3D Printing Extremely Viscous Materials

I'm guessing that Bonnie Raitt could've helped solve this long ago if anybody had just asked her.

Seriously, though, I love that song. Take a few minutes to give it a listen if you haven't before.

More to the topic, though, the idea of 3d printing highly viscous materials would open up a whole lot more possibilities. Heating any polymer filament up to force the polymer through the nozzle leads to complications that could be mitigated apparently with a little shaking.

Plus we get increased opportunities to precisely print with ceramics, cement, even - as the video above mentions - icing.

I wish we'd gotten more of the icing shown.

As always, check out the ASM video of the week.

'Smart implants' dissolve after healing - Science Nation

I don't get what's so impressive. I implant ice cream directly into my body with some frequency, and my body takes care of that all the time.

Too much ice cream, actually...

I'm hoping that they take any magnesium implants out of the bodies before they get cremated... sheesh.

That would be pretty cool, though, if medical implants could be absorbed into the body after the structural support is necessary.

Die forging process (open and closed die)

Forging is dirty. There's no doubt about it, but forging is just so amazing to watch, especially when the scale peels off of the piece as pressure is increased.

This video goes through the advantages for forging (reduce crosssection, improve microstructure, provide directional grain flow, and eliminate porosity of castings), and two types of forging (open die, impression or closed die forging). We get to see multiple steps in the process as well as eventual removal of the flash.

Great intro video, folks. Thanks to Rebecca for passing it along.

Gold - How its made

Gold is pricey. I get that, but when all the steps involved in getting the gold out of the ground are lined up - as they are in this video - that priceiness makes a lot more sense.

There's another good tour through the process of extracting gold in the Nova special Hunting the Elements.

How It's Made: the 2 Euro Coin

These two-euro coins are far more interesting than are the coins that we use in the United States. Yes, our coins are partially sandwiched, but we lack the two-part, ringed coins that are used in many countries in Europe. The rings just make the coins way cooler.

They also, of course, make the coins far trickier to manufacture, a process shown in depth in this video.

3D metal printing

This process isn't quite sintering, but it's definitely not forging or stamping or any of the other methods of making metal products with which I'm familiar. It is, however, absolutely brilliant.

Hopefully it's not as wasteful as it looks.

A better solar-powered water splitter

Metals are just ceramic wanna-be's.

It's something that summarizes so much chemistry, so much material science understanding, and so many problems that we run into with using metals - and apparently with metalloids (semi-metals if you're British).

I'd never thought of the problem of corrosion with metalloids, though it's understandable that even metalloids would 'want' to react with oxygen since all metals do, too.

On track with SAP - Composites

Concerns in the faster and lighter areas drastically outweigh the cheaper ones when it comes to a Formula 1 racecar (a palindrome, by the way). To that end, the engineers use a ridiculous amount of high-technology materials in the efforts to shave an ounce or two from the car's weight. The most stunning comment in this video came about 0:58 for me - the chassis only weighs 45 kilograms.

I know freshman - little freshman - at my school who outweigh the chassis of a Formula 1 racecar.

What the heck?

Jet engine testing (superalloys)

I know a couple of our master teachers who should NOT watch this video because of their little fear of flying thing.

I, on the other hand, have no fear of flying at all. I don't fly very often - about twice in a typical year - and am totally relaxed when I am flying because I know that airplanes are overengineered to the point of ridiculous safety. I hope...

This video shows Rolls Royce testing one of their jet engines in the case of engine turbine blade during an event of catastrophic failure. The super slow-mo footage of the turbine going off balance and recovering is actually terrifically reassuring to me as a passenger.

One box of Girl Scout cookies worth $15 billion

As a chemistry teacher, hearing the quote "carbon is carbon" about 1:20 into this video just made my day.

In the video researchers from Rice University Labs turn girl scout cookies - trefoils from what I can tell - into graphene on copper, and the girl scout troop then performs some simple tests on the graphene sheet, clearly testing the conductivity (or resistance, maybe) of the product.

Making Stuff Stronger: Demonstration Clip

The Making Stuff series is an outstanding exploration of materials engineering and science with four episodes: Smaller, Stronger, Smarter, and Cleaner. In the series David Pogue plays the inquisitive and often comedic and corny host who looks at a number of materials being made at the cutting edge of materials science.

Here he takes a look at Kevlar, providing an excellent graphic showing the polymer's structure, and then suggesting a possible new use for a thick, Kevlar cable.

Scientific Tuesdays: Turn Styrofoam into pseudo-plastic

The demonstration of dissolving Styrofoam into acetone is one that we do in the summer ASM workshops, typically selling the demonstration by counting how many Styrofoam peanuts you can crush into a film canister, having hidden a small amount of acetone in the canister before the beginning of the demonstration.

At the end of the demonstration, however, we always end up with an amount of goopy, dissolved Styrofoam mess. The presenter in this video uses the term pseudo-plastic for what is left at the end when the goopy mess hardens. I'm a little curious as to why the pseudo comes into play, but that may have to do with my lack of understanding of exactly what plastic means.

Anybody want to clarify for me?

Investment Casting (Lost Wax) Process

The lost wax casting process is an impressive thing to watch and one that can be replicated - admittedly in a far simpler version - in the classroom. No, you probably would't be making anything quite as complicated as shown in this video, but having students make and carve a simple piece of jewelry - a ring, for example - is very much achievable.

Swimming and walking gel

I really don't know how to characterize this video. Yes, there's a clear material there - 'magnetic particles embedded in a polymer', but it's not quite like anything I've seen before.

Admittedly, though, I could probably watch the 'snakes...made from magnetic gel' on a loop for hours.

Machine creates aluminum helmet - incredible

The concept is pretty simple: carve a block of aluminum into a shape. The execution, however, is nearly mesmerizing as the machine sends aluminum shavings flying with computerized precision.

There are quite a few steps skipped, however, and I would love to see the entire process in a single time-lapse video. I would also like to know how close to 100% recycling the manufacturers are with the cast-off aluminum shavings. I would hope pretty close.

How CD's are made

The production of some of our materials is absolutely masterful to watch. Here the production of a compact disc is followed from start to finish, largely taking place in a clean room. I'll readily admit that I had no clue whatsoever what went into the making of the cd's that I've been playing for years.

Now, if only we could get a video explaining all the steps that go into the making of an mp3 file. That I'd totally watch.

Liquid metal gallium alloy galinstan

It's amazing how much the properties of metals can change when they're alloyed together. Here the wordless videographer shows how different galinstan (gallium - indium - tin (stannous)) is from the metals from which the alloy is formed.

Metals with a Memory

Memory metals - nitinol being the one with which I am most familiar - are a fascinating material with their solid state transition radically changing the material's macroscopic shape. The old chestnut of turning a straight piece into a coil in hot water is nice, but the creativity of using metals with different transition temperatures to make a little sculpture here with uncurling biceps, straightening spine and neck, able to 'stand' straight up as the temperature rises is very well done.

Bouncing bearings on liquid metal

Advertising is advertising. I think we all know that.

And the advertising demonstrations set up in sporting good stores aren't always the truest indicators of a particular piece of equipment's final performance. Yes, the materials shown probably perform the specific functions being demonstrated very well. Here we can see that the rebound of a metal ball off of liquidmetal's proprietary alloy as compared to the rebound from a titanium surface.

We have to assume that all the other variables - material thickness, cold or hot treating perhaps - are the same between the materials and that the two metal balls are also the same. If so, we can safely say that the liquidmetal does, indeed, provide a greater rebound (coefficient of restitution if I remember my physics correctly). Now, what does that mean on the surface of a golf club, in a tennis racket, or as a fishing pole?

That I can't definitively say from the limited data I have before me. I am glad, though, that their website does provide a little of the science behind the fact that the alloys possess ' an "amorphous" atomic structure, which is truly unique. By contrast to the crystalline structure, no discernable patterns exist in the atomic structure of the unique Liquidmetal alloys. As such, properties superior to the limits of conventional metals can be achieved.'

Has anyone actually used anything from the liquidmetal line?

Making Coins

This video is perfect for demonstrating the practical application of many of the metal labs.  Who doesn't love money???