Galling is another type of welding where threads of some metals are prone to easily friction weld themselves. 304 stainless and Aluminum threads are 2 metals notorious for this.
Galling is cold-welding, its just no one calls it that because its NOT a weld, its friction causing metals to fuse together. edit: to explain further, Galling is a form of wear caused by adhesion between sliding surfaces. When a material galls, some of it is pulled with the contacting surface, especially if there is a large amount of force compressing the surfaces together.
@@TheInfidel_SlavaUA ok fine lets get technical, Galling is a form of wear caused by adhesion between sliding surfaces. When a material galls, some of it is pulled with the contacting surface, especially if there is a large amount of force compressing the surfaces together. Its not a weld.
@@sacred1hawk553 : Whether galling is a weld isn't particularly relevant to what you're using to dismiss it, all that's relevant is whether it's a bond between two things that is directly equivalent to the internal bonding within the materials themselves. For an example, a common failure mechanism of electromechanical relays is a form of wear caused by adhesion between contacting surfaces... where that adhesion is itself specifically caused by _welding_ of the two contacts together via current-caused heating.
@@GameTimeWhy thats not true. The reason things cold weld in a vacuum is because there is no atmosphere to form oxide layers and most contaminants will eventually evaporate off leaving nothing but bare metal which easily bonds together when clean enough. Galling is exactly the same thing but instead of the vacuum removing contamination and oxides, its the pressure mechanically removing them leaving again only a clean metal surface. The friction doesnt come anywhere close to heating the material to its melting point and if you ever deal with stainless fasteners youll find that they will gall no matter how slowly you install them
Not the first time NASA ran into this problem. It happened to Ed White on Gemini IV after a space walk. The capsule door was opened and they couldn't get it closed because of cold welding.
There is another way of welding known as explosive welding. It is litteraly putting 2 plates of metal(interestingly enough it is also possible to connect plates of aluminium and steel together, which is impossible with normal welding techniques) on top of each other with a layer of explosives on top. When the explosive is detonated it pushes the plates so hard together that any air inbetween the plates is forced out and thus creates a plate with different kinds of metal in either side. These plates are used for instance in the construction of ships where the designers want to save weigh by putting a aluminium superstructure on top of a steel hull.
Just did some research. Explosive welding essentially creates a plasma jet in between the two plates, since the plates are at an angle and so the plasma jet travels in between them. The jet removes any oxidation and plasticizes the metals. There is no oxidation, so the plates easily weld together.
Cold welding is also how how wire wrap works! And that's been around much longer than 2010. It is an alternative to soldering: wire wrap twists a wire around a pin so taut that the wire cold welds to the corners of the posts, providing a deceptive amount of strength over friction alone.
@Derek Lam Electronic board assembly and cabling of Atlas ICBM was all wirewrap. I've seen them being manufactured in the early '90s when I first entered industry. They were a work of art.
I think scishow meant that the small cold welding experiment was a great success for electronics, but not necessarily the first time someone cold welded here on earth
They were talking about nano scale cold welding of delicate components, specifically, not wire wrap of the wires in general electronics assembly. It’s an important distinction.
I am glad others have pointed out the "cold welding"/galling issue common in air, on Earth. Ultrasonic welding is another. Related to galling, rub gold wires on the connection pads of circuit "chips" and the housing they reside in.
NASA usually use the weaker low-gain antenna as a dedicated command line, sometimes it's an omni. There isn't very much on spacecrafts that is purely redundant. But lots of things that either are dual purpose, or can be repurposed in-flight.
I haven't seen anyone comment about the "ringing" of 2 extremely flat metal surfaces together, commonly displayed with precision gauge blocks. If left together they will sometimes be near impossible to separate and can sometimes only be separated with above-human levels of strength, that in turn ruins said gauge blocks.
Sputtering chambers, certain steps in chip manufacturing, electron beam welding chambers, x-ray equipment. Vacuum tube manufacturing. Lots of high vacuum applications.
Super strong 🧲 in ultra high vacuum and steel parts that are ferromagnetic ( will become a temporary magnet in the presence of a 🧲. If the surface of both the magnet and steel are sufficiently flat, clean and all the air is removed from in between their surfaces the two will become one as the electrons will be shared by both pieces making it impossible to know where one stops and the other begins.
Something similar happens if you stick a couple AAA gauge blocks together, (incredibly flat pieces of steel used to check the accuracy of other gauges), known as wringing, and they can be surprisingly difficult to pull apart. There are a few ideas why it happens but no one is really sure. It's possible something similar to cold welding is happening or a combination of things like surface tension and molecular attraction.
Yes, and it's also why metals look metallic. Because electrons are confined to atoms in most materials, incoming light (electromagnetic waves) goes through some combination of absorption, transmission, and reflection when it hits them. In metals though, the electrons can easily respond to light, and realign themselves to block it from the interior of the material, producing a near-perfect reflection.
Furthermore, it's part of the real reason why you can't create a transistor by sticking two diodes together- the "sea of electrons" interferes with the semiconductor pieces interacting with each other.
LOL "In Space, No One Can Stop You From Welding." clicked JUST for the title. Excellent work nameless worker of the SciShow Space channel, you are appreciated.
This is probably the coolest (no pun intended) fact I've ever heard. When you explain the science behind it, yea it makes complete sense, but feels crazy!
You absolutely can push two metals close enough together for welding in an oxygen-rich environment. It's called "galling", and it happens all the time with stainless steel fasteners. That's why you need to use anti-seize with them.
@@menguardingtheirownwallets6791 Can't always do that. I've built robotic cells for food plants, and they require stainless on stainless. We did have to use a food safe anti-seize on them and then torque to spec to avoid them both seizing/galling or working themselves out over time with the vibrations and frequent wash downs.
@@samuelthurman5331 not enough heat. I suspect the friction and pressure is removing the oxide layer and allowing the metals to come into actual contact. It would be interesting to construct an experiment to test that. Possibly cleaning stainless steel hardware with some sort of pickling solution and then seeing how much torque is required to gall the nut.
You can also do this in atmosphere with very flat polished glass, silicon wafers, etc. In that context it's often called "optical contacting" or "optical contact bonding". The surfaces just need to be extremely clean.
Cold welding is already in use. Complex computer chips can have multiple stacked dies, and the newest packaging techniques will actually bond the interconnect using cold welding. This can make connections of just a single micron wide.
Also called galling, vacuum welding, and electron bonding. The only trick is making sure two pieces of perfectly clean metal touch with no air gap, it then helps to physically shock it. When doing it in college with a stack of mixed sheets of sterling silver and copper, it was several hours of cleaning with baking soda and distilled water, placing in a clamp, heating to I don't know, maybe 150C (yes that's still pretty cold the melting temp of those metals is significantly higher, the heat was just to ensure a bit of molecular excitation and thermal expansion to help complete pushing the air out), and then wholloping it once with a hammer. The theory is the hit helps the electrons jump the barrier, but honestly it could easily just be superstition. But it definitely got full surface bonds with no bubbles, I rolled it and annealed it enough afterwards that if it had bubbles it would have exploded.
I'm picturing an IKEA style space platform that welds itself together. *Mission Control to Astronauts : "Say again, what do you mean you have leftover parts, and what's it supposed to be?"
This was in the newspaper once. It's how blast or explosion welding works, you put 2 sheets of metal on top of each other and detonate an explosive at one corner. The shockwave pushes the 2 pieces together and pushes the air out along with impurities that were on the surface.
It's the exact reason why in mechanical clocks gears are made of different metals - they go so slow that any oil film is pierced through. Usually steel and brass. It's not because "brass is cheap" as some people think. It's because it lasts much longer than if both gears where made of the same metal. Naturally the largest gear is made of the softest metal.
My welding instructor was certified in cryogenic welding, not the same but still cool lol. He was in the USAF during Vietnam so he probably got some very specialized training for certain aircraft.
It wasn't just that example. One of the first space walks on the Gemini program, almost ended in disaster when the door to the capsule would not close because one of the hinges had 'cold welded'. After a lot of 'forcing', the hinge 'broke' enough for the door to be closed, and the capsule then came back down to Earth.
We actually have a project to prevent cold welding in rockets but before they reach space. During launch vibrations can wear away oxide layers and weld together mechanical parts. We try to solve that by PEO (plasma electrolytic oxidation) by basically adding a ceramic layer on top of the metal.
You're SciShow Space installments from last week have just now shown themselves in the column to the right... I literally searched for them and received only older videos last week!
I remember a field trip to some lab where they had the most accurately flat metal cerfices that can be made, and if you placed them together it was impossible to pull them apart, you would have to slide them apart. Was really cool, it was like they welded together.
there is another form of coldwelding, wich is very common for termination of aircraft wiring. this coldweld is achieved by applying high pressure to the materials that need to be terminated. (Termination means, in this instance to attach a pin, socket or terminal to the wire ends.)
There's another example of spontaneous welding in space! On the Kepler Space Telescope a build up of static electricity was discharged through the reaction control wheel bearings, welding them in place
Wow! I had no idea!!!! I thought the explanation was going to have something to do with them not being shielded from cosmic rays! That’s crazy I didn’t know that the electrons would just travel between the two objects effectively causing the distinction between the 2 to Cease! Great video!!!
Hope this helps us become a space-fairing civilization quicker. The best bet for large scale space travel is to launch individual modules and assemble them in space. With cold welding, the process should be a bit easier.
The NASA report on the Galileo anomaly never mentions cold welding, only galling. Also, ActionLab and Veritasium videos on cold welding kinda make it seem like an overblown or maybe even mythical phenomena. Other details from the report worth noting include the materials of the seized pins and sockets (6A1-4V and Inconel 718), which are inconsistent with the theory of cold welding, wear of the molybdenum disulfide lubricant, and destruction of the ceramic coating. All this makes it sound like plain old seizing up due to wear and not fancy 'space welding'. Just sayin'
Could cold welding weld magnets together without messing with the magnetic field? I know that heat breaks/realligns magnets, so... I wonder what could be done with that? (Even if the magnetism inherently prevents cold welding if the two parts don't have aligned fields, it could still be useful, I imagine)
@@absalomdraconis there is a company that uses advanced technology to bend the magnetic fields to their will and the fields stay like that like any typical magnet
@@Infernoraptor Shoot, I swear I had this bookmarked but I think it was on my old mobile.... Well not actually sure it's the same they were talking about, but either way I'd like the name/link as well. Interested in both.
Great video! I've been wondering for a while why metals break and can't be put back together. I was told it was because they oxidize, but that never explained why it happens with gold
Gold cold welds with moderate pressure in any atmosphere. Gold inlay into fine jewelry makes use of this - not enough gold in the inlay? just mash some more gold wire on top and it will merge together seamlessly.
I have seen cold welding with gauge blocks on AvE's channel, and gold being cold welded on Cody's Lab. Both of these were in Earth's atmospheric conditions.
This gives me an idea: We load metallic building blocks into vacuum cylinders that we railgun into orbit where they are received by a orbital platform and unpacked and assembled into useful objects by little robots working as a team with little silicone mittens on their gripper arms. Could make massive structures that we could never fit into a rocket, huge stations, proper starships.
My brain always swaps in cold fusion when I'm trying to talk about cold welding, which is super annoying because one is a defunct fringe idea and the latter is actually really interesting to talk about, so people keep thinking that I'm one of those people who doesn't care about scientific evidence disproving things.
Naw. As long as you haven’t also start accidentally saying “Electric Universe” when you meant to say either “General Relativity” or “Quantum Mechanics”, you’ll be fine :)
Except that cold fusion is possible, if you replace electrons with the heavier muons. The catch is that muons decay way too fast, which results in the entire process being an overall energy loss, which in turn prevents cold fusion from being viable for energy generation. You can also use the even heavier “tau” particles in place of electrons, but those decay even faster.
@@ExEBoss : I suspect that they'll eventually mix enough things (maybe both fusors & lattice-confinement?) to overcome the muon decay rate, though it'll presumably take a while yet.
@@qzbnyv Yeah, @john lamasters, you can only use the approved made up Science words. Know your place when you're falling in line with nonsense. You don't want to be confused with someone that has their own thoughts and opinions.
The problems that our atmosphere causes during regular welding reminds me of when I was learning to TIG weld. I always pulled to torch away from the weld to quickly. You're supposed to hesitate for a couple of seconds after you stop welding to let the shielding gas continue to protect the metal from atmospheric contamination.
I would think that the lubricant would boil away without any friction. Astronauts describe space as having a "smell," because when they get back into a pressurized compartment, they can smell oils that metal surfaces released in the vacuum.
Small enough gold wires wouldn’t really have a problem of particles of air getting in between them. Rather, the Brownian motion of the air would cause collisions with the ends of the wires, making alignment near impossible. But maybe by applying a potential across the two wires you’d get them to attract one another, and probably spot-weld on contact, eliminating the need for a vacuum chamber. On the flip side, you’d probably want to use a vacuum chamber for constructing nanomachines in the first place.
Cold welding is also a significant problem for assembling parts designed for usage in EUV lithography. These parts usually are passified, pickled, the adsorption layer gets removed and they are cleaned on a molecular level. I accidentally have cold welded dozens of bolts and and pins during assembly, making these costly parts unusable in the process.
Cold welding in space is one of those things that is both obvious and mind-blowing all at once, and makes it one of my favourite facts, and application for nano-scale engineering and creation of future materials.
Machinists measuring blocks tend to stick together they are very precisely machined. I wonder if they are trying to cold weld when they get stuck together.
@SciShow Space actually, Cold Welding represents a revolution is 3D Printing. The next generation in 3D Printing is to be able to print using any material (printing in plastics, metals, glass, ceramics, proteins, cells (basically food)). The generation after that was to be able to print in any material at the same time (Printing copper next to plastic or whatever, Printing simulated steaks with simulated broccoli on printed china plates). Cold Welding represents a potential 2 generation jump. A Third generation is to shrink the resolution of printing to that cellular, then micro cellular level, then to nanoscopic levels, at which point the simulated foods should seem exactly the same and the possibility of on site printed surgery with near zero recovery time may be possible. This tech could end suffering, aging, hunger, and even save the planet with its potential for recycling and resource savings.
At least when we are a space travelling race, repairing hulls will be as easy as grinding both surfaces clean (no air, no oxidation layer) and forcing both parts together so they cold weld could make for easy repairs. Probably with the help of strong magnets or something to really force the two together. Idk lol.
This makes me even more anxious about the unprecedentedly complex unfolding that the James Webb Space Telescope has to do. I hope that the JWST has appropriate countermeasures now we know this is an issue
AMD are planning to use this very feature for their recently announced 3D Cache... The CPU and the cache are stacked and connected by TSV's (Through Silicon Via's) which are miniscule wires within the silicon, there will be no need for solder thanks to the effects of cold welding. Previously this would be done by contact pads and solder bumps which are then heated to cause the solder to melt and create an electrical circuit. By removing the need for these solder bumps there can be an order of magnitude more connections in a given area and also avoid the risk of the solder bumps spreading out and causing a short circuit. The problem here is this will massively increase the need for ultra-precise placement of the chips inside a vacuum chamber and ultra flat surfaces, this last part is possible due to the accuracy inherent in current chip production methods used around the globe...
Forgive me if this was in the video, but atmosphere is only most of the reason it's hard to cold weld on earth. Majorty of metals create an oxide layer when in contact with air, which makes a buffer that prevents cold welding (gold doesn't form an oxide layer and is probably why they used gold wire in their test).
Can't happen in atmosphere? Wring two gauge blocks together and leave them for a while. Boom, welded. Nightmare fuel for anyone in the metal workshop. That is usually the first or second thing tought about gauge blocks.
So if we see someone welding in a spacesuit in a scifi, we can just imagine they're belt sanding with super fine paper to make a nice smooth surface for cold welding to occur quickly with a large-surface-area bond.
Non-metal molecules: "My electrons."
Metal molecules: "Our electrons."
Non-metal molecules: "We shall join forces to brave the world."
Metal molecules: "One of us. One of us. One of us."
Goddamned commie metals!
Stalinium!
I kmew someone was gonna make a communism joke after I saw the "commune of electrons" part.
Plasma: haha electrons go brrrr
Galling is another type of welding where threads of some metals are prone to easily friction weld themselves. 304 stainless and Aluminum threads are 2 metals notorious for this.
Galling is cold-welding, its just no one calls it that because its NOT a weld, its friction causing metals to fuse together.
edit: to explain further, Galling is a form of wear caused by adhesion between sliding surfaces. When a material galls, some of it is pulled with the contacting surface, especially if there is a large amount of force compressing the surfaces together.
@@TheInfidel_SlavaUA ok fine lets get technical, Galling is a form of wear caused by adhesion between sliding surfaces. When a material galls, some of it is pulled with the contacting surface, especially if there is a large amount of force compressing the surfaces together. Its not a weld.
@@sacred1hawk553 : Whether galling is a weld isn't particularly relevant to what you're using to dismiss it, all that's relevant is whether it's a bond between two things that is directly equivalent to the internal bonding within the materials themselves.
For an example, a common failure mechanism of electromechanical relays is a form of wear caused by adhesion between contacting surfaces...
where that adhesion is itself specifically caused by _welding_ of the two contacts together via current-caused heating.
@@sacred1hawk553 you didn't get technical though and it's not cold welding. Nothing on earth is cold welding unless it's in a vacuum.
@@GameTimeWhy thats not true. The reason things cold weld in a vacuum is because there is no atmosphere to form oxide layers and most contaminants will eventually evaporate off leaving nothing but bare metal which easily bonds together when clean enough. Galling is exactly the same thing but instead of the vacuum removing contamination and oxides, its the pressure mechanically removing them leaving again only a clean metal surface. The friction doesnt come anywhere close to heating the material to its melting point and if you ever deal with stainless fasteners youll find that they will gall no matter how slowly you install them
Not the first time NASA ran into this problem. It happened to Ed White on Gemini IV after a space walk. The capsule door was opened and they couldn't get it closed because of cold welding.
What's the end of story?
@@andromaxbse6459 He's still there hammering on the door trying to get it closed 😁
As I recall, they decided that it probably wasn't cold-welding but instead heat-related warping, though they _were_ worried about the possibility.
no
Good thing the door did not jam in closed condition while the astronaut was out. What a prank it would be.
There is another way of welding known as explosive welding. It is litteraly putting 2 plates of metal(interestingly enough it is also possible to connect plates of aluminium and steel together, which is impossible with normal welding techniques) on top of each other with a layer of explosives on top.
When the explosive is detonated it pushes the plates so hard together that any air inbetween the plates is forced out and thus creates a plate with different kinds of metal in either side.
These plates are used for instance in the construction of ships where the designers want to save weigh by putting a aluminium superstructure on top of a steel hull.
There is also friction stir welding. I think Honda was using it to join steel and aluminum in front subframes.
Til, thank you both!
Just did some research. Explosive welding essentially creates a plasma jet in between the two plates, since the plates are at an angle and so the plasma jet travels in between them. The jet removes any oxidation and plasticizes the metals. There is no oxidation, so the plates easily weld together.
I think that is how they make the sheets for some American coins.
@@Feroce I wasnt aware of other methods, how do they work
Cold welding is also how how wire wrap works! And that's been around much longer than 2010. It is an alternative to soldering: wire wrap twists a wire around a pin so taut that the wire cold welds to the corners of the posts, providing a deceptive amount of strength over friction alone.
@Derek Lam Electronic board assembly and cabling of Atlas ICBM was all wirewrap. I've seen them being manufactured in the early '90s when I first entered industry. They were a work of art.
I think scishow meant that the small cold welding experiment was a great success for electronics, but not necessarily the first time someone cold welded here on earth
They were talking about nano scale cold welding of delicate components, specifically, not wire wrap of the wires in general electronics assembly. It’s an important distinction.
NANO SCALE, NANO SCALE !!!
Sorcery!! Ban it for Jesus.
I am glad others have pointed out the "cold welding"/galling issue common in air, on Earth.
Ultrasonic welding is another. Related to galling, rub gold wires on the connection pads of circuit "chips" and the housing they reside in.
"they had to use a backup antenna"
as neat as cold welding is, my takeaway from all this is that NASA overengineers things for good reason.
NASA usually use the weaker low-gain antenna as a dedicated command line, sometimes it's an omni. There isn't very much on spacecrafts that is purely redundant. But lots of things that either are dual purpose, or can be repurposed in-flight.
Ah, Kirk, my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us welding is a process that is best performed cold? It is very cold in space!
Kahhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!
I haven't seen anyone comment about the "ringing" of 2 extremely flat metal surfaces together, commonly displayed with precision gauge blocks. If left together they will sometimes be near impossible to separate and can sometimes only be separated with above-human levels of strength, that in turn ruins said gauge blocks.
I was also looking for mention of this. There are a number of TH-cam videos that examine it.
Cold welding happens to components in high and ultra high vacuum equipment
and can be a real maintenance problem.
Could you give examples to such equipment?
Sputtering chambers, certain steps in chip manufacturing, electron beam welding chambers, x-ray equipment. Vacuum tube manufacturing. Lots of high vacuum applications.
Super strong 🧲 in ultra high vacuum and steel parts that are ferromagnetic ( will become a temporary magnet in the presence of a 🧲. If the surface of both the magnet and steel are sufficiently flat, clean and all the air is removed from in between their surfaces the two will become one as the electrons will be shared by both pieces making it impossible to know where one stops and the other begins.
Something similar happens if you stick a couple AAA gauge blocks together, (incredibly flat pieces of steel used to check the accuracy of other gauges), known as wringing, and they can be surprisingly difficult to pull apart. There are a few ideas why it happens but no one is really sure. It's possible something similar to cold welding is happening or a combination of things like surface tension and molecular attraction.
I've heard it as partly because the surfaces are so flat they push out all the air so the atmosphere is pushing them together.
1:27 I'm going to guess what is why electricity moves so easily through metal
Bingo
Yes
Yes, and it's also why metals look metallic. Because electrons are confined to atoms in most materials, incoming light (electromagnetic waves) goes through some combination of absorption, transmission, and reflection when it hits them. In metals though, the electrons can easily respond to light, and realign themselves to block it from the interior of the material, producing a near-perfect reflection.
Furthermore, it's part of the real reason why you can't create a transistor by sticking two diodes together- the "sea of electrons" interferes with the semiconductor pieces interacting with each other.
@@Rhaegar19 and thus giving the "metallic lustre" that we are so familiar with
[Metal atom]: "Hey, have you seen my electrons?"
[Other atoms] "OUR electrons, comrade."
A moment of appreciation for a stock photo of a drawer of spoons welded together at 2:10
LOL "In Space, No One Can Stop You From Welding." clicked JUST for the title. Excellent work nameless worker of the SciShow Space channel, you are appreciated.
This is probably the coolest (no pun intended) fact I've ever heard. When you explain the science behind it, yea it makes complete sense, but feels crazy!
Nahman hood pun, you mean that and we will like it
There should be a SciShow Deep. Everything about the ocean
Up you go!!
Metal atom: Look at my electrons!
Other metal atoms: OUR electrons (soviet anthem plays in the background)
im dead 😐😐
You absolutely can push two metals close enough together for welding in an oxygen-rich environment. It's called "galling", and it happens all the time with stainless steel fasteners. That's why you need to use anti-seize with them.
Yup you can even get them flat enough where two pieces of metal stick together. Not exactly a weld but pretty similar 👍
I use Brass nuts on Stainless steel bolts (or Stainless steel nuts on Brass bolts). Either way, you avoid the problem of galling.
@@menguardingtheirownwallets6791 Can't always do that. I've built robotic cells for food plants, and they require stainless on stainless. We did have to use a food safe anti-seize on them and then torque to spec to avoid them both seizing/galling or working themselves out over time with the vibrations and frequent wash downs.
Isn't galling more of a friction and pressure action? Friction and pressure cause heat I believe.
@@samuelthurman5331 not enough heat. I suspect the friction and pressure is removing the oxide layer and allowing the metals to come into actual contact.
It would be interesting to construct an experiment to test that. Possibly cleaning stainless steel hardware with some sort of pickling solution and then seeing how much torque is required to gall the nut.
You can also do this in atmosphere with very flat polished glass, silicon wafers, etc. In that context it's often called "optical contacting" or "optical contact bonding". The surfaces just need to be extremely clean.
Hank and John Green got me through some tricky high school classes and I’m so happy to see they are still doing TH-cam stuff.
Cold welding is already in use. Complex computer chips can have multiple stacked dies, and the newest packaging techniques will actually bond the interconnect using cold welding. This can make connections of just a single micron wide.
Also called galling, vacuum welding, and electron bonding. The only trick is making sure two pieces of perfectly clean metal touch with no air gap, it then helps to physically shock it. When doing it in college with a stack of mixed sheets of sterling silver and copper, it was several hours of cleaning with baking soda and distilled water, placing in a clamp, heating to I don't know, maybe 150C (yes that's still pretty cold the melting temp of those metals is significantly higher, the heat was just to ensure a bit of molecular excitation and thermal expansion to help complete pushing the air out), and then wholloping it once with a hammer. The theory is the hit helps the electrons jump the barrier, but honestly it could easily just be superstition. But it definitely got full surface bonds with no bubbles, I rolled it and annealed it enough afterwards that if it had bubbles it would have exploded.
One of the more brilliant video titles out there
I'm picturing an IKEA style space platform that welds itself together. *Mission Control to Astronauts : "Say again, what do you mean you have leftover parts, and what's it supposed to be?"
This was in the newspaper once.
It's how blast or explosion welding works, you put 2 sheets of metal on top of each other and detonate an explosive at one corner.
The shockwave pushes the 2 pieces together and pushes the air out along with impurities that were on the surface.
Hah, finally! I'll escape to space where no one can stop me from welding without a license or training!
You could do that in your private home. It's how some house fires get started.
@@Miranox2 Yeah, but doing it in space is cooler, and there's a lower chance of my house burning down.
Yeah, no one's stopping you right now. The issue is getting someone to hire you without proof of competence.
@@calebricks4890 Doing it in space is cooler? Oh, I see what you did there!
@@calebricks4890 Lower, but not zero? What exactly are you planning to weld?
It's the exact reason why in mechanical clocks gears are made of different metals - they go so slow that any oil film is pierced through.
Usually steel and brass. It's not because "brass is cheap" as some people think. It's because it lasts much longer than if both gears where made of the same metal. Naturally the largest gear is made of the softest metal.
My welding instructor was certified in cryogenic welding, not the same but still cool lol. He was in the USAF during Vietnam so he probably got some very specialized training for certain aircraft.
It wasn't just that example. One of the first space walks on the Gemini program, almost ended in disaster when the door to the capsule would not close because one of the hinges had 'cold welded'. After a lot of 'forcing', the hinge 'broke' enough for the door to be closed, and the capsule then came back down to Earth.
We actually have a project to prevent cold welding in rockets but before they reach space. During launch vibrations can wear away oxide layers and weld together mechanical parts. We try to solve that by PEO (plasma electrolytic oxidation) by basically adding a ceramic layer on top of the metal.
You're SciShow Space installments from last week have just now shown themselves in the column to the right... I literally searched for them and received only older videos last week!
That new intro is 🔥🔥
I remember a field trip to some lab where they had the most accurately flat metal cerfices that can be made, and if you placed them together it was impossible to pull them apart, you would have to slide them apart. Was really cool, it was like they welded together.
This sounds like it will be very useful for space based manufacturing
That’s amazing though. Things like these are the reason I love science.
there is another form of coldwelding, wich is very common for termination of aircraft wiring. this coldweld is achieved by applying high pressure to the materials that need to be terminated.
(Termination means, in this instance to attach a pin, socket or terminal to the wire ends.)
There's another example of spontaneous welding in space! On the Kepler Space Telescope a build up of static electricity was discharged through the reaction control wheel bearings, welding them in place
ah a fellow Scott Manley subscriber
Wow! I had no idea!!!!
I thought the explanation was going to have something to do with them not being shielded from cosmic rays!
That’s crazy I didn’t know that the electrons would just travel between the two objects effectively causing the distinction between the 2 to Cease!
Great video!!!
Hope this helps us become a space-fairing civilization quicker. The best bet for large scale space travel is to launch individual modules and assemble them in space. With cold welding, the process should be a bit easier.
The NASA report on the Galileo anomaly never mentions cold welding, only galling. Also, ActionLab and Veritasium videos on cold welding kinda make it seem like an overblown or maybe even mythical phenomena.
Other details from the report worth noting include the materials of the seized pins and sockets (6A1-4V and Inconel 718), which are inconsistent with the theory of cold welding, wear of the molybdenum disulfide lubricant, and destruction of the ceramic coating. All this makes it sound like plain old seizing up due to wear and not fancy 'space welding'.
Just sayin'
Could cold welding weld magnets together without messing with the magnetic field? I know that heat breaks/realligns magnets, so...
I wonder what could be done with that? (Even if the magnetism inherently prevents cold welding if the two parts don't have aligned fields, it could still be useful, I imagine)
I would imagine that it would produce some change in the field, but only in the weld zone.
@@absalomdraconis there is a company that uses advanced technology to bend the magnetic fields to their will and the fields stay like that like any typical magnet
@@TheFagerlund link or company name plz?
@@Infernoraptor Shoot, I swear I had this bookmarked but I think it was on my old mobile....
Well not actually sure it's the same they were talking about, but either way I'd like the name/link as well. Interested in both.
Great video! I've been wondering for a while why metals break and can't be put back together. I was told it was because they oxidize, but that never explained why it happens with gold
Gold cold welds with moderate pressure in any atmosphere. Gold inlay into fine jewelry makes use of this - not enough gold in the inlay? just mash some more gold wire on top and it will merge together seamlessly.
I have seen cold welding with gauge blocks on AvE's channel, and gold being cold welded on Cody's Lab. Both of these were in Earth's atmospheric conditions.
This gives me an idea: We load metallic building blocks into vacuum cylinders that we railgun into orbit where they are received by a orbital platform and unpacked and assembled into useful objects by little robots working as a team with little silicone mittens on their gripper arms. Could make massive structures that we could never fit into a rocket, huge stations, proper starships.
More hosts on all Sci-show channels, please. Not that I don't like Hank, but variety is always good.
Absolutely brand new thing I learnt today. Thank you!
My brain always swaps in cold fusion when I'm trying to talk about cold welding, which is super annoying because one is a defunct fringe idea and the latter is actually really interesting to talk about, so people keep thinking that I'm one of those people who doesn't care about scientific evidence disproving things.
Naw. As long as you haven’t also start accidentally saying “Electric Universe” when you meant to say either “General Relativity” or “Quantum Mechanics”, you’ll be fine :)
Except that cold fusion is possible, if you replace electrons with the heavier muons.
The catch is that muons decay way too fast, which results in the entire process being an overall energy loss, which in turn prevents cold fusion from being viable for energy generation.
You can also use the even heavier “tau” particles in place of electrons, but those decay even faster.
@@ExEBoss : I suspect that they'll eventually mix enough things (maybe both fusors & lattice-confinement?) to overcome the muon decay rate, though it'll presumably take a while yet.
@@qzbnyv Yeah, @john lamasters, you can only use the approved made up Science words. Know your place when you're falling in line with nonsense. You don't want to be confused with someone that has their own thoughts and opinions.
*Plastic Washer:* _Now's my time to shine!_
The problems that our atmosphere causes during regular welding reminds me of when I was learning to TIG weld. I always pulled to torch away from the weld to quickly. You're supposed to hesitate for a couple of seconds after you stop welding to let the shielding gas continue to protect the metal from atmospheric contamination.
I don't think I remembered that the whole time learning. Probably why I always had porosity at the end of the weld. 😂
I would think that the lubricant would boil away without any friction. Astronauts describe space as having a "smell," because when they get back into a pressurized compartment, they can smell oils that metal surfaces released in the vacuum.
Fascinating. Now how about that formula for transparent aluminum Scotty!
Scooby doo also
Love you Hank!
Huh. I don't believe I was actually aware of this previously. Thanks for, at the very least, reminding me of this phenomenon.
Small enough gold wires wouldn’t really have a problem of particles of air getting in between them. Rather, the Brownian motion of the air would cause collisions with the ends of the wires, making alignment near impossible. But maybe by applying a potential across the two wires you’d get them to attract one another, and probably spot-weld on contact, eliminating the need for a vacuum chamber.
On the flip side, you’d probably want to use a vacuum chamber for constructing nanomachines in the first place.
I'm a welder and never knew this. Now I want to try some cold welding.
Need a vacuum chamber or be in space
Brought to you by the Weyland-Yutani Welding Division.
This just blew my mind.
Cold welding is also a significant problem for assembling parts designed for usage in EUV lithography. These parts usually are passified, pickled, the adsorption layer gets removed and they are cleaned on a molecular level. I accidentally have cold welded dozens of bolts and and pins during assembly, making these costly parts unusable in the process.
Cold welding in space is one of those things that is both obvious and mind-blowing all at once, and makes it one of my favourite facts, and application for nano-scale engineering and creation of future materials.
AMD and Intel are using cold welding for the next generation CPUs. It is fascinating.
It sounds like the next revolution in construction is going to be in space. Imagine cold welding space ships, satellites, space stations, etc.
I love the new intro
That title is perfect :D , nice video
Me playing with metals with very flat surfaces : "is this cold welding?"
Unfortunately it's just Van der Waals palying some tricks
I was thinking about how can cold welding work and this video got suggested to me this yt algo is super strong idk how will youtubers will crack it
Thank you!
Hardness differences between similar metals also help because the electron bonds are strained and are less mobile.
incredible, that may explain how planets get their round shapes
Machinists measuring blocks tend to stick together they are very precisely machined. I wonder if they are trying to cold weld when they get stuck together.
I love Metal, and it seems like Metal loves itself. XD
@SciShow Space actually, Cold Welding represents a revolution is 3D Printing. The next generation in 3D Printing is to be able to print using any material (printing in plastics, metals, glass, ceramics, proteins, cells (basically food)). The generation after that was to be able to print in any material at the same time (Printing copper next to plastic or whatever, Printing simulated steaks with simulated broccoli on printed china plates). Cold Welding represents a potential 2 generation jump.
A Third generation is to shrink the resolution of printing to that cellular, then micro cellular level, then to nanoscopic levels, at which point the simulated foods should seem exactly the same and the possibility of on site printed surgery with near zero recovery time may be possible.
This tech could end suffering, aging, hunger, and even save the planet with its potential for recycling and resource savings.
So... Star Trek? Thank you, Gene Roddenberry. =P
Science is endlessly interesting.
At least when we are a space travelling race, repairing hulls will be as easy as grinding both surfaces clean (no air, no oxidation layer) and forcing both parts together so they cold weld could make for easy repairs. Probably with the help of strong magnets or something to really force the two together. Idk lol.
Galling is cold welding too. And it happens all the time here on earth. Vacuum just sped the problem up.
How did they figured out what exactly had happened to the antenna?
Science. Or troubleshooting. But that's essentially the same thing.
@@96ace96 I was also going to respond with "science" lol
NASA stuff, another form of science.
Checkout the video by actionlab. He explains it clearly.
They had Superman fly up there and look at it.
I'm seeing a future where nanometer-scale metal machines are 3-D printed thanks to cold welding. Mind blown.
As long as we don't make them capable of reproducing... I'd rather avoid the gray goo scenario.
Have you ever thought about becoming a science teacher. You would be great at it. Well done.
This makes me even more anxious about the unprecedentedly complex unfolding that the James Webb Space Telescope has to do. I hope that the JWST has appropriate countermeasures now we know this is an issue
i dont know what the plot would be but someone desperately needs to use this in a space horror movie. or actually just any scifi movie.
On the opposite side, this makes building metal ships in space as easy as Legos.
AMD are planning to use this very feature for their recently announced 3D Cache...
The CPU and the cache are stacked and connected by TSV's (Through Silicon Via's) which are miniscule wires within the silicon, there will be no need for solder thanks to the effects of cold welding.
Previously this would be done by contact pads and solder bumps which are then heated to cause the solder to melt and create an electrical circuit.
By removing the need for these solder bumps there can be an order of magnitude more connections in a given area and also avoid the risk of the solder bumps spreading out and causing a short circuit.
The problem here is this will massively increase the need for ultra-precise placement of the chips inside a vacuum chamber and ultra flat surfaces, this last part is possible due to the accuracy inherent in current chip production methods used around the globe...
Great video, keep it up
As a welder, i now need to become an astronaut just so that i can weld in space
As a welder myself, I wish that all I had to do to join two similar metals was just press them together really hard, would save me a lot of work lol
1:37: Metals are secret comrades confirmed!?!
Cold welding could probably make it easier for things to be assembled in space Just make sure the surfaces are clean clamp them together boom
My current scifi project has this as a construction method for ships. Extrude or roll metal sheets, flatten the contact areas, and squish.
Stainless steel nuts and bolts can cold weld theirselves together even in earth's atmosphere if you crank them up too tight
Forgive me if this was in the video, but atmosphere is only most of the reason it's hard to cold weld on earth. Majorty of metals create an oxide layer when in contact with air, which makes a buffer that prevents cold welding (gold doesn't form an oxide layer and is probably why they used gold wire in their test).
ok we geddit u ace chem
@@wotizit Never took chem unfortunately, ended up having to take environmental.🤷
@@mr.universe740 Environmental was pretty fun too
Nice fresh intro guys
This title is phrased as if it is a rebellion, and this inspires me to dream of space vandalism
Great explanation, knowledgeable, clear and concise, unlike a lot of vlogging babble elsewhere. Great work:)
3:10 failed to mention the four years sitting in storage after the Challenger disaster (the shuttles being the only crafts available)
Go Go Sci Show
Can't happen in atmosphere?
Wring two gauge blocks together and leave them for a while. Boom, welded.
Nightmare fuel for anyone in the metal workshop. That is usually the first or second thing tought about gauge blocks.
1:33 man, metal atoms have it figured out
Anyone else think it is amazing that they found a stock image for welded spoons?
there's a stock image for everything
No.
everyday we learn something new
So if we see someone welding in a spacesuit in a scifi, we can just imagine they're belt sanding with super fine paper to make a nice smooth surface for cold welding to occur quickly with a large-surface-area bond.