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| Dice made from meteoric nickel-iron |
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| Tinkering_Guy:
Since Brass_Machine wanted a description (and more pictures) of the dice I made from a slice of nickel-iron (NiFe) meteorite, this looks like a reasonable place to start. Here's one of the better pictures: I didn't record all the steps as I made them; this was one of my first projects, and it was half done on my UNIMAT-1 and half on my HarborFreight mini-mill. However, I can try to describe what I did, from memory. The first thing was to get a meteor slice from eBay and slice off a section as wide as the slice was thick. I recorded some photos on Flickr, like this one. After getting a long piece that was square in cross-section, I sliced it further into six cubes. For these operations I used a diamond saw, but have since learned to use cutoff wheels instead: "at high temperatures, carbon is essentially soluble in steel". In other words, the diamond grit was turning into carbon steel. Whee. This is the point at which I moved to the mini-mill. I lined the six cubes up and milled them square (about 0.002 in each dimension, so they're obviously slightly thinner than the original slice), and used a #1 centre-drill to put in the pips. This was before I had DROs for the mill, so the pip positions were approximate. I'd do things a little differently next time; that was a learning experience. I've sold two of the dice so far at US$100 apiece; I still have the other four, and intend to make still more. And next time I'll take (and post) more photos. |
| dsquire:
Tinkering_Guy Thanks for showing us that. Looks like a good way to make a couple of extra $$ to help pay for the mll and lathe. :ddb: :ddb: Cheers :beer: Don |
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