New Ravi water fuel cell document up question

[GotHydro?]

[rickoff]

Re: Annealing and sanding

Hi there GotHydro,

I can see where that may sound confusing. To understand this, you must first understand the manufacturing process. You are talking about "drawn" pipes, or tubing, which refers to the manufacturing process of seamless pipe or tubing. To simplify, let's assume that it is actually pipe. During the manufacturing process, the metal for the pipe is first formed into a solid billet (a solid metal casting) of cylindrical shape. The billet is then "drawn" (pulled) over a piercing rod, which results in the hollow core of the pipe. You can just imagine the stress that occurs to the metal during this forming process. If left in this state, the stress points can become hairline fractures that will spread and grow larger, especially if the pipe is heated and/or cooled during use, or subjected to high pressures, and of course that would eventually lead lead to failure. Seamless pipe is normally chosen by fabricators because of its superior strength as compared to seamed pipe, and therefore most seamless pipe does pass through an annealing process. Annealing is a process whereby the formed pipe is heat treated by placing it in a special oven, at a closely regulated temperature, for an extended duration of time. This heating relaxes the metal to relieve the stress points. After annealing, some impurities will have risen to the surface, and the metal will appear somewhat discolored. High quality stainless, or other smooth surface metal piping, would have its surface ground and then polished with special equipment. So unless you manufactured the pipes yourself, there's a good chance that they may already have been annealed. Check with the manufacturer if you are not certain. The author of the article which you quoted probably purchased annealed, but unfinished pipe, and therefore was sanding the pipe on a lathe, with fine emery paper, to obtain a surface similar to manufacturer polishing. Incidentally, FYI, pipe sizes refer to the inside diameter of the pipe, while tubing sizes refer to the outside diameter. You probably already know that, but I thought I would point that out because the terminology is often confused or misused.

I hope this gives you a better understanding of the subject matter. Happy building to you,

Rickoff

[GotHydro?]

[ashtweth]

What an engineer

looks like Rickoff is a metal urgy professor as well as an expert in most things
Adding to the doc so you wont have to type that again

[rickoff]

To Ash and GotHydro

Hi Ash,

No, I am not a metallurgist, and I don't consider myself an expert in anything, but I have learned and experienced a lot during my lifetime and am happy to share that with anyone. The only reason why I do happen to know something about metallurgy is because my dad was, in fact, a brilliant metallurgist. He often took me on tours of his lab at Magnetic Metals Company, and showed me some really interesting R & D experiments, as well as actual metal formation and finishing processes. His brother was also into metals, and after graduating from Yale he started up a heat treating business with assistance from my dad. I actually worked with my uncle at the heat treating company one summer, when I was about 17, and learned quite a bit about the various processes that he used for annealing and hardening of metals. Later I used what I had learned from my uncle to write a report for my high school science class. Like my dad and uncle, I was also fascinated with metals, but mostly from a machining and metal crafting point of view. After high school, I took courses at an automotive technical institute and then jumped at the opportunity to work in an automotive machine and speed shop rebuilding engines, starters, alternators, transmissions, and differentials. Later I worked in tool and die, and high precision/close tolerance machining. At the same time, I had parallel interests in electronics, and took several practical courses at a technical school. That lead to a job building hi-tech precision electronic enclosures and printed circuit boards for an electronics company. Towards the end of my employment there I became their quality control manager, and also worked as an assistant to the company's R&D engineer. I enjoyed working there, and learned a lot, but when it was finally disclosed to me that we were actually fabricating components for missile guidance systems, I decided to leave and start a business of my own. I had already been moonlighting as a wood and leather worker, musician, and as a piano tuner/technician, and was already quite familiar with the pneumatics employed in player pianos, so ramped up my business to include reed and pipe organ tuning, repair, and rebuilding. I found this to be very satisfying and rewarding work, and perfectly suited to my talents and experience in music, woodwork, metalwork, leatherwork, mechanics, electronics, and pneumatics. In some instances, I would find that several metal organ pipes at a church were missing or vandalized, and constructed replacements for them. I did this the old way, by combining and pouring the alloys into flat sheets, and then forming the structures of the pipes from that metal. It is interesting to me to note that some people believe that Stan Meyer actually may have tuned his pipes by slotting them at the top, as is done in tuning some types of organ pipes. While pipes in water would not generate the same tones or harmonics that they do in air, the technique could be useful in manipulating resonance, and the degree of harmonic distortion produced, and this could have a considerable effect on the end results of Hydrogen production.

GotHydro, I see that you are still just slightly confused and may need some further clarification. Ravi is right in saying that metal cutting can inuce new stress points, and that is particularly true when the cutting method produces a significant amount of rapid heat buildup, such as when using a cutoff disc. Stainless pipes are difficult to cut, and thus are very susceptible to heat buildup unless you go very slow and use an abundance of coolant. I would suggest that anyone building a tube or pipe project order their material laser precut to the desired length. That will save work, time, and expense. If you purchase precut and polished ss pipes, you only need to sand the inner surfaces of the larger pipes, and the outer surfaces of the smaller pipes that go inside the larger ones. These are the active surfaces, and sanding them has a positive effect on HHO generation. If you have pipe that has just come from an annealing process, you need to sand it on all surfaces to remove glazing and impurities. Sanding itself is not ordinarily a stress producing procedure, unless done dry at high speed on a lathe, which would tend to produce considerable rapid heating in the metal's surface area. It is best to use wet sanding techniques, and work slowly to keep things cool.

I hope this will make things much clearer for you. Good luck with your project, and be sure to share your results with us.

Best wishes, Rick