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https://luciteria.com/metal-cubes/iridium-metal-cube-9995
$9,000 for a 1cm cube. That's "winning the lotto impulse purchase" level for me.
Unlike say, a $9000 motorcycle impulse purchase, a block of raw metal should hold it's inflation adjusted value relatively well for decades and you can sell it whenever to recoup the money.
I have a tungsten wedding ring and the weirdest thing about it is how it bounces (on the occasions when it’s flown out of my hand - I don’t make a habit of doing so normally). It’s dense/heavy so seeing it bounce so well is somewhat paradoxical. (Side note: it may be impossible to cut through in case of an emergency but your finger is not.)
Was seriously considering tungsten recently, but ended up going with titanium for this exact reason.
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Not only that, machining that piece would take ages and wear out a fortune in tooling.
Below I suggested it would be easy for EDM or ECM. Have I been misled?
Compared to say machining aluminum or steel you will be practicing some patience.
Not necessarily a bad thing to have in the world of metal working. ("increased feed speed is not a substitute for bad planning")
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My sister owns two shoe stores in LA. It wasen't till she raised her prices significantly things got going. Wealthy measure value by price. (I don't get it.)
Shoes (especially the ones people buy for fashion value – think Louboutin stilettos vs. something more functional like New Balance sneakers) are a Veblen good. Their perceived value increases with their price. Like art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
That's why when I buy wine for my girlfriend I don't buy the cheapest brand. It's not that I think the wine market is efficient, particularly when I'm at a supermarket that can charge whatever price they want instead of comparing prices at https://1000corks.com/; it's that I think my ignorance of wine is deeper than the market's inefficiency.
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Ring avulsion is pretty scary too, and can happen with any metal ring.
Try finding a machinist that wears jewelry. Either they have yet to learn a painful lesson or they will have learned it directly or indirectly (colleague, machinist friend). That's one thing you learn to respect in a hurry: no jewelry near rotating machinery.
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Try finding a machinist that wears jewelry. Either they have yet to learn a painful lesson or they will have learned it directly or indirectly (colleague, machinist friend). That's one thing you learn to respect in a hurry: no jewelry near rotating machinery.
I've only spent a very small amount of time around woodworkers, but I imagine that scarves are a big no-no as well. ;)
Similar advisories hold for printing presses, farm equipment and so on. Printing presses are particularly nasty because they tend to be so spotless that you can't tell if they're rotating or not by looking at the surface.
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Below I suggested it would be easy for EDM or ECM. Have I been misled?
EDM will take a very long time, you are going to take off a few microns per hit, and ECM will likely take either an insane amount of power or will take forever across such a large surface. Compared to say machining aluminum or steel you will be practicing some patience. Not necessarily a bad thing to have in the world of metal working. ("increased feed speed is not a substitute for bad planning")
William Osman had a video where he "experimented" with a huge tungsten cube. It's quite entertaining. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O551__3ppM Another interesting fact about tungsten is that its density is 99.75% of that of gold. So essentially you can model how heavy something is if it was made out of pure gold with tungsten. Additionally, apparently gold counterfeiters sometimes put tungsten inside of gold bars…
That is a terrible video.
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EDM will take a very long time, you are going to take off a few microns per hit, and ECM will likely take either an insane amount of power or will take forever across such a large surface. Compared to say machining aluminum or steel you will be practicing some patience. Not necessarily a bad thing to have in the world of metal working. ("increased feed speed is not a substitute for bad planning")
EDM can cheese-wire right through blocks of tungsten.
You can also cut tungsten with water jets loaded with abrasives, I've seen a 2" thick block cut like that, it was quite impressive. But that won't get you a surface. You'd need to start with a sheet of the right thickness.