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| Dissolving broken taps |
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| raynerd:
Lew - chill. To say you need that sort of setup all this time is crazy. Yes, you don`t want to be breathing in acid fumes but a well ventilated room (i.e a door and window) and you will be OK there. You use a fume hood when the products are toxic...like my example of copper with nitric acid, you produce nitrogen dioxide which isn`t good stuff. But to say any use of conc acid needs the following is nuts... --- Quote ---"Wear a face mask and feed a "light trickle" of air into the mask. You do not want to get a lung full of any concentrated acid fumes! I work with concentrated acids fairly regularly. I have a pressure regulator that I set to 3 psi that I feed air into my face mask with (using a piece of 1/4 inch ID tubing with small holes punched in it to distribute the air). I have a board (1 X 4) screwed to the side of my house to which I can attach a piece of polyethylene sheeting (camping tarp) to give me a dry area to work (I live in western Washington State where drizzle is to be expected). I have cinder blocks set into the ground on which I can stand a fan to assure that the fumes are blown away from my house. I have several polyethylene storage containers to hold whatever I am working on and the acid --- End quote --- . We poor from conc acids, hydrochloric, phosphoric and sulphuric almost everyday in an open lab and only use a fume hood when the reaction is likely to be unpredictable or products toxic. We never wear a face mask. I guess however, you can never be too careful. Chris |
| Ned Ludd:
Hi Lew, As already said CHILL, we are talking about, maybe, half a teaspoons worth of not too concentrated Nitric acid, not buckets full. You will have to find your own equivalent to a teaspoon on the other side of the pond, but you should get the idea of the quantities involved. In reply to another earlier suggestion about spraying with WD40 before acid treatment, I would suggest you degrease and dry instead. You want the acid to dissolve the steel and not get diluted or used up by dealing with WD40 first. I await the results with baited breath, I know it works and I hope others find out too. Ned |
| AdeV:
OK.... the results (so far)... At about 3.30pm I started the acid working on the back end of the tap in a test piece. Mainly, I wanted to make sure the acid didn't attack the aluminium (or, rather, one of the alloying metals). I definitely have "fuming Nitric acid" - you could see the haze as soon as the bottle was opened. Lew, I don't have face masks or anything fancy like that. I used gloves, eye protection, and did everything at arms length. I reckon I put about 1.5ml (maybe a smidge less) in the hole. I caught the occasional whiff of the acid smell, but certainly nothing to worry about. Left it until about 9pm, then drained out the acid & had a look in the hole.... OK, it's definitely been doing some kind of dissolving in there, but if I'm honest, it hadn't completely eaten it as I'd hoped. Ah well. I've now set up the sump with its two holes soaking away. Unfortunately, one of the holes is leaking, so the acid simply drains away. I forsee a long boring day ahead as I drip feed fresh acid down the hole.... I know where it's going, I just hope it's not sneaking across the top of the plug & eating into the hole I successfully tapped, which has a steel bolt in it... Scores on the board (so far): Taps dissolved: 0.1 (estimated) Acid used: 5ml (estimated) Fatalities: None (yet) I may write facetiously, but I treat dangerous stuff like concentrated acid with the respect it deserves. |
| raynerd:
AdeV - I haven`t a clue what the part is your tap is stuck in but the problem is that as your tap reacts your basically using up your HNO3 so if your only using a small volume it`ll be diluting. The HNO3 really shouldn`t reactively touch the aluminium and so you need to put the part in more of the solution if you can?? You may also want to warm it a little, maybe put the container in a warm water bath! ... . but don`t shoot me if :zap: :lol: |
| Lew_Merrick_PE:
--- Quote from: Tinkering_Guy on July 29, 2010, 01:19:41 PM ---Thanks for the details, Lew. I could see feeding the air into the mask from the top to blow any fumes downward away from your nose -- and cool your forehead while it's at it.. What sort of mask are you using? --- End quote --- I am using a standard "flip-down" splash & dust shield mask. I loop the flexible tubing to the bottom of my face (similar to a surgical nostril feed -- just not in my nostrils) and let the rising air keep everything clear. |
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