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803t sleds

C

Chad

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So... I heard somewhere that the 803t sleds were flammable. I scraped some metal off with a knife, and held it over an open flame... sure enough, it "lit". I'm wondering if anyone knows what these are made out of. I'm betting a magnesium alloy, just because of how it burned, but I'm not positive.


Discuss.
 





Probably something like magnalium, aluminum with from 5 to 50% magnesium in it. It's quite brittle and burns, like you said, so it's probably on the higher end of that, and might even be higher than 50%.
 
Yes, it is magnalium. There's a video somewhere on youtube of somebody burning one of these.

-Mark
 
rocketparrotlet said:
Yes, it is magnalium. There's a video somewhere on youtube of somebody burning one of these.

-Mark
Click to expand...
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgzeGhd0adE[/media]
Here it is. ::) ;D
 
Hehe.. one [highlight]bright[/highlight] idea:

When burning, throw on a handful of potassium nitrate.
 
I put a blowtorch to my sled, and all it did was spark a little and melt.  ::) And it wasn't anything like that video. Wasn't really worth finding a blowtorch, going out in the cold, finding something heat resistant to put it on, and melting it IMO.
 
Benm said:
Hehe.. one [highlight]bright[/highlight] idea:

When burning, throw on a handful of potassium nitrate.
Click to expand...

Have you actually tried that? I'd like to see how well that works, though I've had great luck so far just by using an air compressor.

Anyways, here's a repost of a pretty picture I took of some burning sled material:
(Reposted from the thread where we first discovered the 803T sled's flammability: http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1216510741)
45047169gh3.jpg
 
pseudolobster said:
[quote author=Benm link=1223658332/0#7 date=1228765122]Hehe.. one [highlight]bright[/highlight] idea:

When burning, throw on a handful of potassium nitrate.
Click to expand...

Have you actually tried that? I'd like to see how well that works, though I've had great luck so far just by using an air compressor.
[/quote]

I used to be a student of chemistry, and did try it with some magnesium turnings and relatively course nitrate powder... the nitrate supplies plenty of oxygen to speed up the reaction giving a great deal of bright white light. You should be cafeful with this though, expecially if both materials are (fine) powders. Its a fairly commonly used reaction in fireworks, but obviously dangerous when it gets out of hand.

Burning magnesium is inherently dangerous as the fires cannot be put out by water or CO2. Attempting water can be very dangerous as it will result in hydrogen gas formation, which is then ignited by the still burning magnesium. If you need to put it out, throw on sand.
 
LRMNmeyer said:
I put a blowtorch to my sled, and all it did was spark a little and melt.  ::) And it wasn't anything like that video. Wasn't really worth finding a blowtorch, going out in the cold, finding something heat resistant to put it on, and melting it IMO.
Click to expand...

Since when has playing with fire...er...conducting scientific experiments been "not worth it"? :)
 
I have some stump remover (potassium nitrate) and about 10 803T sleds (Thanks sk8er), but can't for the life of me figure out how to light these things. Any help?
 
You have to get them really, really hot. Anything short of a big blowtorch is unlikely to succeed in igniting a whole sled or any other 'block' of magnalium or even pure magnesium.

If you get some shavings/turnings, its possible to ignite those over a typical gas stove or bunsen burner. You can try drilling a hole in one, and igniting the magnalium turnings produced.
 
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