[TheForge] Powder Damascus

[James Binnion]

It is cool stuff i have played with a little and a couple of my 
friends are producing wedding rings from it 
(http://www.poirierstudio.com/Gallery/Rings/index.htm)  The Damasteel 
folks have been making this powder metallurgy damascus for several 
years now. They are willing to make custom pattern and sizes. 
Depending on how much you deviate from what they do as "stock" it may 
just be a small charge for the custom work or  you might have to have 
them do a custom run in which case it will cost you about $15K  but 
you can have any metal combo you like if you buy the run.

>Here's an interesting bit for the Damascus/pattern-welding guys:
>
>Patterned steel billets by powder metallurgy.  Stack (dribble?) two
>kinds of powder (say, a hardenable carbon steel and a hardenable
>stainless) just right in a cylinder, add pressure and heat to form a
>billet.  Forge or roll the billet.  Instant pattern welded bar stock.
>
>['Ware line-wrap]
>
>http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/articleLoader.asp?catId=3&path=D%3A%5CInetpub%5Cwwwroot%5CMachineDesign%5Clive%5CMDSite%5CContent%5CIssue%5C10657%5C57611%2Ehtml&strSource=/images/currentissue.jpg
>
>Or you can just go to the main site:
>
>     http://www.machinedesign.com/
>
>and navigate to the Damascus steel article in the current issue
>(18-Nov-2004).  Main site requires javascript to navigate and is a
>PITA.  The long URL above goes direct to the relevant page without js.
>
>Some impressive photos of their flats and rounds.
>
>So how do you dribble two kinds of metal powder into a pressure
>cylinder "just right"?  I wonder if this is an application of the 3D
>metallurgical printing tech developed at MIT.  I'll have to email Sam
>Allen and ask him if he knows about this.
>
>And to think, there we were, just welding chunks of solid stuff
>together a lot of times when we could have had a building full of
>automated machinery and computers to do it for us while we drank
>whiskey and picked ticks offn the dog.
>
>
>- Mike
>
>--
>Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~.
>                                                            /V\
>mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
>http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^
>
>--
>
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-- 
Jim Binnion

James Binnion Metal Arts
Phone (360) 756-6550
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