A while back someone was talking about explosive forming,using all kinds of different charges.I was thinking(dangerous),My youngest son several years ago,worked in a highly stressful job in a small shop near Kansas City. They shipped things frozen in dry ice.Leftover dry ice was tossed out the back door,to evaporate.He got the idea from someone to put some dry ice and water in a plastic pop bottle,screw the cap on and toss it out the back door.I wouldn't think of doing this near any habitation,much less near Kansas City. Luckily the concussion left no evidence,only a small hole and many ringing ears. Why wouldn't this same manner be just right for metal forming? It would be easy to regulate the bang,from a pop to a wham.By the way it takes a short pause before the pop bottle fails. Don't try this unless you take lots of precautions!!!
Bang forming
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I've read that the common plastic pop container is good to about 200psi. The article was about building model airplanes with air motors. The explosion due to dry ice and water is probably due to the CO2 gas pressure exceeding the capasity of the bottle. This might not be enough pressure to form metal by explosion. Still, if you have a small flame in a container on the one side of the mold(consuming the oxygen) and the CO2 pressure on the other, you might find enough pressure differential to bend the metal.
Spence
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Sorry, it's gonna take lots more pressure than that to form metals. I wonder what the explosive pressure of a balloon filled with acetylene would be, maybe enough?I seldom do anything within the scope of logical reason and calculated cost/benefit, etc- I'm following my passion-
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I went to school with a guy who worked at Xerox EOS in Pasadena in the 70's. He said they made the search light mirrors for the M-60 tank by explosive forming. The M-60 used an image tube for night vision, rather than an intensifier so it needed a a strong light source. The mirror was around 2 feet in diameter,and my friend said they were formed in a tank full of water with the mirror on the bottom & the charge on the top. They would have needed fair precision on the mirror, and would have had a steep curve. I would love to have seen the set-up.
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As a side note, Xerox EOS (actually a subsidiary, Pasadena Electro-Optical Systems) made the cameras for the pioneer spacecrafts.Free software for calculating bolt circles and similar: Click Here
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