tl;dr - Yes, he can, but it's expensive and involves a whole lot of oxidation.
Damascus steel has a noteworthy pattern that is really what Alec is trying to reproduce with the titanium shown in these videos. Here he starts with alternating grades of titanium stacked then forge welds them together.
The steps required to then anneal and machine the titanium billet that he produces are labor-intensive to say the least.
But he does get some cool rings out of the process.
I'll admit that there's not a ton of content in today's video. Mostly it's a machining video where a guy - the unseen My Mechanics channel's youtuber - makes exactly what the video title says: an 8 ball made of stainless steel and brass.
The final product is pretty neat, and it would look good on a shelf as a curio - not really as much of anything else other than a heck of a thing to throw at someone or something you really hate.
I'm posting the video because of the neatness of the thermal expansion demonstrations at 1:50, 2:50, 3:30, and 4:10. In each case, a metal cylinder needs to be fit snugly into another metal cylinder. To get the fit to be a bit easier - but only temporarily - our host heats up the outer cylinder.
See, because metal - honestly, all materials - expand when heated. So the outer cylinder gets bigger as does its interior diameter. The youtuber is able to slip the inner cylinder inside, and when the outer cylinder cools, the fit becomes nearly seamless.
The quick version is that Destin (of Smarter Every Day) shows us his tour of United Launch Alliance (ULA with their CEO, Tory Bruno. The ULA factory has some pretty highly-regulated manufacturing going on.
I'll go with a bullet point list of things I found interesting and possibly useful for a material science class. Admittedly, the full video - fifty-four minutes long - is probably more than any class could watch in total, but it's got some awesome clips.
5:15 - The video cuts to avoid filming "that" to Destin's left and right, items that Tory narrates but that he says flatly can't be filmed and shown.
7:15 - Quick discussion of the supply chain for the aluminum sheets that the rocket fuel tanks are made of
8:30 - We see the finished product of a machined isogrid panel as well as why that design - not the ideal design - was chosen because of the limitations of FEA analysis calculations in the 1990s.
9:50 - Discussion of the safety margins in space flight (1.1 - 1.25 times designed load) as compared to those of land-based transportation (7-12 times designed load)
12:15 - Amazingly, we get a mixture of, as Bruno says, "the pinnacle of technology...high-tech, robotic operations but mixed in [with] craftsmanship with people who are very skilled and have great attention to detail." That's amazing that something this precise is partially done by hand. This will come back in a bit.
13:30 - Machining, subtractive manufacturing is mentioned...as well as their recovery system for recapturing the aluminum chips for eventual recycling.
17:00 - 19:20 - Advertisement for Audible, skip it
19:30 - Replacing the isogrid with an orthogrid, saving time and weight, along with a quick discussion of strain and work hardening that happens by hand after the machining. We get a nice close-up of the orthogrid at 21:10.
22:00 - Destin uses the term strongback to describe the construction of the press used to curve the machined panels. That's a term I had to look up.
22:45 - Destin questions whether the aluminum is annealed, and Tory says they allow the aluminum to artificially age at room temperature after they are slightly work hardened from the curving process.
24:15 - Back to manual manufacturing to a precision level that - according to Tory - can't be achieved by automation. "You will always get better results by doing it by hand," he says.
27:30 - We see the anodizing facility to create a thick oxide layer for hardness and corrosion resistance. I knew that bare aluminum automatically formed an oxide layer, but I hadn't heard - as Tory says around 28:10 - that the natural layer is very thing and porous, leading to poor corrosion resistance.
31:30 - I wonder what the various acid concentrations are.
32:10 - We head toward the friction stir welding area, and Tory explains why friction stir welding is the better choice for strength of their final tank.
34:05 - Destin 'peaks over there' at a highly pixelated area. Cute
36:00 - Quick explanation of why it's better to order one large pizza than to order two medium pizzas
37:40 - Another pixelated section with the specialized head of the friction stir welder
40:15 - We switch over to stainless steel - half the thickness of a dime - instead of aluminum as we switch from boosters to upper stages.
43:00 - We get a finished view of the 5m composite payload faring and a discussion of ULA having brought the manufacturing of that from Switzerland to north Alabama via business partnership.
44:00 - Bruno discusses ULA's record of flying both payload and actual people successfully with 135+ consecutive, successful launches.
45:20 - Discussion of mass fraction (without explanation)...I had to look that up, too.
46:30 - Changes coming from hand arc welding to automated welding in the next version of Centaur (the upper stage) to save time (and assumedly cost).
47:40 - We get a quick glance of the team of people who are walking around behind the scenes with Destin and Tory. Admittedly, it looks like Tory is taking Destin around solo, but there are clearly people supervising even the CEO the whole time.
In general, I'm incredibly impressed with Bruno's knowledge of the entire process. It's amazing to see that from a CEO. Maybe that's the way that all CEOs are, but I doubt it.
And, if you want even more, there's a second video - on Destin's second channel - where the guys get into some discussion about the rocket engines themselves and ULA's position within the industry. It's less materials-focused, but it's worth watching.
That is a straight up gorgeous piece of film making and advertising.
The sights of the aluminum being forged, poured, machined, anodized, and finished are absolutely stunning. Go watch it again before you start looking at the science of what's happening.
We get the full gamut of processing (forging, machining) and materials (metals, alloys, ceramic - zirconia - beads for the finish).
Beautiful...
And that doesn't even being to touch on the gold and steel videos that I'm putting after the jump.
All of these are available on Apple's watch craftsmanship webpage along with text and photos of the zirconia chosen for the crystal covers, the ion-x glass for the Sport face (potassium ion soaked to increase strength), or the sapphire facing for the Watch and Watch Edition editions (that sounds incredibly stupid to read).
There is also a webpage from Atomic Delights (a blog with sadly only three posts in two years - better quality than quantity, I guess) that does a far better job breaking down the three videos and speculating on some of the science therein than I ever could.
I'm kind of amazed that the forging (1:30) is done by hand. The movement of the preheated, prulubed slugs into the press would seem to be very easily done by machine. I'm also a little surprised that the final sanding/smoothing at 4:15 is done by hand as well.
High heat to strengthen the metal then lower heat to stabilize it? That sounds kind of like annealing and tempering.
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.
