The method he's showing is called froth flotation. He's not mentioning an important part of the process. The process of electrolysis leaves behind "anode slimes". Two of the more common metals in the slimes are gold and silver. The slimes often provide a significant part of the income of the mine.
I've done some contracting work at the Kennecott copper mine in Utah and the entire process including all the products from the other 99% of the ore is crazy interesting. You should look up molybdenum processing and anodes pouring :)
Truck driver here. I'd like to point out that, those slabs are abSURDly heavy. Normally when we transport those slabs to a plant that turns those slabs to wires, we can only transport about 5 sets of 6 slabs because, that much alone already gets up to around 45,000lbs which is usually the max weight limit that trucks can transport without going overweight.
the fact that someone looked at the way Factorio smelts copper and said, "hmmm not realistic enough" and then made a mod that mimics this process is crazy.
The fact that you just used a complete sentence where 99.99% of other people would leave it open-ended brings me unreasonable satisfaction. Also I too love Factorio.
Yeah, I tried those mods, and while they are realistic, it made it hard for me to get into it and I gave up. Very cool though, and yes I had the exact same thought when I saw the copper slabs and started picturing belts full of copper plates
@@okname5335Imagine getting a chemistry problem asking you to convert 3 tons of 1% copper ore into meth How many grams of 80% purity meth can you make from this ore?
Copper is one of the most cool metals. It's very malleable, resists corrosion, conducts electricity well, can form a protective layer of patina when outdoors, and it even has antimicrobial properties! The color is also fairly unique.
@@JustRememberWhoYoureWorkingForwhich also preserves or enhances nearly all the good physical qualities of copper despite slightly fudging the conductivity
And you can use it to make beryllium copper, basically as strong as steel but corrosion resistant and conductive. Incredible material. And yeah the antimicrobial properties are why they use them in IUD birth control
Also forgot to include the part about the companies abandoning the mines after they run dry, turning them into toxic death lakes when the rainfall fills them. It's a necessary part of the process.
I'll finish since the video didn't. After the cathode is put into the furnace, it melts down and the liquid copper is poured out into a continuous bar. While hot, the bar is pulled through progressively smaller and smaller plates with holes in them called dies. From what I've seen, there is a large size finished wire that is transported to other drawing facilities to be further drawn to smaller sizes for different uses.
This is actually where the 'gauge' of a wire comes from. A 1-gauge wire has been pulled through the smallest die that they can force a bar of metal through. A 2-gauge wire has been pulled through a second die that's the smallest a 1-gauge wire can be forced through. And so on. Most wiring for electronics is in the neighborhood of 20-gauge. Huge powerlines and the like are usually much larger than 1-gauge. Of course a lot of wires are more complex than even that. A solid bar of copper - even a thin one - is not especially flexible and prone to 'necking' (bending in one spot over and over which makes it brittle). So many modern wires are instead made of a collection of even smaller strands which are twisted together. A uniform twist in this way not only gives the wires more flexibility, but has been shown to conduct electricity a little better, which seems to prefer moving in spirals. So a 20-gauge wire is often a spiral of much smaller wires twisted together to provide the same overall cross-sectional area (or CAU).
@@certifiedredditgenius Where I work for, the plant that casts out the wire into "rod" only does that. The other plants with the drawing machines which bring the wire to the proper gauge also have "plexers" which twist multiple wires into cable. It all depends on the plant and the product, plus different companies have their own spin on the process.
@@CrucialGaming444 Yeah, I can agree with that, especially since making high purity copper made so many electronics either more efficient, or simply possible at all.
its not just one process but many. Speaking of smelting, that really really old like 2000 years old process. Driling and blasting, may be 200 years. Froth flotation, the first paper on froth flotation was published in 1972 so pretty new tech AND very important as well.
What you really think this that the past people would get bored because they do not have internet or phone 😅u really are just a kid listen thousands of years ago our ancestors dp not get bored because they don't have phone they were continuously developing and and doing much more discoveries@@elimarc3891
Never underestimate the knowledge of humans. Maybe soon, we will turn cooper into a dyson sphere if we focused on using our resources instead of destroying each other.
@@Irobert1115HDProbably would take more material than our planet could produce too. We'd have to advance a LOT before even trying to imagine making a Dyson Sphere.
99% purity is actually very low for refined metals, especially when it is going to be used in electrical applications. Every single atom of impurity adds electrical resistance, so 1% impurity in a cable is a LOT of resistance. You can also imagine how that would add up very quickly as more wire is used. Edit: Another way to picture it is that, with 99% purity, 1 out of every 100 atoms is an impurity. With 99.99%, its only 1 in every 10,000. The percentage may seem small, but its a difference in _orders of magnitude_
@@OmnipotentNoodlethank you, math and chemistry have never interested me, so I don't know much about them. That was a good way of putting it out in simple terms.
When I buy food I tend not to feel bad, like when I buy an Apple, or Yogurt, or meat my brain immediately recognizes that it took an insane amount of labor and knowledge to get me that product so I am fine paying the price for it. When I buy any raw material usually I feel that way, metal, wood, etc. FOR SOME REASON THOUGH whenever I am asked to pay taxes or rent my mind goes berserk. I know that these people PROBABLY do stuff, and I know that technically they own the land therefore they have the right to charge what they want, but the idea that someone can just make money without transforming something for some reason infuriates me, I know my thinking is illogical, but I can't help it. I also get insanely angry the more complex a product is. Like if someone sells me metal I am chill because I am paying for a simple product, but like a car I also get angry especially when I KNOW the car company is screwing me over, or I feel that way. Like I know that they could easily make a 1990s Honda Civic and that's all I need, but instead the only thing they sell is their modern cars with so much unnecessary crap that I am FORCED to buy. If anyone can explain that to me that'd be cool. I spend a fair bit of money on food, but I drive the most beater car available, and I live as cheaply as possible in terms of housing. I logically understand the market and that land/housing is scarce, but it still just angers me. There is something far different to me when buying an apple or a piece of copper compared to buying a new car or an apartment.
@@ashinonyaa6588 i made better money scrapping professionally than i did working full time for 30k a yr at the factory. Its not just crackheads and brokies scrapping lol
@jasonvoorhees5640Aye don’t be pulling that. You said what you said, own it. Other guy ain’t wrong. Obviously a chemical lab would be ill equipped to smelt mettle compared to a medieval forge, which wouldn’t have ‘lab equipment’ to begin with.
I was riding with my friend who was a trucker, he was taking me from Oakland to Atlanta. We stopped at a copper mine in New Mexico and we picked up a load of cathode slabs. I left with 2 buckets of slag from the cutting process. I got $200 for each bucket. Each slab weighed 400lbs
@@FlamingCockatiel I would hope that we have read many of the same books, but in this particular case, not so much. My statement didn't come from a book. I have worked in manufacturing and fabrication for pretty much my entire career, a toaster was just an easy example I figured most people could look at and consider
@FlamingCockatiel wow! That sounds like it would be an interesting read. If you happen to remember the name of it, please let me know what it is! In the mean time, there is a channel on TH-cam called how to make everything that has some pretty interesting videos about going through some of the historical technological advances using tools from the previous technological era
"Son" Mom I want *FORBIDDEN ICE CREAM SODA!* Mom: We have *forbidden icecream soda at home!* Forbidden ice cream soda at home: skull 🤣💀 😔💀 copper heavy metal poisoning yay!
Thank you! My father was a metallurgist many years ago. He poured large manganese bronze propellers for tankers, subs, aircraft and cargo carriers. I miss his metallurgy lectures. I’ve forgotten most of it now but I think I was the only one in my fourth grade class who knew the difference among copper, brass, and bronze! We loved visiting his foundry. Thanks again for the memories!
Yeppp. Brass and Bronze are alloys of Copper, I myself had interest in metals and their properties since childhood, it was always something only a few knew.
True for copper sulfide ore. Copper oxide ore gets stacked in huge mountains and leached with sulfuric acid. The pregnant leach solution goes to an electrowinning plant where the copper gets plated out via electrolysis. Simpler process that doesn't require a smelter.
@gregorymalchuk272 Yes, it does. I simplified the process a bit. Obviously the pregnant leach solution (PLS) carries impurities as well as copper ions when it comes out of the heap. It goes through solvent extraction (SX) where copper is stripped from the weak acid solution using an organic medium and is then stripped again from that medium by stronger acid. This solution is used to produce cathodes. They get shipped straight to rod mills.
@@WhatIsSanityLeach pads are built on top of multiple layers of thick plastic sheeting. The suction lines that collect the acid solution are on top of the plastic sheeting buried underneath the crushed ore. The sites chosen for leech pads generally have an impervious layer of clay underneath preventing leakage into ground water.
@WhatIsSanity There are probably some jurisdictions that do poor jobs managing this type of extraction. Modern mining and processing standards require extensive studies and a high level of engineering and planning to protect the environment while optimizing production. Certainly, there are examples of legacy sites and unscrupulous operators in poor or highly corrupt countries that do not adhere to these standards, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the process if done correctly with properly designed and constructed drainage, multiple impermeable base layers, adequate emergency containment to account for rain events, and well-planned and implemented site closure plan. I work in the industry and have had the fortune of working for responsible employers.
I’ve seen the process in AZ. He left out the fact that the main ingredient in that green slurry is pine oil. It’s the best smelling factory you could imagine.
No, you use 8 cobblestone to craft a furnace, than place the ore inside and use fuel, such as any wooden item (like planks, or more efficiently, sticks) or coal to fuel it lomg enough for the copper ore to be transformed into ingots. Then you can use it to craft lighting rods or use it for decoration.
@@snorttroll4379 I have been been working with copper almost every day for 6 years, and I haven't noticed any kind of difference, as far as heavy metal poisoning. And I as far as pex, I work in commercial construction in the US, and it typically isn't used in commercial settings.
I’m conflicted, because all these jobs are pretty much being done by robots. It’s wild to me that in the 90s, before widespread computerization, people had a higher quality of life in America and more mobility. How has the computer and robotization of America helped? It really doesn’t seem like it has
@@solorollo9756 Robots need a lot more servicing and maintenance than a human. So they do create more jobs. The problem of job loss in the US lies in outsourcing the production to other countries. That has nothing to do with the robots however and everything to do with the businesses
Man. How wild would it be to give a tour of a factory like this, explaining the entire process in painfully high detail, to someone like Benjamin Franklin. His fascination and joy at seeing how fair science has come would be heart warming.
Kennecot copper mine / Bingham canyon mine near where I live in Utah offers them between April and October . They’re currently $6 a person and you have to buy tickets in advance. If you want to see one up close and personal
@@Dx_Heartedno silver is used in computer chips silver have better conductivity than copper (sometimes gold is used to for better corrosion protection)
This is one method to get the copper. At the mine I worked at we sprayed sulfuric acid on big piles of ore, heap leaching. The acid would leach out the copper into the solution. That would then go to a leach pond that one the way up to the refinery would need to clarified, either with a clarification step or through filter media. Once the clarified solution, pregnant leach solution or pls, made it to the refineryit would enter the solvent extraction stage (sx). In the first stage and organic layer floats on top the aqueous layer (pls), in this stage the copper is “pulled” into the organic layer above, basically kerosene or better known as jet fuel. The aqueous layer in the first stage is recycled back to the front end of the stage to ensure maximum recovery. The organic layer then is pumped over to the second stage, where the aqueous solution then floats on the organic layer and the copper is “pulled” into the aqueous layer. The organic layer then gets pumped to a filter to pick up any solids or floaters that may have been picked up, with the filtered organic solution going back to front of stage 1. The copper rich solution from stage 2 is then pumped to the elctrowinning process, known as the tank house. The copper rich solution is pumped through troughs with a substrate to adhere to. The plates at our tank house were very thin copper sheets other plants had thin stainless steel sheets that would split the copper plate off. In the troughs are alternating copper (cathode) and lead (anode) plates. Every plate has a hanger that laid on a bus bar to deliver the electricity to cause the electrolrecipitation on the copper starter plate. The power applied to the process determined the cycle time for collecting the completed plates and putting new starter plates in. Once the copper was pulled out it then was inspected for lead deposition and the smoothness of them, they stack better when smoother and are easier to truck out. Some were cut and sent out for assay to determine purity thus resulting the rating. I can’t remember the ratings, but a certain grade would go to a company owned refinery to be purified further and then made into wire or other products. The above grade would be sold directly to copper product suppliers. Sorry for the novel, hope you learned something.
In the company where I worked, we had a separate small plant called the Slimes Treatment Plant. The process used hydrogen sulfide gas in special flotation rows of machines. That shit's deadly, and an accident at the rail end with a tanker car could have taken out the concentrator as well as a sizeable chunk of the town over a 1/4 mile away.!
Copper is also used for pipes since it's corrosion resistant. It's used for decorations too although brass is more common since it's harder than copper I think. As a musician, I see that timpanis have copper sheets around the bottom. Copper used to be used more for things like roofing, buckets and some tools, cookware, decorations, etc. But it's gotten expensive and now been replaced by plastic, steel, aluminum, and other materials. It's also used in radiators in ACs and for tubing in refrigerators and. As a scrapper, I know that older electric motors and transformers used copper windings. Nowadays, some still do, but many appliances and tools use aluminum instead because it's cheaper, which is disappointing as a scrapper because copper is worth about 10 times as much as aluminum. If you're wondering, in America the scrap price is $3-$4/lb. To compare, for regular light steel and iron(everyday scrap like appliances or an old lawnmower), the scrap price is only about $0.08/lb. This is the lowest price, as you're selling the metal to a third party buyer, which then separates the metals to sell to another company which further separates and processes the metal, which is sold as raw material to many other companies. It all starts at the scrap yard, which pays the lowest price for the material, which makes sense because it then goes through a lot of other buyers until it's made into it's final product and sold on the open market.
That airplane you may have rode in has tungsten (W) weights on control surfaces to reduce vibrations. The ball in your pen is W also. That weight in the buffer of your ar is W; likely. Wherever you need more weight to occupy less space, W is important. @@zay0_n4ra11
Infinite money hack: -Start up copper mining company and copper refining factory. -Set up security team and surveillance systems to ensure workers do not steal. -Give workers 15% of copper produced in a day instead of a wage. -Employ only crackheads you found on the streets. -Profit.
I remember as a lad growing up in a prosperous copper mining town. The concentrate to smelting process provided the backbone of the economy. Open pit mining sure leaves an ugly scar on the land but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. 1 percent ore. You have to move a lot of earth to make a profit.
The Green Valley Arizona, the city I live in sits smack dap in between several huge open pit copper mines. The high quality ore was depleted years ago so now they are processing the lower grade ore. It's interesting to see the copper ingots on railway cars as they move through town. If you're ever in southern Arizona it's really worth visiting Bisbee. The small city has a pit that is deep and tours are available. It's one of the most interesting cities in Arizona because of its history. Tombstone is about 45 minutes away also.
As long as we are here, how about the huge copper pits outside of Ely, NV., opened in the late 1890's. The smelter was built north of town & was considered the largest industrial plant west of the Mississippi River for many years after it was built about 1905? Also, the pits near Yerington NV. There is a newer operation east of town pulling gold & copper values.
Whoever came up with this long yet intricate process needs to be given credit, imagine the science and math that went behind building all the machines and steps to do this?
Has to have been an incremental improvement process spanning a couple of years. Multiple people would have contributed at each step. I am pure guessing here.
@@latestmush9281 Same reason you can't get 100% anything, it gets exponentially more expensive to get the next bit of shmoo out and most of the time 99% or even less is fine for the use case.
These processes are litterally thousands of years in the making.. if say society collapsed and ferral humans in the future had no knowledge whatsoever of anything, and environmental conditions etc where the same it would likely take thousands of years to come back to these processes... occasionally processes are sped up by smart individuals who figure things out, and a lot of the time they happen by chance.. but a lot of the times they happen by chance is when clever people are experimenting random stuff. We all probably remember that one kid who was always doing random weird stuff.. and it's often kids like them that go on to figure these things out. Them and the observant ;)
I mean… you dont need to be a genius to smelt copper. People in 4,000 years ago virtually all around the world independently and concurrently figured it out i think its just natural for us to use metals
Imo mainstream education has misinformed us in many ways. There was massive civilization. Operations. Human power, machinery, horses, tools, even astronomy.
Copper along with silver are still to this day the best conductors for passing an audio signal. Copper provides low resistance with an affordable warm sound, but it's a silver conductor that helps keep the sparkle within that sound. Hence, silver plated copper cables are the way to go. An avid music lover
you're hardly an avid music lover, you get everything wrong; the silver plating is only to prevent oxidation. no sparkle doing the tainting and the colouring of the sound, the copper is doing all of the current flowing
@luigicirelli2583 Yes, even though Silver holds up to oxidization, it's not the reason why I chose to go with silver plated copper cables. Silver has more conductive properties and interacts with impedance differently. This makes it easier to reproduce the source signal accurately.
@@luigicirelli2583 tbh dunno why "Silver is only there for oxidation" when it's the best electricity conducting metal in the world. The rubber/plastic outlay is there to prevent oxidtion/damage/open wires. I dunno why some people feel the need to be contrarians.
@@Antibackgroundnoise silver only conducts electricity 5% better than pure copper; silver has the lowest volumetric resistivity, make a pair of copper speaker cables that have an even lower resistance by simply using larger wire, and they would be a lot less expensive. silver plated copper would muddle the sound, the skin effect would get all sort of eddy currents that would make the treble shriek; stick with pure copper
I live in Michigan, up in the UP are aware some of the purest forms of copper are found in mines, I asked a minor up there what happens when they find large chunks of very pure copper, They said that it's actually difficult to extract at the higher purity levels because it becomes difficult to process it on a manner to get it out of the underground mines. High purity copper underground apparently wicks away too much heat to use heat cutting methods and doesn't come out real well from mechanical methods because it gums up the cutting surfaces.
Its not actually "amazing"...it took 10 000 years and each step was added one by one...plus nowadays consumerist sheeps are "baffled" and "amazed by simplest things. And coppper production is pretty basic. Its nowhere near nuclear energy reactors. Which im admitting is pretty amazing
There are also other methods available. The route described here utilizes refining electrolysis. Alternatively, one could use extraction electrolysis, which depends on the type of ore and the copper concentration. Furthermore, employing different reactors might be beneficial if there is a higher cobalt concentration-though that’s a topic for another discussion.
I remember collecting scrap copper and metals when I was a kid so that I can play in the arcades or buy ice cream. Stripping the shielding was also fun, cut my hands many times 😂
Copper mines in Silver City, NM are HUGE, OPEN PIT. Ore is smelted in ElPaso, TX. We had a copper roof in our Albuquerque, NM house. Wonder if it's still there. Turquoise ore found in copper ore is smelted to keep value of Turquoise higher
Well you could actually answer the question you posed.... By explaining how those companies turn copper slabs into wire..... Then it might have actually had a point.
@pilipolvoron2699 another major source of income is that after the electrolysis process, there is an "anode slime" left behind coating the plates. This slime contains high concentrations of gold and silver
I might be talking out my ass but what I understood is, everything was mixed together in the rocks. You can process all the ore to turn back to metals, but the metals will still be a mixture of different metals. This is the limitation from physical processing it. It takes electrochemical process to make it refined where the specific metal you want can be selected for by choosing the correct volts
In order something to be 100% pure all other different substances need to be extracted. Since atoms are so so soo damn tiny you cannot possibly seperate every single of them from something you want it to be 100% pure. It is literally same thing as finding a needle in a haystack and almost impossible.
It can be. It just isn't profitable to be so. And regardless. Our copper economy thrives on the less than 100% pure copper, if it were, thousand (millions) of equipment, and objects would have to be rewired, or changed to handle 100% pure copper.
Really EXCELLENT explanation, thank you. I have often wondered this, abd it took almost 66 years for someone (you) to explain it. I really learned from this ❤
@@yuukaneelike the free greek Staats how they found the materials,they need to have tread so they need to have peac no peac no tread, i dont send materials if i can loos them
The method he's showing is called froth flotation. He's not mentioning an important part of the process. The process of electrolysis leaves behind "anode slimes". Two of the more common metals in the slimes are gold and silver. The slimes often provide a significant part of the income of the mine.
Mmmm slime cash 💰🤤
@@JKTCGMV13slime cash 💰 😩
irl slime rancher confirmed
Well this video is about copper production, not gold.
@@shanetuma3845 gold, silver, and other valuable metals are almost always found with copper.
Humans have figured out how to do some wild shit
@@mrsstaff78 yeah like living without water and in polluted area
*white people
@@neonnova-on1gpYou'd be long buried by then.
As we learn the intricacies of the universe, the only things that holds us back are creativity and resources
Yet none of it means anything and it's all wrong
As an electrician who pulls this stuff everyday at work, I find this pretty fascinating.
I've done some contracting work at the Kennecott copper mine in Utah and the entire process including all the products from the other 99% of the ore is crazy interesting.
You should look up molybdenum processing and anodes pouring :)
you, an electrician?! so?
@@rite2bcreative you've done some contracting work at the kennecott copper mine in utah?! so?
@@luigicirelli2583yes
@@luigicirelli2583 So he pulls copper wires for a living and being that I have to explain that connection just baffles me.
Truck driver here.
I'd like to point out that, those slabs are abSURDly heavy. Normally when we transport those slabs to a plant that turns those slabs to wires, we can only transport about 5 sets of 6 slabs because, that much alone already gets up to around 45,000lbs which is usually the max weight limit that trucks can transport without going overweight.
God fuckin damn. Would be a pain in the ass if your were the only one on transport
Each anode is 700-1200 lbs, the cathode Cu (final product) is about 400-500 lbs per sheet
30 slabs are 45.000 lbs
holy SSSSSS :o
Well, every metal has its specific density….
I thought copper was a light metal, must be so thin that it just seems light.
Cover all metals that you can be done or extracted by electrolysis
Godzilla just had a stroke trying to read this sentence!
@@bibhutihazarika8610 bro fr
@@bibhutihazarika8610Hahahaha
Metal
Too Low Power electric
Only copper
Fast Power
@@Unknown34083 👏
the fact that someone looked at the way Factorio smelts copper and said, "hmmm not realistic enough" and then made a mod that mimics this process is crazy.
The fact that you just used a complete sentence where 99.99% of other people would leave it open-ended brings me unreasonable satisfaction.
Also I too love Factorio.
@jackmeyers7805 The fact you used and right after a period brings me so much sadness.
Yeah, I tried those mods, and while they are realistic, it made it hard for me to get into it and I gave up. Very cool though, and yes I had the exact same thought when I saw the copper slabs and started picturing belts full of copper plates
What mod?
pyanodon's?
"This copper is 99.9% pure"
-Heisenberg
At 99.9% purity you would go, on average, only TEN atoms in any direction before encountering an impurity atom. :-O
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂..... I heard his voice when I read it
Koppaberg
@@YodaWhat Still pretty good
Whats really funny is the copper mineral is a blue crystal.
Now we just need a video on how crackheads steal the copper and the cycle will be completed.
thats a different cycle
@@okname5335😂😂😂
😂😂😂
@@okname5335Imagine getting a chemistry problem asking you to convert 3 tons of 1% copper ore into meth
How many grams of 80% purity meth can you make from this ore?
😅😅😅
Copper is one of the most cool metals.
It's very malleable, resists corrosion, conducts electricity well, can form a protective layer of patina when outdoors, and it even has antimicrobial properties! The color is also fairly unique.
And is recyclable..
And with copper you can make brass, which looks like gold
@@JustRememberWhoYoureWorkingForwhich also preserves or enhances nearly all the good physical qualities of copper despite slightly fudging the conductivity
The more abundant version of gold
And you can use it to make beryllium copper, basically as strong as steel but corrosion resistant and conductive. Incredible material.
And yeah the antimicrobial properties are why they use them in IUD birth control
"Jesse, we need to cook 99.99% pure Copper"
Heh heh heh 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
What are you, like 60 and all of a sudden you're gonna break bad?
ahhhh wire
I’m not in danger Skyler, I am the Danger..is my middle name
Uh uh tuco you arent supposed to snort that oh ok
Now I understand the Ea Nasir customer complaint tablet from Ancient Mesopotamia about copper quality
Best comment I'll see today, thanks!
Lol
Ea-Nasor: I sell only quality copper
He did not mention what quality
Think they still do returns? We've even got the recipt.
Yeah. Different techniques back then, I'd suppose...
Also forgot to include the part about the companies abandoning the mines after they run dry, turning them into toxic death lakes when the rainfall fills them. It's a necessary part of the process.
It's tradition....and completely expected.
i hope we get more of them they look beautiful.
Well that's just the way she goes if that part is necessary.
Have to take the bad with the good.
@@creepingdeath9795Or we could make the corporations pay for the clean up.
I'll finish since the video didn't. After the cathode is put into the furnace, it melts down and the liquid copper is poured out into a continuous bar. While hot, the bar is pulled through progressively smaller and smaller plates with holes in them called dies. From what I've seen, there is a large size finished wire that is transported to other drawing facilities to be further drawn to smaller sizes for different uses.
Really, they don't twist it into wire at the same factory?
Freeport-MacMoRan has a copper rod plant in Claypool Arizona with the refined copper cathode sheets converted into coils of copper rod.
Thank you!
This is actually where the 'gauge' of a wire comes from. A 1-gauge wire has been pulled through the smallest die that they can force a bar of metal through. A 2-gauge wire has been pulled through a second die that's the smallest a 1-gauge wire can be forced through. And so on. Most wiring for electronics is in the neighborhood of 20-gauge. Huge powerlines and the like are usually much larger than 1-gauge.
Of course a lot of wires are more complex than even that. A solid bar of copper - even a thin one - is not especially flexible and prone to 'necking' (bending in one spot over and over which makes it brittle). So many modern wires are instead made of a collection of even smaller strands which are twisted together. A uniform twist in this way not only gives the wires more flexibility, but has been shown to conduct electricity a little better, which seems to prefer moving in spirals. So a 20-gauge wire is often a spiral of much smaller wires twisted together to provide the same overall cross-sectional area (or CAU).
@@certifiedredditgenius Where I work for, the plant that casts out the wire into "rod" only does that. The other plants with the drawing machines which bring the wire to the proper gauge also have "plexers" which twist multiple wires into cable. It all depends on the plant and the product, plus different companies have their own spin on the process.
my minecraft furnace ain't doin allat.
I was searching 🔎 for the comment though...😂
@@user-xu4ev4lh6nso did i
All that*
@@Kreptic boowomp
@@Krepticr/wooosh
This is way different than how the tweekers in my city do it.
They are experts in copper extraction 😂
They tend to extract everything of value from the home. Preferably when no one is there.
This video shows you how to get it from rock to wire...Tweekers show you how to turn wire into a different rock. Theres a whole science to it.
@@Mo11y666😂😂😂
@@Mo11y666omg 😂😂😂
Whoever figured out that process deserves some recognition
Shout out to the process
Well, I'm not sure it was just one guy, it was likely many different invertors coming up with each step, and refining said steps.
@@Metal_Master_YT true, makes sense. Either way kudos to them… incredible.
@@CrucialGaming444 Yeah, I can agree with that, especially since making high purity copper made so many electronics either more efficient, or simply possible at all.
its not just one process but many. Speaking of smelting, that really really old like 2000 years old process. Driling and blasting, may be 200 years. Froth flotation, the first paper on froth flotation was published in 1972 so pretty new tech AND very important as well.
"that's it" it amazes me that people actually figured out how to do all this
Thousands of years with no internet or tv. They got bored
What you really think this that the past people would get bored because they do not have internet or phone 😅u really are just a kid listen thousands of years ago our ancestors dp not get bored because they don't have phone they were continuously developing and and doing much more discoveries@@elimarc3891
Never underestimate the knowledge of humans.
Maybe soon, we will turn cooper into a dyson sphere if we focused on using our resources instead of destroying each other.
@@BreadLover-NothingElse nah that takes far far sturdier materials than copper.
@@Irobert1115HDProbably would take more material than our planet could produce too. We'd have to advance a LOT before even trying to imagine making a Dyson Sphere.
"Ahhhhh, wire."
"Yo, Mr White."
Hands down best comment
They really went "99%? Nah fam, over here we do 99.99%"
99% purity is actually very low for refined metals, especially when it is going to be used in electrical applications.
Every single atom of impurity adds electrical resistance, so 1% impurity in a cable is a LOT of resistance. You can also imagine how that would add up very quickly as more wire is used.
Edit: Another way to picture it is that, with 99% purity, 1 out of every 100 atoms is an impurity. With 99.99%, its only 1 in every 10,000. The percentage may seem small, but its a difference in _orders of magnitude_
Walter White style
@@OmnipotentNoodlethank you, math and chemistry have never interested me, so I don't know much about them. That was a good way of putting it out in simple terms.
@@stephengrigg5988😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😘😏
Time to cook!
Minecraft Steve just smelting in in a furnace 🗿
Try gregtech
I remember when me and my dad would go copper mining during the recession in abandoned homes
😅😅😅
OMGZ that was not yesterday ... ah you didn't mean the great depression ... or did you?
Hey even the electricians of 08 went into them and ripped the work they did last month after not being paid and let go.
I know some guys that still go cooper mining. They must also go crystal mining because they always have bags full of them.
Aight that gave me a lol
Im never going to complain about the price of cable again. Scrap dealer prices are excellent at the moment.
It’s amazing how much effort people thought can put in to getting 1 material
You broke and you steal copper and sell it at th scrap yaard
@@ashinonyaa6588 haha. No I'm an electrician and after about 12 + months I get around $400 worth.. I install aircon so copper is clean = primo price.
When I buy food I tend not to feel bad, like when I buy an Apple, or Yogurt, or meat my brain immediately recognizes that it took an insane amount of labor and knowledge to get me that product so I am fine paying the price for it.
When I buy any raw material usually I feel that way, metal, wood, etc.
FOR SOME REASON THOUGH whenever I am asked to pay taxes or rent my mind goes berserk. I know that these people PROBABLY do stuff, and I know that technically they own the land therefore they have the right to charge what they want, but the idea that someone can just make money without transforming something for some reason infuriates me, I know my thinking is illogical, but I can't help it.
I also get insanely angry the more complex a product is. Like if someone sells me metal I am chill because I am paying for a simple product, but like a car I also get angry especially when I KNOW the car company is screwing me over, or I feel that way. Like I know that they could easily make a 1990s Honda Civic and that's all I need, but instead the only thing they sell is their modern cars with so much unnecessary crap that I am FORCED to buy.
If anyone can explain that to me that'd be cool. I spend a fair bit of money on food, but I drive the most beater car available, and I live as cheaply as possible in terms of housing.
I logically understand the market and that land/housing is scarce, but it still just angers me. There is something far different to me when buying an apple or a piece of copper compared to buying a new car or an apartment.
@@ashinonyaa6588 i made better money scrapping professionally than i did working full time for 30k a yr at the factory. Its not just crackheads and brokies scrapping lol
I tried to refine copper at university and realised bronze age people had better lab equipment than me.
I guess you can’t identify a good joke when it hits you in the face. It’s not that serious.
@jasonvoorhees5640seek help
@jasonvoorhees5640Aye don’t be pulling that. You said what you said, own it. Other guy ain’t wrong.
Obviously a chemical lab would be ill equipped to smelt mettle compared to a medieval forge, which wouldn’t have ‘lab equipment’ to begin with.
@jasonvoorhees5640your projecting lol who hurt u bud?
@jasonvoorhees5640Yeah try to make grapes with nothing but water and a banana
I was riding with my friend who was a trucker, he was taking me from Oakland to Atlanta. We stopped at a copper mine in New Mexico and we picked up a load of cathode slabs. I left with 2 buckets of slag from the cutting process. I got $200 for each bucket. Each slab weighed 400lbs
Crazy how much goes into things we take for granted every day.
Look at how involved a process making a toaster is
@@Dragon.Slayer. Did you by chance read the same book I did? By a British guy, if I remember correctly?
@@FlamingCockatiel I would hope that we have read many of the same books, but in this particular case, not so much. My statement didn't come from a book. I have worked in manufacturing and fabrication for pretty much my entire career, a toaster was just an easy example I figured most people could look at and consider
@@Dragon.Slayer. I asked because there was a book where a man actually made his own toaster from scratch, and it was fascinating.
@FlamingCockatiel wow! That sounds like it would be an interesting read. If you happen to remember the name of it, please let me know what it is! In the mean time, there is a channel on TH-cam called how to make everything that has some pretty interesting videos about going through some of the historical technological advances using tools from the previous technological era
How to make Copper:
Rock -> Sand -> Forbidden Ice Cream Soda -> Copper
"Son" Mom I want *FORBIDDEN ICE CREAM SODA!*
Mom: We have *forbidden icecream soda at home!*
Forbidden ice cream soda at home: skull 🤣💀 😔💀 copper heavy metal poisoning yay!
Thank you! My father was a metallurgist many years ago. He poured large manganese bronze propellers for tankers, subs, aircraft and cargo carriers. I miss his metallurgy lectures. I’ve forgotten most of it now but I think I was the only one in my fourth grade class who knew the difference among copper, brass, and bronze! We loved visiting his foundry. Thanks again for the memories!
Nickel
Ooh thank you for the story. Though this might be rude to ask but working with that much metal, does it affect your father's health?
No. This ore isn't Radium. Radioactive ores. uranium. I think it's interesting how God legit made a useful but dangerous ore ☠️💀
Yeppp. Brass and Bronze are alloys of Copper, I myself had interest in metals and their properties since childhood, it was always something only a few knew.
Salute to your Dad.. my Mom: Steel mill 30years
This is why recycling is so important.
It’s fucking wild how it’s only 1 percent copper yet we extract so much of it on a daily basis that copper is considered a cheap metal
4000 years old technology.
huh? is copper cheap? i heard people steal copper wiring like crazy
I wonder if society could get these types of facilities going again if we were to miss a few summers due to some type of event
@xZatchx as a current copper miner,
copper has never gone above $5/lb.
@@dylantellez2496 Thats raw copper. Not cable/wire.
True for copper sulfide ore. Copper oxide ore gets stacked in huge mountains and leached with sulfuric acid. The pregnant leach solution goes to an electrowinning plant where the copper gets plated out via electrolysis. Simpler process that doesn't require a smelter.
Does it automatically produce cathode quality copper?
@gregorymalchuk272 Yes, it does. I simplified the process a bit. Obviously the pregnant leach solution (PLS) carries impurities as well as copper ions when it comes out of the heap. It goes through solvent extraction (SX) where copper is stripped from the weak acid solution using an organic medium and is then stripped again from that medium by stronger acid. This solution is used to produce cathodes. They get shipped straight to rod mills.
This process also obliterates the surrounding area with toxic run off. It's easier and cheaper, but causes catastrophic pollution.
@@WhatIsSanityLeach pads are built on top of multiple layers of thick plastic sheeting. The suction lines that collect the acid solution are on top of the plastic sheeting buried underneath the crushed ore. The sites chosen for leech pads generally have an impervious layer of clay underneath preventing leakage into ground water.
@WhatIsSanity There are probably some jurisdictions that do poor jobs managing this type of extraction. Modern mining and processing standards require extensive studies and a high level of engineering and planning to protect the environment while optimizing production. Certainly, there are examples of legacy sites and unscrupulous operators in poor or highly corrupt countries that do not adhere to these standards, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the process if done correctly with properly designed and constructed drainage, multiple impermeable base layers, adequate emergency containment to account for rain events, and well-planned and implemented site closure plan.
I work in the industry and have had the fortune of working for responsible employers.
I’ve seen the process in AZ. He left out the fact that the main ingredient in that green slurry is pine oil. It’s the best smelling factory you could imagine.
Now you got my interest
Have you got a linl to the smell? A smell link?
In maryvale az ....never thought we processed copper hear ....you still work in that field. Would you recommend it ?
@@EBO47 I was just a visitor to the Asarco mine near Green Valley.
Unless you’re deathly allergic to pine resin, like my poor niece! 1 minute in there would put her into anaphylactic shock!
No, you use 8 cobblestone to craft a furnace, than place the ore inside and use fuel, such as any wooden item (like planks, or more efficiently, sticks) or coal to fuel it lomg enough for the copper ore to be transformed into ingots. Then you can use it to craft lighting rods or use it for decoration.
As a plumber, I love copper. It is genuinely one of my favorite metals! Great and informative video!
Do u not get heavy metal poisoning? And what about pex?
@@snorttroll4379 I have been been working with copper almost every day for 6 years, and I haven't noticed any kind of difference, as far as heavy metal poisoning. And I as far as pex, I work in commercial construction in the US, and it typically isn't used in commercial settings.
@@snorttroll4379 Copper does not cause heavy metal poisoning, and actually is valued in hospitals for its anti-microbial properties.
Electcrian here! Same!
is it your favorite because you make the most money when you repipe a house ? LOL
When you begin to understand things like this, you really appreciate that as end user consumers we can get daily items like this for fairly cheap
I am also sure he missed a step called bessemerization but I am talking from my chem textbook so I don't know if that still happens.
@Dr.Kay_Ryet there are millions of miles of copper wires
I’m conflicted, because all these jobs are pretty much being done by robots. It’s wild to me that in the 90s, before widespread computerization, people had a higher quality of life in America and more mobility. How has the computer and robotization of America helped? It really doesn’t seem like it has
@@solorollo9756 Robots need a lot more servicing and maintenance than a human. So they do create more jobs. The problem of job loss in the US lies in outsourcing the production to other countries. That has nothing to do with the robots however and everything to do with the businesses
@@Visiopod yeah sure bud, that’s why we use robots. Because they are more expensive. Makes sense
Man. How wild would it be to give a tour of a factory like this, explaining the entire process in painfully high detail, to someone like Benjamin Franklin.
His fascination and joy at seeing how fair science has come would be heart warming.
My mom and I used to talk about how my grandmother would be astounded by a rotary telephone.
Now, my mom would be astounded by a Kindle tablet...
Franklin would promptly turn around and invent cold fusion utilizing the tools and technology available today.
Franklin would probably go to some occult rituals, be a freemason pig and bury more bodies in his chateaus.
He was a wicked person.
Kennecot copper mine / Bingham canyon mine near where I live in Utah offers them between April and October . They’re currently $6 a person and you have to buy tickets in advance. If you want to see one up close and personal
How humans extracted copper before modern machinery is truly beyond me.
Copper is so unbelievably important for electrical purposes. It's *everywhere.*
That’s shocking
No shit?
I need more Copper for advanced computer chip
@@Dx_Heartedno silver is used in computer chips silver have better conductivity than copper
(sometimes gold is used to for better corrosion protection)
Did you only just find this out or something? 😂
This is one method to get the copper. At the mine I worked at we sprayed sulfuric acid on big piles of ore, heap leaching. The acid would leach out the copper into the solution. That would then go to a leach pond that one the way up to the refinery would need to clarified, either with a clarification step or through filter media. Once the clarified solution, pregnant leach solution or pls, made it to the refineryit would enter the solvent extraction stage (sx). In the first stage and organic layer floats on top the aqueous layer (pls), in this stage the copper is “pulled” into the organic layer above, basically kerosene or better known as jet fuel. The aqueous layer in the first stage is recycled back to the front end of the stage to ensure maximum recovery. The organic layer then is pumped over to the second stage, where the aqueous solution then floats on the organic layer and the copper is “pulled” into the aqueous layer. The organic layer then gets pumped to a filter to pick up any solids or floaters that may have been picked up, with the filtered organic solution going back to front of stage 1. The copper rich solution from stage 2 is then pumped to the elctrowinning process, known as the tank house. The copper rich solution is pumped through troughs with a substrate to adhere to. The plates at our tank house were very thin copper sheets other plants had thin stainless steel sheets that would split the copper plate off. In the troughs are alternating copper (cathode) and lead (anode) plates. Every plate has a hanger that laid on a bus bar to deliver the electricity to cause the electrolrecipitation on the copper starter plate. The power applied to the process determined the cycle time for collecting the completed plates and putting new starter plates in. Once the copper was pulled out it then was inspected for lead deposition and the smoothness of them, they stack better when smoother and are easier to truck out. Some were cut and sent out for assay to determine purity thus resulting the rating. I can’t remember the ratings, but a certain grade would go to a company owned refinery to be purified further and then made into wire or other products. The above grade would be sold directly to copper product suppliers.
Sorry for the novel, hope you learned something.
In the company where I worked, we had a separate small plant called the Slimes Treatment Plant. The process used hydrogen sulfide gas in special flotation rows of machines. That shit's deadly, and an accident at the rail end with a tanker car could have taken out the concentrator as well as a sizeable chunk of the town over a 1/4 mile away.!
@@d.rodrickeamon6133 yeah hydrogen sulfide isn’t anything to mess around with!
I did, thanks.
@@d.rodrickeamon6133 god fordbid should your personal H2S monitor go off. Paperwork and safety precaution all day follows.
I stopped reading your essay 20 minutes ago.
99.99% pure. "Tight! Tight, tight, tight!"
Blue, yellow, pink... whatever man just keep bringing me that
Been studying for 5 years to do this. Learnt about metallurgy from a family friend and now about to move into copper procession. Love the stuff
Copper is also used for pipes since it's corrosion resistant. It's used for decorations too although brass is more common since it's harder than copper I think. As a musician, I see that timpanis have copper sheets around the bottom. Copper used to be used more for things like roofing, buckets and some tools, cookware, decorations, etc. But it's gotten expensive and now been replaced by plastic, steel, aluminum, and other materials. It's also used in radiators in ACs and for tubing in refrigerators and. As a scrapper, I know that older electric motors and transformers used copper windings. Nowadays, some still do, but many appliances and tools use aluminum instead because it's cheaper, which is disappointing as a scrapper because copper is worth about 10 times as much as aluminum. If you're wondering, in America the scrap price is $3-$4/lb. To compare, for regular light steel and iron(everyday scrap like appliances or an old lawnmower), the scrap price is only about $0.08/lb. This is the lowest price, as you're selling the metal to a third party buyer, which then separates the metals to sell to another company which further separates and processes the metal, which is sold as raw material to many other companies. It all starts at the scrap yard, which pays the lowest price for the material, which makes sense because it then goes through a lot of other buyers until it's made into it's final product and sold on the open market.
"how ore is made to wire"
"ore made to slab, it's done"
The slabs are made into everything else, pipe wire etc.
Yeah, I came here because I wondered how they draw ductile metals into wire, but all I got was this clickbait.
THANK YOU! I Was thinking the same thimg
Those surviving 0.01% gonna start their villian arc
those bubbles are truly satisfying to watch
The metal I am most curious about is Tungsten, as that metal has a high melting point and is not very common.
Who cares about Tungsten? Just use Iron it works 100 times better me lad 👍
That airplane you may have rode in has tungsten (W) weights on control surfaces to reduce vibrations. The ball in your pen is W also. That weight in the buffer of your ar is W; likely. Wherever you need more weight to occupy less space, W is important. @@zay0_n4ra11
Tungsten filament for light bulbs!
@@zay0_n4ra11 - Need tungsten for homemade tank ammo!
@@zay0_n4ra11this comment brought to you by iron gang
People wonder how we built the pyramids like we didn't figure this shit out.
Now try doing any of that shit without industrial level tech.
@@grabballz4857 It will take some time but you could do it
@@grabballz4857Like they did in the copper and bronze ages?
@@Sprosbold It's just a stupid point.
@@grabballz4857 not that hard
I’m a truck driver. I’ve actually hauled those plates to those facilities before
Sad to hear it. Your channel has been a blessing.
No wonder copper always has value, this process is wild to get it in the first place
Infinite money hack:
-Start up copper mining company and copper refining factory.
-Set up security team and surveillance systems to ensure workers do not steal.
-Give workers 15% of copper produced in a day instead of a wage.
-Employ only crackheads you found on the streets.
-Profit.
@@DIY_DISASTERZuhhh I think that's called managing a copper processing factory, down to hiring crackheads
99.99% purity, you say?
-chicken man
Gustavo Fring?
@@subarunatsuki4145~Miner White
I knew this comment was gonna be here the minute he said purity
I was about to comment that 💀
Aah, wire....
The engineering and design behind all the machines and robots is mind blowing!!
Haha just wait till you stand next to one of the cable shovels. They are at least 3 stories tall.
I visited the second largest open pit copper mine in Asia. They took us through the entire process. Pretty cool experience.
I remember as a lad growing up in a prosperous copper mining town. The concentrate to smelting process provided the backbone of the economy. Open pit mining sure leaves an ugly scar on the land but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. 1 percent ore. You have to move a lot of earth to make a profit.
The Green Valley Arizona, the city I live in sits smack dap in between several huge open pit copper mines. The high quality ore was depleted years ago so now they are processing the lower grade ore. It's interesting to see the copper ingots on railway cars as they move through town. If you're ever in southern Arizona it's really worth visiting Bisbee. The small city has a pit that is deep and tours are available. It's one of the most interesting cities in Arizona because of its history. Tombstone is about 45 minutes away also.
As long as we are here, how about the huge copper pits outside of Ely, NV., opened in the late 1890's. The smelter was built north of town & was considered the largest industrial plant west of the Mississippi River for many years after it was built about 1905? Also, the pits near Yerington NV. There is a newer operation east of town pulling gold & copper values.
Whoever came up with this long yet intricate process needs to be given credit, imagine the science and math that went behind building all the machines and steps to do this?
money. capitalism. sadly, thats where the credit goes.
Has to have been an incremental improvement process spanning a couple of years. Multiple people would have contributed at each step. I am pure guessing here.
I dont think its one person, it probably evolved into this by different people trying to make this work
Not me reciting my chemistry text book 😂
Lol me too
From studying this in textbooks to see how real life application works.
This video is totally metal. Thanks for this!
I c wht u did there
"That's it" really underscores the fact that someone developed the process of this amazing feat we take for granted.
Not one person for sure
We needed this level of quality from Ea Nasir.
We makin lightning rods in minecraft with dis one 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Last video is from the plant I work at haha
Oh W
That's very cool! Thanks for the work you do.
Cool man
where?
@@memetsolderon the planet earth
That 0.01% left over: “I’m still worthy!”
There is a copper mine near my hometown called "Copper Mountain Mine". I always wondered what they do there.
If I had to guess, I'd assume they extract copper from a mountain. 😉😂 Idk why I think I'm funny, I'm my only fan
It's actually,
"Copper Mountain. Mine!!!"
Jeff owns it all.
Does it cause pollution, and bother you?
This leaves the question of how humans used to do it back in the Bronze, iron and copper ages
Because yes, there's a copper age, apparently
Having relied on scrap medals as my main way of survival economically, those solud copper squares look absolutely gorgeous to me.
Why can’t we get 100% copper
@@latestmush9281 Same reason you can't get 100% anything, it gets exponentially more expensive to get the next bit of shmoo out and most of the time 99% or even less is fine for the use case.
@@latestmush9281what do you need a 100% pure copper for?
@@Jupiter-td4kwhis Time Machine
@@TomaHawkBobXIII. Yeah, I tried getting some from a guy in ancient sumeria, the guy ripped me off
The minds that worked out how to extract these minerals are amazing
Most things are discovered by accident or coincidence and build upon the work of others. Its all accumulative.
The pro-SESS is interesting
These processes are litterally thousands of years in the making.. if say society collapsed and ferral humans in the future had no knowledge whatsoever of anything, and environmental conditions etc where the same it would likely take thousands of years to come back to these processes... occasionally processes are sped up by smart individuals who figure things out, and a lot of the time they happen by chance.. but a lot of the times they happen by chance is when clever people are experimenting random stuff. We all probably remember that one kid who was always doing random weird stuff.. and it's often kids like them that go on to figure these things out. Them and the observant ;)
I mean… you dont need to be a genius to smelt copper. People in 4,000 years ago virtually all around the world independently and concurrently figured it out i think its just natural for us to use metals
@@mikhalych9748exactly
Please make a video about aluminum and magnesium alloy.
Froth floated…bubbles…float to the surface…rich froth skimmed off and thickened. Are we talking about copper or coffee?
The first copper wire was made when two Scotsmen found a penny in the same time.
I thought it was two Jews? Hahahahaha maybe that’s when the first gold wire was made.
Lol funny but does come off a bit racist
It is hard to imagine our ancestors 3000 years ago using this process to make copper tools.
Imo mainstream education has misinformed us in many ways. There was massive civilization. Operations. Human power, machinery, horses, tools, even astronomy.
Good brisk description of a very complex process. The amount of science involved is mind boggling haha
Went from 30 to 90 without explanation
Copper along with silver are still to this day the best conductors for passing an audio signal. Copper provides low resistance with an affordable warm sound, but it's a silver conductor that helps keep the sparkle within that sound. Hence, silver plated copper cables are the way to go.
An avid music lover
you're hardly an avid music lover, you get everything wrong; the silver plating is only to prevent oxidation. no sparkle doing the tainting and the colouring of the sound, the copper is doing all of the current flowing
@luigicirelli2583 Yes, even though Silver holds up to oxidization, it's not the reason why I chose to go with silver plated copper cables. Silver has more conductive properties and interacts with impedance differently. This makes it easier to reproduce the source signal accurately.
@@luigicirelli2583 tbh dunno why "Silver is only there for oxidation" when it's the best electricity conducting metal in the world.
The rubber/plastic outlay is there to prevent oxidtion/damage/open wires. I dunno why some people feel the need to be contrarians.
@@Antibackgroundnoise silver only conducts electricity 5% better than pure copper; silver has the lowest volumetric resistivity, make a pair of copper speaker cables that have an even lower resistance by simply using larger wire, and they would be a lot less expensive.
silver plated copper would muddle the sound, the skin effect would get all sort of eddy currents that would make the treble shriek; stick with pure copper
Why can’t we get 100% copper
And people say I only use "natural" products. Yet the "natural" copper underwent multiple processes using modern technology
well it came from the ground didn't it
@@exceptionalanimations1508So did plastic. Using that logic, everything is natural, which makes the term useless.
that's just typical liberal logic. Totally useless
@@exceptionalanimations1508So do POISONOUS MUSHROOMS👈🏻
I live in Michigan, up in the UP are aware some of the purest forms of copper are found in mines, I asked a minor up there what happens when they find large chunks of very pure copper, They said that it's actually difficult to extract at the higher purity levels because it becomes difficult to process it on a manner to get it out of the underground mines. High purity copper underground apparently wicks away too much heat to use heat cutting methods and doesn't come out real well from mechanical methods because it gums up the cutting surfaces.
What did you get the minor for his 7th birthday?
you asked who ? 🤨
You find a MINOR in a mine?? Damn, Epstein v2 went from the ocean to the mountains I guess.
@@AM-bf9tb🤦🏾♂️
What is more amazing is that someone figured all this out.
Its not actually "amazing"...it took 10 000 years and each step was added one by one...plus nowadays consumerist sheeps are "baffled" and "amazed by simplest things. And coppper production is pretty basic. Its nowhere near nuclear energy reactors. Which im admitting is pretty amazing
Chile is very copper rich and when I went there on a trip I found their local amusement park (named fantasilandia) had some copper handrails!
Loads of copper handrails in chile. The metro system also have them. So users don't spread germs when grabbing the same handrail.
@@6401gabrielthat's cool af
There are also other methods available. The route described here utilizes refining electrolysis. Alternatively, one could use extraction electrolysis, which depends on the type of ore and the copper concentration. Furthermore, employing different reactors might be beneficial if there is a higher cobalt concentration-though that’s a topic for another discussion.
Always fascinating to see copper froth..
The forbidden/electrifying soap bubbles.
This generation has learned to do some incredible stuff and making people's life easier
Copper also makes for excellent sounding snare drums
Tímpanis have copper sheets around the bottom, I always wondered why
@@austinhernandez2716 gives it a nice low undertone, with low frequencies
Today, I learned something important. Thx!
I usually just get my copper from the big boxes labeled " Electrocution Risk : DO NOT OPEN"
I remember collecting scrap copper and metals when I was a kid so that I can play in the arcades or buy ice cream. Stripping the shielding was also fun, cut my hands many times 😂
Metals are so fascinating man.
I worked at Duval Copper plant Battle Mtn,NV. It was a leach system that went to a giant battery.
Copper is a noble metal, and doesn't often bind with other material. You find it pure in nature.
Copper mines in Silver City, NM are HUGE, OPEN PIT. Ore is smelted in ElPaso, TX. We had a copper roof in our Albuquerque, NM house.
Wonder if it's still there.
Turquoise ore found in copper ore is smelted to keep value of Turquoise higher
Billionaires margins be sky rocketing 😂😂
Worked for a copper mine. The flames coming from the furnace are quite beautiful.
Arizona copper mine. Actually worked in the anode dept. for my first job.
Woah, that’s very interesting
Wow, i never knew or thought about it. Awesome! Thank you miners, truck drivers, factory workers, and others in the industry ⚜️🙏🏿⚜️
No Problem! I work in a base metal mine copper, nickel and zinc. 10000 feet underground now. It is fun working in an industry that helps everyone!
@@plutobottles8561 how long have you been in the field and how did you get into it?
All I know about copper ore is from subnautica 🗿
Well you could actually answer the question you posed.... By explaining how those companies turn copper slabs into wire..... Then it might have actually had a point.
That's insane that copper is comprised of only 1% of those rocks in that truck load
It's worth noting a large secondary income for metal & mineral mining is plain 'ol gravel. And gravel is used for a ton of things like concrete.
@pilipolvoron2699 another major source of income is that after the electrolysis process, there is an "anode slime" left behind coating the plates. This slime contains high concentrations of gold and silver
That's because the concentrated ores were all consumed. Thus, we need more and more power to make less and less these days.
Question: Why isn't it 100% pure?
I might be talking out my ass but what I understood is, everything was mixed together in the rocks. You can process all the ore to turn back to metals, but the metals will still be a mixture of different metals. This is the limitation from physical processing it. It takes electrochemical process to make it refined where the specific metal you want can be selected for by choosing the correct volts
In order something to be 100% pure all other different substances need to be extracted. Since atoms are so so soo damn tiny you cannot possibly seperate every single of them from something you want it to be 100% pure. It is literally same thing as finding a needle in a haystack and almost impossible.
It can be. It just isn't profitable to be so. And regardless. Our copper economy thrives on the less than 100% pure copper, if it were, thousand (millions) of equipment, and objects would have to be rewired, or changed to handle 100% pure copper.
Too much cutting and splicing of the video clips.
99.99% is as pure as anything gets ! I’m surprised they can even get it that pure !
Wow! God bless these men who do this!
Really EXCELLENT explanation, thank you. I have often wondered this, abd it took almost 66 years for someone (you) to explain it. I really learned from this ❤
As a trucker, I used to ship those coiled up copper wires. I only carried six of them because those things are extremely heavy
It never fall off?
It can fall off if you don't secure it correctly
How did our ancestors do it though is what im curious on
they used ore chunks, basicaly big blobs of copper, then hit it with a hammer to shapen it into what was needed.
@@yuukaneebut where they find it like the wapoons where are the material from 1 cupperswords or how muzch wood cole you need to transform it
@@yuukaneelike the free greek Staats how they found the materials,they need to have tread so they need to have peac no peac no tread, i dont send materials if i can loos them
Open hearth smelting. Very inefficient and dirty.
Two cheap bastards fought over a penny and invented copper wire
So much for answering the question you asked us at the beginning of the video