My Tungsten Cube (2019)

https://thume.ca/2019/03/03/my-tungsten-cube/

by defaulty • 5 years ago

288 327 5 years ago

quwert95• 5 years ago

I also have this cube as part of a set. As a far as desk accessories and toys go it's unique and a fun thing to show off.

If you get the set that has the copper cube beware that the copper one will oxidize and discolor if you touch it a lot.

elliottkember• 5 years ago

Bar keeper’s friend will shine it back up nicely!

Avshalom• 5 years ago

Gotta say I love the ad copy for the 10 pound cube:

    ADD to your collection! This cube is the larger version of the world famous tungsten cube
    COMPARE the density to our 2.5" Aluminum cube to enhance the experience

burnished• 5 years ago

this is the sort of value driven advertising that I appreciate

cwkoss2• 5 years ago

I wonder if anyone is manufacturing tungsten dumbbells. Would be very pricy, but also super cool.

plorkyeran• 5 years ago

The brittleness would be an issue. Shattering when you drop it isn't really a property you want in dumbbells.

6nf3• 5 years ago

'Official' sports kettlebells are all the same physical size but are available in a wide range of weights. For sizes 8kg to about 32kg they just use steel. For heavier ones they use lead. The very heaviest kettlebells contain tunsten.

modeless• 5 years ago

How about the 4" 40 pound $2,999 one?

WHY? We thought nobody would buy our 17.6lb, 3" tungsten cube. We were so, so wrong

mensetmanusman5• 5 years ago

Once it gets large enough, it will end up at MOMA.

hellbannedguy• 5 years ago

My sister owns two shoe stores in LA.

It wasen't till she raised her prices significantly things got going.

Wealthy measure value by price. (I don't get it.)

at_a_remove• 5 years ago

I wonder why it is 5% nickel/iron -- availability? Machining purposes?

adammunich• 5 years ago

Machining

zanecodes• 5 years ago

The Amazon seller mentions that pure tungsten is typically too brittle to machine.

opwieurposiu• 5 years ago

Because of tungsten has the highest melting point of all metals, it very expensive to cast pure tungsten ingots. Instead, powdered tungsten is mixed with small amounts of powdered nickel or other metals, and sintered.

Also pure tungsten is often excessively brittle.

juancampa• 5 years ago

If you drop it, your floor won't like it. My 2lb one is great though!

andagainagain• 5 years ago

I bought a set of 1cm element cubes awhile ago. There is definitely a change of perspective of density when you see several things of one generic size, and yet they are dramatically different weights.

I think it's fairly common to see volume and assume weight. And less volume is often assumed to be a structure issue, like expanded metal vs solid blocks of metal.

foobarian• 5 years ago

I often marvel at the densities of the various heavy metals especially compared to steel. The densest of them like osmium are almost 3x as dense!

I wish I could afford an osmium cube. I guess tungsten is the best cheapest-yet-still-heavy option.

lisper2• 5 years ago

Tungesten is only 10% less dense than osmium. I doubt you could tell the difference without a scale.

ISL8• 5 years ago

Osmium is not good for you.

If tungsten isn't dense-enough for you, consider platinum or rhenium.

probably_wrong• 5 years ago

1kg of rhenium costs $265 while 1kg of platinum costs $30K.

I'm not saying one is a better choice than the other, but I know which one I'd get.

ncmncm3• 5 years ago

Osmium spontaneously oxidizes to a gas that is deadly poison. A sphere would be safe kept in oil. Do not be around when it is being polished.

BugsJustFindMe• 5 years ago

The more accurate title would be "My 95% Tungsten 5% Nickel/Iron Cube"

ScaleneTriangle2• 5 years ago

Calling it a tungsten cube is incredibly accurate. Not very precise though.

If you're gonna be pedantic then try to do a good job of it.

ryandrake• 5 years ago

One excellent application of a block of tungsten is as a bucking bar for metal riveting. Due to its density, tungsten bars can be much smaller than steel ones, easily fitting into your hand, and fitting into tight spaces. I’ve got a number of tungsten bars and use them almost 100% over my steel bars.

btgeekboy• 5 years ago

Definitely. The only time I grab one of the steel bars is when it’s in a particular shape that I don’t have in Tungsten.

changoplatanero• 5 years ago

I really want to get a gold plated one. The density of tungsten is less than 1% different from gold

eurasiantiger• 5 years ago

Apply some affordable gold leaf on it after thorough solvent cleaning, and rub it in so it bonds with the surface.

minsc__and__boo• 5 years ago

The Amazon reviews make it seem like this is a meme product.

jamesgreenleaf• 5 years ago

Some of the reviews on these are fantastic:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RZKKKAM6FE5AI

lqet• 5 years ago

Nietzsche once said that a man who has a why can bear almost any how. But a man who has a tungsten cube can bear any object less dense, and all this talk of why and how becomes unnecessary.

lisper2• 5 years ago

I have a 2kg tunsgsten sphere. Also deeply viscerally satisfying to hold, and makes a great party trick.

kylebenzle• 5 years ago

I got the big one from Midwest Tungston, about $700. Well worth it.

I love letting people hold it. I call it my heavy ball.

scrps• 5 years ago

I had a neighbor a few years back who was a retired mechanical eng & machinist and as a retirement gift someone gave him a calibrated high percision gauge block set. There was some weird brain tingle I would get handling them, I think simply due to the extreme percision of them, I wonder if the sensation from handling the cube is similar?

stronglikedan• 5 years ago

gauge block

It's so cool how they wring without magnetism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5XOk1oMFh0

jrumbut• 5 years ago

There's only one way to find out...

devindotcom• 5 years ago

Cool cube and I want one. But a metalworking friend of mine warned against getting a ring made out of tungsten.

Apparently a climber had one on and broke his ring finger, and the EMTs couldn't get the ring off because the finger had swollen and they couldn't cut the ring due to the strength of the metal. They ended up having to amputate and re-attach the finger (much longer and it would have had to be amputated anyway, it seems).

tshaddox3• 5 years ago

Ring avulsion is pretty scary too, and can happen with any metal ring.

oxfeed65261• 5 years ago

I had to look this up: ‘Ring avulsion happens when a ring on one of your fingers is caught on an object and gets yanked off suddenly and rapidly. The force and pressure of the ring being pulled can strip off and damage finger tissues, including muscles, tendons, and bones. This is called “degloving.”‘ https://www.healthline.com/health/ring-avulsion

xupybd• 5 years ago

Yeah my work mate wears a silicone band at work after almost losing a finger. I still wear my gold band but am rethinking it.

jacquesm22• 5 years ago

Try finding a machinist that wears jewelry. Either they have yet to learn a painful lesson or they will have learned it directly or indirectly (colleague, machinist friend). That's one thing you learn to respect in a hurry: no jewelry near rotating machinery.

ISL8• 5 years ago

If you are in this situation, don't cut the ring, crack it. Pure tungsten, and some alloys like tungsten-carbide, is somewhat brittle.

https://www.larsonjewelers.com/can-tungsten-rings-be-cutoff

BizarroLand7• 5 years ago

I originally had a tungsten ring when I got married and managed to shatter both it and its replacement within a year.

Terrible for rings, just go with silver if you want or need a cheap wedding ring.

SoylentYellow• 5 years ago

I'm surprised the EMTs did not know how to remove the ring. Squeeze it with locking pliers and it will break into pieces.

AndrewOMartin2• 5 years ago

We can only pray that all EMTs read your comment such that they may be redeemed.

silisili2• 5 years ago

Similarly, if missing pliers, you should be able to set it on a hard surface(like concrete or metal) and give it a few tough taps with something hard. They shatter shockingly easy.

frakt0x90• 5 years ago

I bought a tungsten wedding band and will never again. Not because of its hardness but because I dropped it on the floor and it shattered. Apparently tungsten is very brittle and is useless on a hand that does anything. Luckily it was cheap.

adrian_b3• 5 years ago

As others have mentioned, that band was not made of metallic tungsten, which does not shatter, but of sintered tungsten carbide ceramic, which shatters like any ceramic, even if not as easy as ceramic cookware.

dharmab3• 5 years ago

This sounds like an urban legend. "Ring cracker" tools are widely available, and can be improvised from common tools.

jacquesm22• 5 years ago

Scene of an emergency: hold still while I figure out how to improvise a ring cracker that can crack a solid tungsten ring without further injury to your finger.

jacquesm22• 5 years ago

Exactly this. That was my first reaction when someone upthread wrote that they made a ring out of tungsten. I can only imagine that it would lead to misery at some point. You really don't want this kind of metal for Jewelry that surrounds you (wristband, ring, ankleband). You're going to get hurt sooner or later.

cwkoss2• 5 years ago

My dad owns both a tungsten cube and a tungsten sphere. I slightly prefer the sphere, the smoothness and lack of corners, combined with density, makes it really try to slip out of hour hand.

Can be a bit dangerous for your floors, but lots of fun to hold.

vayeate• 5 years ago

I have a 2" cube and wish I had the sphere instead for sure

UncleOxidant• 5 years ago

This reads like they're allegorically throwing shade. At what I'm not sure.

ortusdux• 5 years ago

I have plenty of samples of explosion bonded metals that I fidget with in a similar manner. Samples that combine metals with different densities feel unnatural in the hand.

Cous_Cous_Cous• 5 years ago

I held a neptunium (20.45 g/cc) sphere once. It was about the size of a baseball and I hard the hardest time lifting it. It was like lifting a full gallon jug of milk when you think it's empty - you apply a force and it doesn't budge. I had to lift it as if I was lifting a stack of books to get it off the pedestal.

ISL8• 5 years ago

Was it warm? That was a rare experience; not many people will have done so.

mensetmanusman5• 5 years ago

Uranium is the heaviest naturally occurring on earth, so after that on the periodic table (uranium, neptunium, plutonium…) things are made with collisions in the lab.

I bet a lot of energy went into creating that sphere…

the8472• 5 years ago

osmium is denser than uranium, the issue is that it's quite expensive.

kadoban3• 5 years ago

I'm quite curious what the circumstances of that would have been. I looked it up because I thought I was mistaken, but ya: it's nuclear reactor byproduct and itself capaple of being turned into a nuclear weapon (or only some isotopes maybe? Not sure). It also apparently is capable of just starting on fire in open air, is poisonous, radioactive obviously and accumulates in the bones. Sounds like fun stuff.

bsedlm• 5 years ago

I was expecting to read "I love my precious tungsten cube... my precious" in the conclussion

_caw• 5 years ago

I struggled a lot with deciding to buy a cube. It felt wrong to spend so much money on a featureless hunk of metal.

When I bought my cube, I used it as an exercise to fight back against my frugality.

But it wasn't meant to be: it was delivered to the wrong address and I received a full refund.

Then my neighbor delivered it to me.

mensetmanusman5• 5 years ago

The cube thwarted your attempts at frugality, so that it could spend time with you alone.

TeMPOraL2• 5 years ago

A perfect Companion Cube.

lostlogin• 5 years ago

But it wasn't meant to be: it was delivered to the wrong address and I received a full refund. Then my neighbor delivered it to me.

This must have caused havoc with your frugality.

ethbr02• 5 years ago

Then my neighbor delivered it to me

The only thing that would make this story more perfect is if they'd said, "Wow. Heavy. What do you have in there? A cube of tungsten?"

dhosek• 5 years ago

True story: When my brother was in college, he played in the University of Illinois marching band. One year, the football team made it to the Rose Bowl. The band flew to Los Angeles to perform and do tourist stuff. On the beach, in a fit of eccentricity, he started picking up rocks from the beach and calling them seashells.

He brought the rocks back to Chicago.

Our grandfather picked him up at the airport and picking up his suitcase, said, "This is really heavy. What, do you have rocks in here?"

"Yes," my brother answered.

galaxyLogic2• 5 years ago

Better tungsten than bitcoins

nextaccountic2• 5 years ago

Why did you fight your frugality?

Ashanmaril• 5 years ago

I want to buy one but looking at the Amazon Canada listing, it's gonna rack up to $250 + tax

jarenmf2• 5 years ago

Same in Germany, it's 250 EUR

huhtenberg2• 5 years ago

~ 180 EUR if you order directly from https://midwesttungsten.com. Not sure if it's covers the import tax or not though.

MgB22• 5 years ago

In Germany, you can get your tungsten at Smart Elements

nimbius• 5 years ago

I work sometimes in a metal shop where Tungsten alloys abound. This might be the stupidest hn post I've ever read.

You bought a piece of metal at vastly inflated prices for a very narrow range of performance over a specific set of conditions. Nothing more. Being the hardest isn't being the best. Tungsten is extraordinarily brittle. A hard drop on concrete could crack it.

I'd also argue without a MA (metal analysis or labsheet) you probably bought some tungsten. Lead, slag, tin and other undesirable byproducts also weigh a lot. Your cube, without proper inspection, may also be slightly radioactive as its likely sourced from scrap. This could be good or bad, but the cube most definitely isn't a meaningful purchase.

ScaleneTriangle2• 5 years ago

Every material more dense than tungsten costs more than tungsten, and the same goes for anything that even close close. Only thing you need to do to determine if you were screwed or not is measure the density. Since it's a cube the only thing you need is a ruler and a scale.

As for the value to a consumer. That comes almost entirely from its density not its hardness, something you'd know if you read OP.

As for the "vastly inflated prices" if you have the ability to produce and sell 1 kilogram cubes with the side length of an inch and a half for significantly less than OP paid then you should consider selling that information and retiring.

kragen11• 5 years ago

What are the materials with similar, but lower, densities? WC, I guess, at 15.63 g/cc; what else?

Apparently wholesale tungsten costs US$30/kg, which is about one fourth the US$130 cost the guy paid. I'd think either wire EDM or wire ECM would be able to dice tungsten into featureless cubes for a lot less than US$100/kg. Its brittleness wouldn't be a problem.

Also, it could very easily be impure, or even not tungsten at all; lots of people have gotten tricked into buying tungsten-carbide jewelry they thought was tungsten, and tungsten carbide isn't even metal. The Amazon seller says it's actually 5% nickel and iron, though I'm not clear whether it's an alloy or a powder-metallurgy sinter using those metals as sintering aids. Alloys aren't necessarily less dense than their densest pure component, so impurities might not even lower the density. X-ray fluorescence would be a cheap way to detect heavy-metal impurities (though not, say, boron, carbon, or nitrogen).

The guy is excited about how it's durable and will last for a long time. I think he will be disappointed if it really is so brittle that he chips the corner off by dropping it on the floor. Probably the nickel and iron will prevent that.

jarenmf2• 5 years ago

If it brings OP joy, it's a reasonable and meaningful purchase

bob1029• 5 years ago

This might be the stupidest hn post I've ever read.

I don't know... Seems your own post has missed the mark pretty sharply as well.

To me, it was abundantly clear that the purpose of this tungsten cube is not for engineering or practical utility.

mhb• 5 years ago

Yes, but it seems like the Pet Rock for this crowd. It's entertaining to give it a heft, but I doubt if it will see as much daily use as his amortization projection suggests.

I think a better desk objet is a Curta calculator.

galaxyLogic2• 5 years ago

he purpose of this tungsten cube is not for engineering or practical utility.

I would think you can easily sell it for the same or better price. It's like gold. It's a capacitor of wealth

dekhn2• 5 years ago

i bought a CNC so I could make my own cubes. It's very nice. I often make objects just so I can hold them later.

ghostbrainalpha2• 5 years ago

Wait.... are you being sarcastic?

Or did you really spend $5,000 on a machine for your hobby of making cubes just so you can hold them?

If you are serious, I think we could be friends. Maybe I should make a subreddit for people like us?

dekhn2• 5 years ago

I spent $2K (X-carve). I've made spheres, cubes, boxes, various 3D shapes I bought on Ebay, and keep the parts around (they're nice to look at as well as hold during long meetings). A cube with filleted edges is particularly nice, although you can make that easily with just a table saw and a sander. If you sand it enough, it can be unbelievably smooth. or you can make it rough.

note that I'm mainly doing wood because the x-carve can't carve aluminum easily (no idea about tungsten). If I could make metal cubes, I would.

The actual hobby here is all sorts of wood projects, like tables, arts, etc, but I still make small geometry pieces all the time because I enjoy 3D graphical objects in the real world.

I mainly read https://www.reddit.com/r/CNC/ but you may also find this interesting: https://www.instructables.com/Turners-Cube-Manual-Machine/

mdorazio• 5 years ago

Pro tip: as with many things on Amazon, you can usually get these cubes (or spheres) for a fair amount less on eBay.

telaandrews• 5 years ago

I've got a couple similarly-sized hunks of aluminum and vanadium that I got from a steel mill tour when in college. I enjoy the difference in densities in my hand, but I don't know about $130 of enjoyment for one more in the set.

rdevsrex• 5 years ago

This is cool, but I still want to stack some gold coins.

1970-01-01• 5 years ago

Much cheaper if you can negotiate a price while cutting out the middleman (Scamazon):

https://www.tungstenheavypowder.com/tungsten-balls-spheres-c...

onychomys• 5 years ago

That place looks like you're meant to shop in bulk. Having one cube would be cool, but I probably don't need a thousand of them.

Aardwolf• 5 years ago

The prices are listed as "Request quote". So it could as well be more expensive

mclightning• 5 years ago

This is one of those moments I feel so out of touch with the community here. Is this even real life?

mensetmanusman5• 5 years ago

Aha, yes. I wanted one for a mini periodic table.

divbzero2• 5 years ago

Would you include radioactive elements in your real life periodic table?

skohan• 5 years ago

I actually had the opposite reaction. A few months ago, I was researching a project involving a counterweight, and the periodic table led me to tungsten on account of its density. That was until I saw the price.

Ever since then I have been vaguely considering buying a tungsten cube as a curiosity. I am bemused to find that others on hacker news seem to have arrived at the same idea.

kragen11• 5 years ago

Totally by coincidence, yesterday I was trying to plot out the cost/kg vs. density Pareto optimality curve. Construction sand is US$0.03/kg and 2.4 g/cc; magnetite is US$0.10/kg and about 5 g/cc (I don't have the notes in front of me); scrap steel is US$0.20/kg and 7.9 g/cc; scrap lead is US$0.95/kg and 11.3 g/cc or maybe a bit less; tungsten is US$30/kg and 19 g/cc; and osmium is US$13000/kg and 22.65 g/cc. I'm interested to know what I'm missing; is there anything denser than steel but cheaper than lead, for example, or denser than magnetite but cheaper than scrap steel? Is there tungsten carbide that's cheaper than tungsten?

Mercury is denser than lead but doesn't have a well-defined market price any more and has certain disadvantages. Many mercury amalgams would be a better substitute in many circumstances, but they might impose high costs on you for reasons that come down to pure superstition.

AndrewOMartin2• 5 years ago

Maybe you'll prefer one of the million articles about a passive £10k MRR, or how I sold my Twitter bit for an infinity billion dollar valuation, but this thread is about someone who spent a slightly disconcerting amount of money on an entirely inert, but hefty, cube of material and finds it pleasant.

tiborsaas2• 5 years ago

If you take a closer look, it's a brilliant sales pitch with an affiliate link to Amazon.

eps2• 5 years ago

I see two links there, neither is of an affiliate type.

yrral• 5 years ago

William Osman had a video where he "experimented" with a huge tungsten cube. It's quite entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O551__3ppM

Another interesting fact about tungsten is that its density is 99.75% of that of gold. So essentially you can model how heavy something is if it was made out of pure gold with tungsten. Additionally, apparently gold counterfeiters sometimes put tungsten inside of gold bars to fake gold

jacquesm22• 5 years ago

That is a terrible video.

daemoens• 5 years ago

I thought it was entertaining.

mkaic• 5 years ago

Thanks for reminding me that this video exists. William never fails to make me laugh.

code_duck2• 5 years ago

I have a collection of thin tungsten cylinders if anyone is in the market!

Glassblowers use tungsten rods to pierce borosilicate glass. When you get tungsten and a piece of glass hot, you can push the tungsten through the glass fairly easily. Tungsten doesn’t get “wet” and stick to glass at these temperatures (~2000F), unlike other metals we use such as steel or brass. We tend to buy these at the welding store (arc welders use them as electrodes or something).

skykooler2• 5 years ago

Note that if you're buying welding tungsten as a plaything, avoid the oneswith the red paint on the end - they contain thorium to improve the electrical arc and as such are a bit radioactive, and shouldn't be directly handled for long periods.

rusteh1• 5 years ago

I'm a hobbyist tig welder. 1-2% thoriated electrodes emit alpha particles that won't penetrate skin. It's really only a risk if you breath in a lot of the dust created by grinding the tip of the electrode to a point. That said, ceriated, lanthanated and pure tungsten electrodes are widely available.

code_duck2• 5 years ago

Indeed, the thorium ones definitely shouldn’t be put into a 5000 degree flame 2 feet in front of your head. All the other metals in glass work are bad enough.

aappleby• 5 years ago

I love my tungsten cube <3

BenoitEssiambre• 5 years ago

I didn't realize that tungsten was as heavy as gold. I always wanted to to hold a gold bar for the same reasons. When I see a picture of someone holding a gold bar, I always wonder if they are struggling much more than apparent because of the insane density (almost 20x that of same volume of water, 3x that of steel). I can't afford the $600K for a gold bar however.

tiborsaas2• 5 years ago

Then you'd find this interesting too: there's quite a lot of gold stolen or faked like this:

"Exclusive: Fake-branded bars slip dirty gold into world markets"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gold-swiss-fakes-exclusiv...

saba2008• 5 years ago

Bank of England museum had a holdable gold bar. And yes, cage around it was probably for prevention of body damage, rather than theft.

zamadatix3• 5 years ago

I got one as well, around the same time actually, as a gift. I also fell into a strange fascination with it and find it fun to hold in the exact same ways as the author. Folks tend to get me 1" element (or sometimes non elemental but interesting in another way) cubes as gifts now which works out as it gives a great range of price to choose from while maintaining surprise with the guarantee I'll enjoy it.

I've had my sites set on something this size https://midwesttungsten.com/tungsten-cube/ for a while now. (about as much as I would feel safe setting down or handing to people considering the hard edges and chance of accidents) I've more than had the spending money to do it for a long time but much like the author I've just had a hard time justifying it. I suppose it's still less ridiculously than what many spend on car hobbies or whatnot. I'm sure I'll eventually get something of the nature.

I'll also add I was extremely surprised others enjoyed it as well. Of all of my desk toys/models/prints it's generated the most talk amongst friends and coworkers.

I'd like to experience a sizeable amount of iridium some day as well.

Edit: One of the most fun gifts I've received (beyond the tungsten cube) was a 1" magnesium cube. Apart from being a ridiculous fire/blinding risk capable of easily melting through the tungsten cube if set off it is even lighter than an equivalently sized aluminum cube.

divbzero2• 5 years ago

For context, iridium is probably the densest material you’d want for a paperweight [1] but it’s rarer and more expensive than tungsten or platinum.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-heaviest-metal-I-can-legal...

Taniwha• 5 years ago

https://luciteria.com/metal-cubes/iridium-metal-cube-9995

brundolf• 5 years ago

Of all of my desk toys/models/prints it's generated the most talk amongst friends and coworkers.

I'm not joking when I say one of the things I miss most about office life is decorating my desk with objects and having people react to them. Even before Delta, when things were opening back up, my office was doing "hot desks" which meant you didn't really get to personalize your space. It's understandable, but a bummer.

kadoban3• 5 years ago

Do you have some kind of work chat room(s)? Just share pics or videos there. No it's not really as satisfying, but it's still fun.

justsomeuser• 5 years ago

Blocks of magnesium are not fire hazards are they?

Magnesium only ignites easily when in thin strips?

detaro• 5 years ago

yeah, needs a strong heat source if it's a block. E.g. it's tricky to ignite a NeXTCube even with a blowtorch: https://simson.net/ref/1993/cubefire.html

zamadatix3• 5 years ago

"easily" is a relative term, it'll absolutely go up in a glorious blaze among any other actual fire but it won't set off at the slightest spark like fire starting powder or strips.

It's also a relatively pure sample, very soft, not an alloy like you'd see with magnesium casings. The block is actually a little deformed just from dropping it on the floor once.

aranchelk• 5 years ago

At Christmas my partner’s family always struggle to know what to get me. One year I just said anything made of titanium. Everyone thought that was super weird.

Now I’m thinking it must have been the metal’s low density.

lxe2• 5 years ago

I hope I'm not too late to the cube measuring party. My friend gave me the 4 inch one for my birthday, and it's been a source of constant amazement ever since: https://midwesttungsten.com/tungsten-cube/?sku=40400-03914B&...

It weighs over 40 lbs and it's almost impossible to lift with one hand.

I haven't smashed anything with it yet

_2d302• 5 years ago

Generous friend at $3K!

lxe2• 5 years ago

He's a TechLead at a FAANG company

Bud• 5 years ago

My wedding ring is tungsten; my wife and I decided to go with, shall we say, non-standard metals for our wedding bands to keep the costs down. I got her the usual gold/diamond sort of ring for engagement. We figured we could always get platinum or gold rings later.

I've found that I really love it, and now we may not replace mine at all. It's hilariously heavy and has a nice brushed finish.

jacquesm22• 5 years ago

Good luck cutting it off in an emergency.

sbelskie• 5 years ago

You can easily shatter it with a vice grip or locking wrench, and with the rise of tungsten wedding bands EMTs and hospitals are more and more equipped for this.

Godel_unicode2• 5 years ago

Don't cut, shatter. Grab some channel locks and be free.

frankus2• 5 years ago

Tungsten is about the only minimally-hazardous substance I could find that could max out the 70-pound weight limit on a (US) Priority Mail flat-rate envelope, but that would be an expensive stunt.

jacquesm22• 5 years ago

Not only that, machining that piece would take ages and wear out a fortune in tooling.

kragen11• 5 years ago

Below I suggested it would be easy for EDM or ECM. Have I been misled?

rm445• 5 years ago

Bear in mind that we're talking about metallic tungsten here, not tungsten carbide (WC). It's a little slow and expensive but it can be machined in fairly conventional ways, using tungsten carbide tipped tooling.

Tungsten has an enormously high melting point, the normal way tungsten parts are produced, for typical industrial purposes such as radiation shielding, is sintering (powder + heat + pressure) to near-net-shape, finished with a machining pass.

skykooler2• 5 years ago

Gold is also about the same density as tungsten, though it would make for an even more expensive stunt at $1.5 million.

frankus2• 5 years ago

That might be a bit over the limit as far as the insurance that they offer.

ksec• 5 years ago

I wonder if you could mill a dumbbell out of it, so even the handle itself is made of Tungsten. You would have a fairly normal looking 10Lb dumbbell that weight more than 10Kg or 26Lb. Everyone coming in the house would always (somehow) pick up these Dumbbell.......

jacquesm22• 5 years ago

I can see some practical joke potential here.

CPLX• 5 years ago

I clicked on this post out of standard curiosity.

Now I have a tracking number for a cube of tungsten that will arrive at my office by tomorrow afternoon.

Happens.

gfody• 5 years ago

I wish someone made a standard 608 (fidget spinner, skateboard, etc.) deep-groove ball bearing entirely out of Tungsten - it would be the ultimate desk trinket and I bet it would have the longest and most satisfying spins.

EvanAnderson2• 5 years ago

The tops look like fun: https://midwesttungsten.com/tungsten-shapes-toys/spinning-to...

sosuke• 5 years ago

LOL at the Pinewood Derby tungsten blocks. Feels like cheating no?

alasdair_2• 5 years ago

Foreverspin make spinning tops out of all kinds of interesting materials including tungsten.

ComputerGuru• 5 years ago

I have a tungsten wedding ring and the weirdest thing about it is how it bounces (on the occasions when it’s flown out of my hand - I don’t make a habit of doing so normally).

It’s dense/heavy so seeing it bounce so well is somewhat paradoxical.

(Side note: it may be impossible to cut through in case of an emergency but your finger is not.)

ethbr02• 5 years ago

may be impossible to cut through in case of an emergency but your finger is not

Was seriously considering tungsten recently, but ended up going with titanium for this exact reason.

kakali• 5 years ago

I believe you can shatter then with vice grips in an emergency.

banana_giraffe• 5 years ago

I have a tungsten cube and some tungsten dice. They're impressive to hold, and make a nice satisfying thunk when the dice are thrown.

I also have a magnesium cube. Really amazing to compare the weights.

huhtenberg2• 5 years ago

Damn. Midwest Tungsten Service now owes 'defaulty' a nice little Thank You card.

If anyone wants to compare, my order ID is 10000107xx ;)

MgB22• 5 years ago

I used to work with tungsten carbide cubes during my PhD thesis. They're used in multianvil high-pressure synthesis. With the right setup you can reach almost 20 GPa of pressure. Not as much as with diamond anvil cells, but you have more reasonable sample sizes (a few milligrams). And thats still like the pressure pretty deep into Earth's mantle.

I also used the opportunity to snap a neat picture of a polished WC cube: https://imgur.com/C2YiMqb.jpg

I always had fun handing them over to students because everyone is surprised by the sheer weight of these things.

Tungsten carbide is actually quite dangerous after it has been subjected to a lot of stress (Such as being stuck into a 1000 t press for a high-pressure synthesis). They have the mean tendecy to explode into super sharp pieces when you're not expecting it, so wear goggles.

kragen11• 5 years ago

Oh, that's really interesting! I guess the energy is storred in them because they underwent some plastic deformation in the press? Is that from plasticity of the WC itself or from a sintering aid such as cobalt? I would have thought pure WC would have no plasticity at all at room temperature or anything nearby.

fywacro• 5 years ago

FYI, tungsten carbide (tungsten + carbon) is a different substance from the pure metal tungsten... They have very different physical properties.

But I do appreciate your story about tungsten carbide, too :-)

paulgerhardt2• 5 years ago

If anyone knows where to get a tungsten cube I would be interested. I’ve wanted one since reading this post a few years ago but every vendor usually sells alloys.

fraa-orolo• 5 years ago

FYI

I'd wager they're fully aware of the differences between tungsten carbide and pure tungsten, having done a doctorate about it.

dvaun• 5 years ago

They have the mean tendecy to explode into super sharp pieces when you're not expecting it, so wear goggles.

Well, I guess I need to buy a new wedding ring at some point.

hutzlibu3• 5 years ago

Your marriage yields the equivalent of 1000t pressure stress on your wedding ring?

toiletaccount• 5 years ago

i read something about a guy shattering his tungsten wedding band on his wedding night, after deciding that slapping his hands on concrete was how you're supposed to dance.

professional advice: don't use an exotic metal for your wedding band. some fire departments can't cut it if your ring finger swells up.

theIV• 5 years ago

I accidentally dropped my tungsten carbide wedding band on my kitchen tile floor. Now, I have 4 shattered pieces of tungsten carbide sitting in a box on my desk.

analog31• 5 years ago

Given that my wedding ring is permanently egg shaped due to some impact that I don't even remember, I'll stick with gold.

thaumasiotes2• 5 years ago

They have the mean tendecy to explode into super sharp pieces when you're not expecting it, so wear goggles.

This seems understated. Shouldn't you also wear armor?

danielheath• 5 years ago

A 3mm deep cut 2cm long will heal just fine on your arm with minimal first aid.

You’ll be lucky to keep an eye with the same injury even with an excellent surgeon.

NL807• 5 years ago

Those things look awesome. What's cost of getting one of these?

ncmncm3• 5 years ago

It is, for all practical purposes, impossible to buy an actual tungsten ring; all sold as "tungsten" are really just tungsten carbide ceramic. Really-pure elemental tungsten is not difficult to machine, unlike common tungsten alloys.

A company near Los Angeles, American Metals, will sell you a 0.99999 pure tungsten boule for a few $thousand. You can ask for it to have a nominal (e.g.) 22 mm outer diameter, and slice it up and core out a collection of rings. The boule melt pattern on the outside is really appealing.

You can sell the rest of the rings, then, provided you can find a way to cut through the noise of the $2 tungsten-carbide hawkers. You might be tempted to paint on a design with resist and electro-plate gold where it isn't.

The scrap you cored out is pretty valuable. Maybe have the cores cut out as discs, instead of just drilling, because the "swarf" would be really hard to melt! They would resemble very heavy, thick coins; you can use a CNC machine to mill designs onto them, if you like.

desdiv• 5 years ago

Tungsten carbide is not heavy at all. Pure tungsten is twice as dense.

Tungsten carbide: 15.63 g/cm3

Tungsten: 19.3 g/cm3

Pure tungsten is about 1.23 times more dense, not twice as much.

nextaccountic2• 5 years ago

They have the mean tendency to explode into super sharp pieces when you're not expecting it, so wear goggles.

Will goggles really help? This sounds like it would rip your whole face..

trhway• 5 years ago

around the time of elementary school i had a ~15cm diameter steel (or may be something harder given where it came from - i didn't pay attention what it was made of, it was just pretty heavy) ball from a ball bearing from a driveshaft of a Navy ship. While not tungsten, it was still pretty great toy. We even played soccer using it - the style is very different as just strongly hitting it with or trying to abruptly stop with a foot would only cause pain to the foot, and the ball also would naturally not fly far :)

markus_zhang• 5 years ago

This reminds me of Bill Gates who owns a small amount of every chemical element.

falcrist3• 5 years ago

I had to look this up. It seems he has a periodic table with lots of little cubbyholes with pictures and items representing the element, but not every element is actually there.

It's hard to find a good source for details about this display, but he has cubbyholes for all of the lanthanides and actinides, so there must be some that don't have the actual element being represented.

science4sail2• 5 years ago

Yeah, I imagine that it'd be hard to get ahold of some technetium or astatine

ffhhj• 5 years ago

I instead bought a lamp with tungsten filament filled with Xenon gas for $5. Sometimes I slowly apply a little current to it to see the filament radiate. This is a 150W halogen bulb. I don't know what the crystal is made of, but tungsten and xenon are interesting.

MisterTea2• 5 years ago

We use blocks like this in our electron beam welders to set the beam power, shape and focus on older machines (newer machines use a CPU/DSP controlled system). A small 25x25x50mm block sits on an adjustable height stand which is set to the height of the weld joint. You dial in the settings, hit the block with the beam and using the optics, visually check the focus and alignment. Then you move to the weld joint and start welding. For big power jobs we break out "the brick" which is 75x50x155. Its so heavy you need two hands to hold it and sometimes two people to place and line it up in the vacuum chamber.

Tungsten is the only metal you can reliably use as our machines have beam powers up to 15kW which can precisely deliver an enormous amount of heat into a pencil point sized area. Even at the common 1-3kW ranges the tungsten instantly liquefies when the beam turns on. Ive seen 1/2 thick aluminum turn into a puddle while the tungsten just gets a dent in it. You'd think copper is a good second bet but nope. Its good at heat sinking but melts way quicker.

e12e2• 5 years ago

Tungsten is the only metal you can reliably use as our machines have beam powers up to 15kW which can precisely deliver an enormous amount of heat into a pencil point sized area. Even at the common 1-3kW ranges the tungsten instantly liquefies when the beam turns on.

I'm sorry - is there an error here? As I understand the rest of your comment, you use Tungsten because it does not liquify?

zamadatix3• 5 years ago

The whole block doesn't instantly liquify like other metals, just the small point the laser hit (hence the small dent after).

MisterTea2• 5 years ago

No error. The tungsten liquefies locally to the section of the block where the beam strikes but the surrounding tungsten stays solid. It's a poor heat conductor so it doesn't form a wide liquid puddle. With copper or aluminum the heat spreads rapidly and the pool grows wide very quickly.

hutzlibu3• 5 years ago

What are you welding with that thing? And for research or production?

duderific• 5 years ago

I kind of got the gold bug after the 2008-9 crash and bought a few gold coins. Even holding just an ounce of gold, you notice how much more substantial it is than say, a "silver" dollar, which is the same size but weighs a fraction as much.

alasdair_2• 5 years ago

I bought a cube of aerogel and feel the same way about it, with the obvious distinction of it being insanely light not heavy.

anonporridge4• 5 years ago

I have a cube of aluminum the same size as my 1kg cube of tungsten. It's weird feeling the insane difference between two solid blocks of metal.

GloriousKoji• 5 years ago

I've been dreaming about getting the 4" tungsten cube for a while but could never justify buying it. I would need some extra truly disposable income, like as a side effect if I got really lucky gambling a marginal amount. Sadly in the last year it's price has jumped up 50% from $2000 to $3000.

Kaibeezy• 5 years ago

1” copper sphere. Satisfyingly heavy and wasn’t expensive, maybe $15 at the Smithsonian gift shop.

I keep it next to a similarly sized, nearly spherical light gray pumice stone I picked up near Crater Lake years ago. Satisfyingly light!

I was given a tungsten carbide ring that’s supposed to be easy on the skin, but it rotted my flesh. I tried not to read anything into it.

ipsin• 5 years ago

I purchased a 35 pound tungsten racing weight about 15 years ago, 70% tungsten if I recall. It's large enough that it's triggered my "why do I have this?" sense, but it is still cool to hold.

It's very important to realize that it's not a safe object, the kind you might leave on your desk at work.

If someone tries to pick it up for some reason, it's quite likely that they'll drop it.

Animats• 5 years ago

You can get cubes of most of the solids in the periodic table here.[1] Some are very expensive, but available.

[1] https://luciteria.com/metal-cubes

science4sail2• 5 years ago

They even have uranium cubes! Depleted uranium though, so it's no good for your garage nuclear weapons lab.

https://luciteria.com/metal-cubes/uranium-cube

skyfaller• 5 years ago

What's not 100% clear to me, after reading through some descriptions, is which metal cubes I could handle semi-regularly without damaging them (iron? will it rust?) or endangering myself (lead? how likely is handling it to poison me?).

It seems to me that the point of buying a cube of some metal is to feel its weight and texture, to see it respond to light. If you're just going to keep it in a capsule and never take it out, you could just have a photo or video of the metal.

What elements can you hold in your hand without either you or the element taking damage?

jfk13• 5 years ago

In case you haven't seen it, https://englishatlc.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/randall-munr...

SilverRed3• 5 years ago

I have a few of the non toxic ones. I like titanium most since it has a decent weight and doesn't make my hands smell like copper.

Some of them will oxidize and if you want to stop that you can coat them in a clear resin. I wouldn't touch lead even with the resin coating as I wouldn't trust it to not chip off.

ubermonkey• 5 years ago

Dammit, I'm gonna end up buying one of these, aren't I?

robertwt7• 5 years ago

Hmmm, now there goes my compulsive spending over the weekend, yeah i'll get one

iAm25626• 5 years ago

"The Simpsons Did It" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTLYris4kJU

tohnjitor2• 5 years ago

Tungsten rocks.

karaterobot• 5 years ago

Kids ask "ahh, gee, when will I ever need to use geometry?" and the answer is when you realize you got ripped off by paying the same price for a 1.5" diameter tungsten sphere as you would for a 1.5" tungsten cube.

exmadscientist• 5 years ago

In terms of bullion value, absolutely. In terms of cost to manufacture, maybe not? I can't imagine making a sphere meeting any kind of surface tolerance is any easier than making a plain old cube to a similar surface tolerance.

mml• 5 years ago

I too have owned a tungsten rod for the same reasons. it's very nearly exactly the same density as gold, but cheaper.

liamwire• 5 years ago

Somewhat-tangentially related: I’ve always found the concept of [Rods from God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment) (kinetic bombardment of tungsten rods dropped from orbit) fascinating.

moftz3• 5 years ago

I visited a national laboratory for an experiment and saw the tungsten bricks the size of a normal building red brick) they used to shield parts of experiments from high energy particles. They weighed about 60 lbs each.

cnees• 5 years ago

We put a $600 tungsten sphere on our secret wedding registry as a joke, along with lobster flavored pillow mints, etc. It arrived in the mail. My husband's high school friends had pooled their resources. Now it's on the mantle, resting amongst warm woolen pom-poms.

rrock• 5 years ago

Tungsten beads are also popular as a weight for fly fishing nymphs due to their density.

nate_meurer• 5 years ago

I love this kind of thing. My favorite fidgeting things are two 2-inch stainless steel ball bearings I got from Ebay. Perfectly round to the eye and mirror smooth. I sit and clack them together; the sound and sensation they make is addictive to me.

Natsu• 5 years ago

This reminds me of the infamous cube of saguaro rib wood from Dwarf Fortress

[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:WOOD:WOOD_TEMPLATE] [STATE_NAME:ALL_SOLID:saguaro rib wood] [STATE_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:saguaro rib] [PREFIX:NONE] Density was determined experimentally. Contact Uristocrat for a sample if you want to verify this yourself. A 6g (+/- 0.1g) piece of dry Saguaro wood had a volume of approximately 14 cm^3 (+/- 1 cm^3) [SOLID_DENSITY:430] [STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:ECRU]

Source: the 'raws' link on the page http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Saguaro

herval• 5 years ago

…that’s a sphere though

J5892• 5 years ago

It's so dense that over time, the corners are pulled to the center by gravity.

(the picture is a separate 3kg sphere he bought after the cube)

speleding• 5 years ago

When this was posted in 2019 it compelled me to get a tungsten cube as well.

One additional benefit that gives me more joy than fidgeting with it: it is great educational prop. Kids that visit my place have a habit of picking it up, either by their own initiative or prompted by me. Being surprised at the weight they start asking question and are then receptive to hear me give a short explanation. I love that curiosity.

SpelingBeeChamp• 5 years ago

Love this. I bought a 3" mostly-tungsten cube a few months ago.

Almost without fail, every time I walk by it I pick it up.

And without fail, every time is satisfying.

(The 3" cube weighs ~18 pounds.)

tcspence• 5 years ago

I have a block of tungsten about the size of my fist. Got it at a missile test range. When the explosives are replaced by the telemetry unit, empty space is packed with tungsten to make up the weight difference. The target area was filthy with tungsten blocks.

My Tungsten Cube (2019)

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