steel – thduggie's blog

This is what we do for a living

thduggie — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 19:48:19 +0000

Not me, myself, but our lab has a 1000 kN tensile testing machine. That is the metric equivalent of the 220 kip tensile testing machine shown in this Slow Mo Guys video of a tensile test on a roughly 600 MPa rebar. What did I learn from their video? First, what we do is cool, and second, there is a unit out there called kip, and it’s not for measuring hotel capacity.

An introduction to metallography

thduggie — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 22:46:11 +0000

Folks generally don’t know what metallography is (an art form? a record collection? a synonym for molybdomancy), and even when I try to explain (in those cases where they care to know or feel etiquette demands they enquire), it’s often hard to imagine visually what I’m talking about.Â Leica Microsystems has published a fine introductory article to metallography with pretty pictures that should help y’all visualize a bit better what I do for a living.

On a side note, I met the author of the article when I worked for Nanosurf and he distributed our microscopes.Â When I left, he expressed some envy that I was moving into metallography, a field he loved.Â It’s great to see him back with passion!

Making steel generates heat

thduggie — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:44:10 +0000

…and there are plans to recover the excess heat to generate electricity and heat houses.Â Only problem: we’re missing 16 MCHF.Â (Kickstarter, maybe?)Â Here’s a news clip that shows a number of neat steelmaking videos.

Note: I only got the clip to work in IE, not in Firefox.