of the fleeing cricket. I don't know if it was added in production, or if it was wearing a mike, but it was just perfect.
Dude yeah they are huge what in the hell. Where im from the brown ones are tiny and the black ones are slight larger. Dime or nickel size is just about the limit in my location.
Those are Mormon Crickets. They swarm nevada/utah by the billions in the early summer. They have to get snow plows out to clear the roads because it gets so slippery from the mashed up crickets.
Backyard scientist found that adding steel or iron fillings helped the casting go much better. Also, adding a release agent like talc to the mold halves could help with the stuck sand. Might be good to add some flux and let the slag rise to the top of your "ladle" as well before tapping
@@Lookingformorefunhe hit the egg on a sharp edge, if he hit it flat on the counter the you'll would not of broke. One hand easy. Please season your pan
Though failed attempts are frustrating, showing them and explaining how you learned from them is arguably the most important part of this entire project. Also, an entire set of kitchenware made of the sand (the iron in the sand technically) around the area sounds amazing.
@josephdorey8458 he was getting hit with strikes on a lot of videos that even hinted at explosives despite other larger channels basically teaching how to make them. He took a bunch down just to prevent losing the channel. Others probably have better details on the fiasco.
Detonating home-made nitro glycerine with a butter knife, and the moment of 'tapping' off home-made thermite iron with no PPE whatsoever, is some of the best content on the internet. You are still as crazy as ever Cody. Never change mate, the world needs fearless people like you. Greetings from a loyal viewer in the UK.
@@gusallan3967 He had to remove it from youtube, or they did it... it wasn't allowed.. but it was there for a while! Nerrly blew his finger off even though he was wearing a thick leather welding glove... it was only a tiny drop off nitro too!
I work as a mechatronics engineer for a ductile iron company (actually just up north of you) and those folds are called Mold Splash. It is because the casting was not a single smooth motion. That is absolutely still usable!
It's cool to see structures from manufacturing like this imo, like waves in plastic from the pump pushing in spurts of plastic in an injection mold causing a chatoyancy effect.
This is also due to the low casting temperature, and mostly because that. As the temperature reduces, viscosity gets higher and makes it harder to fill the mold cavity.
@@leonardoulian764that was the long way to describe what anybody watching this would know intuitively but I’m sure it helped with all those people who watch this channel for the music…
One of my favorite "Cody things" is that like nothing seems to go to waste. "I need a funnel" doesn't mean go to the store and buy a funnel, it means cut the top off of a plastic bottle. "I need a vent for my mold..." Well, take the rest of that bottle you made a funnel out of and cut off the bottom. Cracked beaker? So what, it'll still measure out dry stuff fine. Wet stuff? An empty gallon jug is fine! Need something like a pastry bag? Well I'll just go ahead and cut a hole in the corner of a ziplock. I do get nervous seeing him handling a moderately heavy box of hardened sand around his bare feet... but I guess if you are careful enough to play with thermite, you are probably careful enough to not lose a toe :)
When working around crushing hazards w/o any foot coverings, one tends to be hyperfocused where your feet are at all times. Except for that one time where your "ain't never got hurt before" hubris catches up to you...
My uncle used ziplock bags to ice cakes for years, and I always had the best birthday cakes growing up. Sometimes it's more about the skill than the tools.
> need a funnel > just cut it out from a plastic bottle dude, that's, like, how 95% of people who ever lived on a ranch are doing it. Seriously, are you ever touched grass in your life?
I think annealing the iron afterwards will help with the casting Bing brittle. We also used a special paint inside the molds to help maintain the integrity of the mold while pouring. We also used a 2 part epoxy sprayed in the sand to bind the sand together. We made steal at the foundry I used to work at, hopefully these tips may help some.
For your next attempt, you should probably try to have the volcano drain directly into a channel that feeds the mold, rather than filling up crucibles and then needing to dump the crucibles, the extra transfer step is just giving that crust time to form and obstruct the casting
I wanted to suggested something similar. Maybe the same way pig iron is casted into ingots (piglets), but with a shorter channel, to avoid freezing the metal innthe channel.
I refrained myself from suggesting this, tyinking there was probably a good reason hé chose to use crucibles. Maybe it has something to do with the slag ?
@@gnusamgnu the slag definetly poses a problem for using channels, but I think that a deep channel would allow the more dense iron to flow on the bottom, while the slag solidifies on top. Of course, the channels would beed to be as short as possible, and Cody would have to babysit it and remove any slag blockages.
that won't work here because of the melting point of iron. Its over 1500°C (don't ask what it is in freedom units) and the temp in the melt is even higher, around 1700 - 1800°C. So to have any effect the mold would have to at least 800°C. In that heat the mold would simply collaps. The best solution would be to use finer alu and iron oxide in the correct ratio, maybe a bit more iron oxide than needed to reduce the alu content in the final product to make it less brittle as aluminium makes iron very brittle
Thank you. The idea using CO2 to harden sodium silicate is genius. I have for months been fighting to make refractory bricks and had trouble with it. This saved me.
One of the best RU-vid videos I've seen in a while. There was a reason, why i wanted to check your channel again after a few months, and you did not disappoint 🎉
one thing i love about cody is he never cuts his video short, i love it that he goes through and investigates what happened and shows us his investigation too.
Hope this will become a series: Thermite Casting with Cody! And we cast some really silly stuff everytime 😄 Maybe just going wild and creating some artsy stuff. I would buy one 😉
Cody: The single guy on RU-vid who have 2million subscriber's but still record like a young RU-vidr, without any setup or other 😂 Only the resolution is higher since some videos 🤣
It's great. He's focusing on content and is the reason people still come back after many many years. If he did one project every few months with no videos in between but high production value, it would defeat the purpose of his rough and tough approach to things. How he does it is perfect for his content.
I love you explaining why you are not doing something and then cutting to where you learned that lesson. Really nice to see the failures as well as the successes since they give so much to learn from.
I’m 27 and in my early teens I started watching your channel and I feel like I’ve grown up with you in a way. It’s so weird and cool. I’ve had your notifications on since I was 14 and I’m always reminded of you whenever you post a new video. Please don’t stop
@@hugegamer5988 It causes polymerization of the oils/fats, and with enough layers it could even plug up the hole in the pan. But that's besides the point of my comment, which was meant to be a joke.
Things I'm surprised he didn't use: Using a sparkler to start the thermite reaction ; Using a Wire metal brush to clean off the sand from the cast pan ; Shoes for any length of time in Nevada sun ; And salt on eggs. - Good Lord, are we not savages?!?!?!
I'm pretty sure he did use a sparkler as a fuse, rewatch the part when he's lighting it. It ends up not working too well I guess, cause he just started blasting the powdered thermite mix with the torch. ALSO, he did wear shoes for the rest of the video after he started the thermite, surprisingly. 🤣Thankfully he had some heavy, non-polyester clothing. Tbh that's the most important part. I'm pretty sure that's a Carhartt jacket or something similar, and I don't think he would just wear that in Nevada sun for no reason. It IISSS Cody though, so you can never predict him lol.
i worked in a foundry when i was young the finale step they would do with a mold is use a supper fine silica powder and make a surly with it thick like paint then spray it on the mold lightly dont want drips prob 3 or 4 times use a torch to bake the coating on each lair tell smooth this creates a glass like lair between the coarse sand and molten metal
so i work in a foundry that does cast iron. those lines in there we call cold shut or interrupted pour so what happens is different parts of the pan cooled faster than the others so it makes those lines. could have happened because you used 2 crucibles could have happened because sometimes the molds have air leaks which cause the iron to cool faster. but for someone who is doing this essentially in their back yard this was a very good first attempt terrific work!
This is an amazing video. So typical of a typical Cody's Lab video, yet also, I don't know. Oddly accomplished somehow. I've been watching for years on and off, but with this one I realized just how much I enjoy watching these, and also _why_ I enjoy it. It's relaxation pure and simple, sitting back and emerging myself in this feelgood, slightly nutty chemical engineer univers and knowing that there is this guy out there on a badlands hillside doing backyard science like none of all that other stupid shit going on even existed. You help keeping the world just a little sane and playful, Cody. Also, yeah. Of course the wind is going to blow the smoke your way, that's a natural law. It doesn't help move around because then the wind just shifts, so. But at least it spewed the lava in the other direction, so there's that👍
For the flipping of a sand mold you need a lot of compaction. You can use pounding but you can also use vibration. A fairly powerful subwoofer attached to any sand mold for a good period of time will compact a great deal. Might also err on the side of excessive moisture. Liquifaction is your friend here. Try to compress everything at once, not in layer. Layers make surfaces for delamination. Compressing as much volume as possible means you have more of a single chunk. Also, pleeeeeeeease, support both surfaces at all times while flipping. Some plywood screwed down would be eperfect. The whole thing should move as a monolith as much as possible. Great work. Great video. Just had ME 153 flashbacks.
When collecting the metal from a thermite reaction you need to start the reaction from the bottom.. Mythbusters showed this in one of their thermite episodes and it's also how thermite welding of rail steel (railroad) works. If you start it from the top most of the metal is lost to the reaction and burnt up instead of being usable. Something to help the metal flow in the mold is to preheat it. You need to season cast iron pans before you cook with them.
You don't NEED to season cast iron before cooking the first time, it's just a really helpful thing to do. It'll work just fine unseasoned, similar to carbon steel. Food will just stick more and the pan will rust pretty fast. I suppose you might also get a higher iron content from your food.
This is the most low tech/high tech thing with how aluminium requires huge industrial infrastructure to make and yet mixing it with sand and setting fire to it is so simple, I love it
Yeah aluminum is pretty much a high tech miracle fuel. Once the oxide layer comes off, it gets super reactive. There was a research team that made a surprisingly strong rocket fuel from aluminum and ice.
That was my thought as well. The volcano reminded me of a Primitive Technology video. Yet, it's only possible because the energy "put into" the Aluminum. Which was probably shipped around the world so it could be done "cheaply."
It makes me wonder if there were any thermite- type processes that would have been possible with primitive technology. We couldn't use aluminum metal or really most pure elements, so I can't think of anything off the top of my head to use as a good reducing agent.
@@tomarnd8724 Copper is lower in the reactivity series than iron, so if anything, pure iron would be a reducing agent in a reaction like that, to produce copper, not the other way around. The potential energy and kinetics are also a lot lower so I doubt you could even get a sustained reaction. My hunch is that thermite wouldn't have been possible to make before we started using electrolysis in isolating metals.
Best suggestion to improve? The crucibles are an unneeded step. In essence, the biggest "issue" with the casting, was the fact that the metal started to cool in various places and locations, and you didn't have enough of it all at once to fill the mold, so it started to harden in various locations first. So if instead, you just put the mold in the right location? You could have the whole mold filled immediately, and it would be a clearer, simpler process, with fewer steps, and fewer possible points of failure.
@@mr.narwhal547 slag COULD be an issue, yes, but If you took that into account in the first place? Plan for it? You'd still get a WAY better end-result. IMO
Seeing as how violent the eruption of melted material from the volcano was, getting the material in the mold in a controlled way without using the crucibles as an intermediate step looks like it would be really hard.
That pan came out a lot better than I was expecting. Not the most efficient method, but certainly a lot more interesting to watch. Thank you, Cody. Keep up the great work.
I've been watching your videos for years and that sequence at 22:30 was one of the coolest things ive ever seen, the molten steel shooting out violently at 2000ºC and then the way you have to fight to wrangle it into the mold, that was amazing!
That was great! It's both the most successful thermite casting I've seen AND the most successful I've seen a RU-vidr be at making a cast iron pan. Great work!
What a project! Making everything from scratch, the failed mold attempts, actually getting it to work on the first try, the tapping… So much work and such a good result. Awesome video cody
getting the metal out of the vulcano seems to have worked a whole lot better than i would have thought, i was very skeptical before seeing it flow out so nicely
The way Cody list all of the steps that he had to do to cast his Cast an Iron Pan using thermite, reminded me of the old *_British TV series Connections,_* that was created, written, and presented by British science historian *_James Burke._* To remove the sand you need a *_SANDBLASTER!!!_*
I still can't get over you can get such a "rough" thermite mix to actually react with a really good yield seeming the raw and I mean RAW mix 😂 well done cody. Awesome stuff!
When you do it the next time, besides using both finer powders for your iron oxide and aluminum, you might want to consider adding some activated carbon powder, as well, to create cast *steel* thereby creating something a bit less brittle as well as temperable to make it even tougher. Good vid, in any case.
I came for Cody's Kitchen and was not disappointed As far as the pan goes, I think the flaws can be mostly mitigated. The pan is brittle because it was cooled too fast. reheating it and holding it at temperature should destress the material, so it's not crazy brittle. For the leak, you may be able to seal it off by seasoning the pan. Over time that could also fill that crack up giving you a nice cooking surface.
I think that if you're confident that your largest crucible has the volume to fill the mold, use only that one to collect at the tap. Let it overflow so that the metal sinking to the bottom displaces as much of the crust forming slag that capped both the crucibles this time around. Best case scenario is that the molten iron displaces virtually all the slag and you loose a bit of unneeded iron to overflow. Worst case scenario is that you have all your usable metal in one crucible, and you only have to break one crust and do one pour.
A bigger crucible for a single pour will likely help, and I think if you put your flasks at a ~10 degree angle you may avoid the wrinkle/void in the center of the pan base. I think that knit line/void was mainly a failure of venting.
Normaly, in an industrial process of melting iron, they add additions like lime stone to the molten iron in order to form the slag needed for the casting process. The slag is then liquid and helps to remove unwanted stuff from the iron.
the only thing i'd suggest is to try and skip the crucibles. after tapping into the molten iron, have it flow into a (tile/ceramic?) funnel, directly into your cast. if it'd cool down too fast in the open air, you could extend the cast to include a hollow section leading to the mould. you would tap it with a pipe like you did here, but the pipe is blocked at the end (away from the molten iron), and has a quarter segment cut out that the metal can then flow through, into the hollow below towards the mould.
@@RichardClaessens the aluminum converts to aluminum oxide and separates out into the dross/slag. He does need to get the ratios correct so there isn't too much excess aluminum after the reaction though, for the reason you mentioned.
I think there's only a few things you can do to improve the process, and probably only marginal improvements: 1. More vents. The wrinkles and bubbles are definitely from trapped gas. 2. More dry. Steam is probably the main source of any surface pocketing (which you didn't have all that much of.) Ideally, you'd bake the mold in a large metal box to keep combustion from adding steam to the mix. Probably ideal to bake it for 8+ hours in a mold that big. I know Nevada and Utah are dry, but not as dry as we'd want, ideally. Mars would be dry enough. 3. More hot. The mold would, ideally, be hot when you pour, but that's pretty hard to do. It would help the metal flow. 4. Thicker walls on the form. You coated that pan really thick in wax, which is great, but more hole to fill means more flow to fill it. 5. If you can, try to place the mold directly under the furnace output pipe to prevent wasting heat and making that top crust on the crucibles when pouring it manually. 6. Make that furnace output pipe thicker or actively cool it with water to prevent it melting and use a bigger inner diameter to prevent it plugging up. Convert to an open channel if you want to restrict flow rate further down the line.
7. More flux. I just watched the exotic thermite series of a RU-vid channel named "The Gayest Person On RU-vid". He uses a 50:50 mix of calcium fluoride and cryolite as flux to remove impurities and increase crystal size.
Bubbles come back in the the casting as voids and pits makes the metal like a aero bar there usually concealed inside or look like bubbles them folds look like cold shuts caused by the iron not been hot enough and flashing off slightly in the mould that’s why the water pisses though it’s not sealed together it’s basically where both sides of the pour have met
@@GigsVT I doubt it the gravity of the metal and the viscosity will stop that although sand inclusions are common in castings it’s usually down to breakdown of the mould when the boxes are together so it’s gets picked up as the metal flows the crust on the outside is crusty because the heat has managed to melt the sand it won’t happen instantly
@@markussmith3135 I don't know, I've only ever dealt with nonferrous casting. You may well be right. Just seems like this stream is really "dirty" and some settling time might be helpful.