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New video: Cold Welding

In the early days of the space age, scientists thought cold welding would be a serious problem. If two bare metals are pressed together in vacuum, they weld together without the need for heating or melting of either piece. This has caused problems for some space missions, but it's found a useful application in nanotechnology.

New video: Cold Welding

Comments

I had a mechanic tell me, regarding the welding of bearing metal to the crankshaft of a gasoline engine that lost oil pressure, that the welding effect would occur over time in cold temperatures, even between dissimilar metals. He told me that pieces of lead and copper were clamped together and left for many months (years) and when released from the clamps, were quite well stuck together. Those metals were merely burnished to prepare the surfaces and them vised together. Possible the fact that they are relatively soft metals that there surfaces might be brought into closer contact due to the pressure than would stainless steel or titanium that might be used in spacecraft hinges. I also believe that atoms of the one metal diffuse into the other, so that it is not just an exchange of electrons as implied in your test. The video of the gold nanowire welding also implies that.


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