You're just not pushing hard enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_welding
Also, if you get the non-metal stuff out of the way, they do.
Why don't metals bond when touched together?
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Why don't metals bond when touched together?
#22Guage blocks[1] due to their near perfect flatness are thought[1] to adhere by "Molecular attraction".
Re: Why don't metals bond when touched together?
#23Is this not an obvious answer? I am genuinely curious why the impurities and oxidation are not the answer the OP jumped to.
Re: Why don't metals bond when touched together?
#24Is this not an obvious answer? I am genuinely curious why the impurities and oxidation are not the answer the OP jumped to.
When you know you have basic but not expert knowledge you can make an educated guess (or several), but in the absence of empirical evidence you acknowledge there could be other factors you haven't thought of.
Re: Why don't metals bond when touched together?
#25The hatches and frames on the Mercury and Gemini capsules had to be well painted because the exposure to vacuum raised the danger of like metals welding together.
Re: Why don't metals bond when touched together?
#26This was the primary source of 'stiction' in the disk drive business. Platters became optically smooth, read write heads similarly. When the heads "landed" on a spot where the lubricant had migrated away from they would bind so tightly the motor couldn't break them free. (old SparcStation drives you could take them out. give them a sharp twist along the platter's rotational access, and if you were lucky move the head…
Many summers years ago, during an internship, I got tasked with setting up a development machine from old parts lying around the office. One of those parts was an, even at the time, ancient hard drive. When I first powered the computer up everything turned on just fine, but it couldn't recognize the disk. I'd run into bad hard drives before, no big deal.I went to my bosses boss, an older engineer who had seen a thing or two, and told him we'd need another drive. He took the thing out and gave it a good hard twist, and told me to try again. Lo and behold, it worked!
He explained that sometimes when older hard drives have been powered off for many years the head some times sticks to the platter and doing what he did can fix it. I could barely believe that the phenomenon was actually real. I've spoken to a few people over the years about heads sticking to platters and it turns out, while it isn't (or wasn't?) exactly common, it's not exactly rare either.
Re: Why don't metals bond when touched together?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been wanting to do this. How expensive is the equipment to keep and maintain?
Used welders in good condition can be had for under $1000. Depends on if its a MIG, TIG, or "stick" (flux). Traditional welding relies on the shielding gas being generated from a solid material (flux) wrapped around the consumable electrode. Other methods (MIG and TIG) rely on inert gasses being provided by separate support equipment to a "gun", which is also feeding electrode wire. To take the class should only cost…
One note: if you have a MIG welding rig you can use flux cored wire in it without a shielding gas, which simplifies things somewhat if you're an occasional welder. Just make sure to adjust the polarity settings correctly when you do (there are tons of videos on youtube explaining how and why).