making babbitt question

A few times but not every time I've gotten lucky and been able to replace babited bearings with ball, roller or needle bearings. A bit of strange thinking can sometimes come up with a way to do it simply and accurately. If not, you should still be able to get sticks of material. I'd be thinking twice about changing the alloy.

This thing is old and cranked by hand. Rolling element bearings would be overkill. Copper based babbitt is likely overkill but I'm curious how they alloy the copper into a much lower melting point metal.

Wes

We have assembled printed circuit boards for some customers that require lead free solder. We use 100% tin on some and it will dissolve any bare copper circuit traces. The raw board has tin coating on the copper traces, but if the pass through the convection oven takes too long, so the tin is molten for too long, the copper under the tin begins to dissolve into the tin coating. Temperature and speed have to be just right.

Even normal 63/37 tin/lead solder in the wave solder machine will pick up some copper from components with trimmed leads.

So, I guess if you can find some copper powder or finely ground copper and added it to your babbit and stirred well, you would have your alloy.

Paul

Hi Wes.

Look at the phase diagram for copper/tin: (figure

3) (We call 'em thermal equilibrium diagrams - "TED" )

See that at - say - 20% Cu, the alloy is totally liquid at about 530 deg C. Heck - that's a lot less that it takes to melt Aluminium!

Read on, and discover the 88/8/4 Cu/Sn/Zn alloy which is considerably

*harder* than the pure copper. Within reason, that *could* be an advantage for your application. More cupper-rich alloys shown a little further on.

That any use?

-- Jeff R.

(bloody link!)

(figure 3)

There!

JR

Likely not a good idea unless the copper is oxide free. Clean copper, given a wash in sulfuric acid, would work best. Fine copper wire would be a good choice----lots of surface area that can be well cleaned prior to adding to the alloy. Add to the molten lead/tin alloy and keep stirring, with a bee's wax flux covering to insure no loss of lead and tin. The copper will dissolve in good time. Molten metals are excellent solvents for other metals, even those that melt well above the temperature of the alloy in question.

Harold

============= Lindsay has the information you need click on

is a Gingery book and very much for the modern ocasional user.

also see the following for mixing your own.

the older techniques and what they used before moglice to rebuild special nuts.

for old composition click on

new babbitt is available -- click on [but be setting down] supplies Hope this helps -- let the group know how things went and if possible post some pictures to the drop box.

Unka' George [George McDuffee] ============ Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, 17 March 1814.

I can only comment from melting aluminium alloys. I once needed to stir some dross out of a crucible of aluminium melt. what to use? what to use? as I looked around the workshop. a pair of leather gloves for the heat and an offcut of copper pipe since that melts at about 1500 degrees.

I dont think I got it stirred around twice before it was all gone. totally dissolved into the aluminium.

if the tin behaves the same when melted you just stir the copper in. and watch in amazement as it vanishes into the melt.

Stealth Pilot

Nice refs. F. George, thanks.

============= Lindsay has the information you need click on

is a Gingery book and very much for the modern ocasional user.

also see the following for mixing your own.

the older techniques and what they used before moglice to rebuild special nuts.

for old composition click on

new babbitt is available -- click on [but be setting down] supplies Hope this helps -- let the group know how things went and if possible post some pictures to the drop box.

Unka' George [George McDuffee] ============ Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, 17 March 1814.

I hereby nominate FG as the KING OF GOOGLE.

For this week anyway. :-)

GWE

Robert Sw> Nice refs. F. George, thanks.

Ordinary tin/lead solder dissolves copper soldering tips fairly rapidly. One manufacturer made a "Sav-bit" solder containing copper to reduce the effect. I heard of an electrician who made a solder pot out of copper, only to have the bottom perforate fairly soon.

Don Young

There are about 100 different "babit" bearing formulas.

Some use lead, others use tin, others use nickel tin etc

Gunner