Incredible Tungsten

Hey everyone,

It's time this metallic element got its share of spot light and respect in this forum, after all the fuss around Mercury and Gallium and Bismuth.

I have recently purchased several pieces of Tungsten and I'm simply amazed by it.

Tungsten is fascinating, so much interesting properties in one single element, but the most impressive is its density.

Some of its interesting properties:
- *VERY* heavy, its density is 19.25 grams per cubic cm. For comparison it's slightly lighter than Gold (19.3) and significantly heavier than Lead (11.34) and Iron (7.874).
- Highest melting point for metals - 3422 degrees Celsius, very close to Carbon (diamonds and graphite).
- Incredibly resistant to corrosion, acid and oxidation (rust).
- Very hard and relatively scratch resistant (unlike gold).

So first I bought 3 small rods from www.emovendo.net ($9.99 per piece), each one:
- Size 6mm diameter, 13mm height
- Mass 7.7 grams
- Purity 99.95%
When I hold one of these, the feeling reminds me of holding a small magnet and pulling it from under the palm with another magnet (only this case it's purely gravity pulling it down).

Then I thought I must feel what it's like in greater size, so I found two sellers of ~1KG rods in eBay (slightly different dimensions), bought one for $225:
- Size 41mm height and diameter
- Mass ~1KG
- Purity 99.95%
- Polished (very shiny and reflective, flawless surface).
This piece demonstrates really well the feeling of a high density matter, I never felt anything like it. But after a while it stopped surprising me, after all 1KG is rather easy to lift. (BTW one of the sellers also has similar sized Magnesium rod which is the opposite of Tungsten in density - 1.738, probably interesting to compare but I don't have it).

So I looked for an even bigger rod, I thought 4KG would be enough, but couldn't find such rods for sale (or cubes or bars), so I Googled and finally reached a manufacturer in china www.chinatungstens.com. They were really responsive in email, and allowed me to order my own custom size rod:
- Size 65mm height and diameter.
- Mass ~4.2KG (!!!!)
- Purity 99.95%
- Price was $600 + $150 DHL + $100 customs (wire transfer, no PayPal or credit card). They offered a very big discount (about 50%) if I bought more than 100KG...
Not cheap, I know, but damn this rod is CRAZY!
It's hard to pick up from a table, and everyone trying to pick it up laughs surprised and asks me "what the hell is this?!" or "is this thing magnetized to the table or what?" (BTW Tungsten is not attracted to magnets at all).

So I paid quite a lot for these pieces, but I'm very happy to have them, this is not something you encounter.
Plus since Tungsten is such a tough metal these pieces will last me (and all my descendants...) a life-time.
All other materials around this density or higher are extremely more expensive, and are not available in these sizes (gold, platinum, osmium, rhenium), and they are not as durable as Tungsten.

And finally one small thought I had later - considering that it's about the same density as gold, I remembered seeing movies where thieves stole gold, filling a bag with lots of big gold bars and then picking up the bags - NOT A F***ING CHANCE!!!

Here are some photos, first is of all my rods, with AA battery for size perspective, then the two bigger rods in my palm.

I use it for tig welding.

larrball said:

I use it for tig welding.

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Very interesting, I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Indeed I forgot to mention it has many applications.

The most well known is light bulbs of course.

Wow! About 10 pounds in the big boy. I would buy it if it were around $10

sweet you should polish it up to match

That's so freaking cool!! Amazing that you invested so much in such a big piece of tungsten, now you can use it to hit thieves' heads instead of using an RPL


I'm looking forward to seeing more of these threads about specific elements

My wedding band is tungsten carbide.

Can't be machined easily, nor cast easily from the melt, so they use powder metallurgy to make shapes, like a ring. It can then be polished, has a nice "dark" silver tone to it (but not black), and it is still as shiny as the day I put it on because it doesn't scratch.

Awesome stuff. It's funny, I wear a tungsten carbide ring (very high density) and a titanium watch (very low density), so my ring is almost the same weight as my watch. It's a nice conversation piece, especially in my field where all the people I work with and have class with are materials scientists like me, and appreciate all the science that went into making this ring.

pullbangdead said:

My wedding band is tungsten carbide.

Can't be machined easily, nor cast easily from the melt, so they use powder metallurgy to make shapes, like a ring. It can then be polished, has a nice "dark" silver tone to it (but not black), and it is still as shiny as the day I put it on because it doesn't scratch.

Awesome stuff. It's funny, I wear a tungsten carbide ring (very high density) and a titanium watch (very low density), so my ring is almost the same weight as my watch. It's a nice conversation piece, especially in my field where all the people I work with and have class with are materials scientists like me, and appreciate all the science that went into making this ring.

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The fun thing would be having a girlfriend that actually appreciates those facts too

we use tungsten rods for tig here too 90%

I have some tungsten as well. It's cool stuff! I've got about 72 grams of it, between a welding rod I bought (for my element collection) and some tungsten surplus twisted wires I bought from a tungsten company.

-Mark

Years ago when I worked in Intel Corporations R&D engineering dept., we were characterizing the process for depositing tungsten silicide to create computer processors. It was used to create power vias between layers of circuitry. Just like a light bulb, it was hard to burn it out. Tungsten hexafluoride gas was used to produce the material. The gas is purple LOL.

the main contacts on modern circuit breakers are about 90% tungsten and 10% silver.

millirad said:

Years ago when I worked in Intel Corporations R&D engineering dept., we were characterizing the process for depositing tungsten silicide to create computer processors. It was used to create power vias between layers of circuitry. Just like a light bulb, it was hard to burn it out. Tungsten hexafluoride gas was used to produce the material. The gas is purple LOL.

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Awesome. I worked for Micron Technology for a summer doing sputtering of WSi, as well. Cool to see other thin film process engineers around.

That actually even reminds me of another experience with tungsten itself. I was doing sputtering on 12inch-diameter silicon wafers, so our sputter targets were, naturally, 12 inches on diameter and from 1/4 to 1/2 inches thick. Among the targets I had opportunities to hold were tungsten, tungsten silicide (well, I say "hold", but one person couldn't pick these things up by yourself), silicon, germanium, cobalt, titanium, and platinum. (yes, a piece of pure platinum, 12 inches in diameter and 1/4 of an inch thick, no I couldn't steal it, yes I wanted to).

But yeah, the tungsten and tungsten silicide were amazingly heavy pieces of metal, very impressive, especially considering how pure they were; IIRC, everything was in the range of 5 or 6 nines pure. The pure silicon target was actually the heaviest overall, not because of the silicon, but because it had to have a specialty HUGE copper backing plate on it, and all the extra copper made it easily dwarf weight of the tungsten targets. These metal sputter targets ranged in price from $10k for any of the W/WSi/Ge targets, to $500k for the platinum target. Amazing stuff.

This looks great, but I can't understand how could you pay 800$ for having 4KG of this. I supose it's just a matter of hobbies...

Hallucynogenyc said:

This looks great, but I can't understand how could you pay 800$ for having 4KG of this. I supose it's just a matter of hobbies...

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It IS great, I love having such a unique and special material.

I guess most people also wouldn't understand how anyone can pay $1500 for a laser - it just makes a very strong beam of light, not very useful.

It's not just a matter of hobbies, it's a matter of priorities.
I have an old cheap car, we don't have a single piece of jewelry at home and none of our clothes are expensive, even though we can afford it (like most people can), so this leaves a good monthly budget for scientific interests, lasers, computer products.

@ohada what do you think about this piece?
Weights 3lbs 15oz. 1-7/16" Diameter. 4-5/16" in length.
Tungsten Round Bar Backup Rivet GC-106 - eBay (item 230348824894 end time Jun-19-09 08:27:27 PDT)