Copper Nickel Gold balls

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ray_parkhurst
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Copper Nickel Gold balls

Post by ray_parkhurst »

I went to an estate sale today. I love estate sales almost as much as electronic swaps, maybe in some ways even more! The good ones have been minimally picked-over by the heirs, and it's amazing what you can find there. Basically today's was a garage full of an eclectic old guy's accumulation of treasures, most of which it appears the heirs had no clue what to make of it all.

I got a nice old SK 50mm enlarging lens, and an optics textbook, and although there were other optics items there that's all that piqued my interest. Mostly he had a lot of interesting tools and such, but a few items really looked interesting. There was a 2" diameter, 5/8" thick disk of pure Tungsten. Not a common item. Plus many other weird things that I am still going through.

The reason for my post is that I found in a box a small vial marked Copper Nickel Gold, with about 1/4" deep of very small metal balls. They are clearly gold, but must be Cu/Ni alloy based on the sticker. Does anyone know what these might be used for? I think they are ~10um in diameter but that's only an estimate. I'll do a measurement a bit later.

Anyway, now they are mine to figure out...

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

I just ran across a vial of ~10ml of Methylene Blue crystals. What the heck?

Pau
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Post by Pau »

ray_parkhurst wrote:I just ran across a vial of ~10ml of Methylene Blue crystals. What the heck?
A very usual biological dye: for school wet slides for Microscopy, medical staining or for colorizing flowers
Pau

zzffnn
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Post by zzffnn »

Ray, how did you manage to find all those cool stuffs?

I go to local estate sales and swaps sometimes too, but rarely find things like those (for example, I rarely find good prime lens locally, other than the boring 50mm f/1.8 varieties).

Methylene blue is used medically too, sometimes as antidote for poisons. Wiki has it right. Was the previous owner an alchemist :twisted:

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

zzffnn wrote:Ray, how did you manage to find all those cool stuffs?

I go to local estate sales and swaps sometimes too, but rarely find things like those (for example, I rarely find good prime lens locally, other than the boring 50mm f/1.8 varieties).

Methylene blue is used medically too, sometimes as antidote for poisons. Wiki has it right. Was the previous owner an alchemist :twisted:
Maybe so, given the eclectic nature of what he had. I only took home the things I was really interested in. The gold balls and methylene blue were in a little compartmentalized tray with a host of other weird things. The W disk was in a drawer in a regular type organizer cabinet. The other drawers had screws and tools and razor blades, ie normal organizer cabinet stuff, but there in the middle was a drawer marked "W" and had this disk. What would someone use a disk of Tungsten for? It clearly has some wear on one surface.

I also picked up a nice heat gun, a variac, a beautiful lambda 40V power supply (bench type, not component), a bunch of double stick tape with dispenser, a like-new weller soldering iron, a roll of sandpaper, several vintage clamps, a set of Nicholson needle files, etc. I was there early so the "good stuff" was still there. No telling what folks took away while I was there, or that I missed.

Bob-O-Rama
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Get out of my basement!

Post by Bob-O-Rama »

It sounds like the estate sale my kids will be having some day. Put me on your calendar for 2045, if not sooner. And yes, I do have small vials of metal microspheres. They show up in various applications from fluidized catalyst beds to scale / size references for micro-photography and for sintering applications.

genera
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Re: Copper Nickel Gold balls

Post by genera »

ray_parkhurst wrote:

The reason for my post is that I found in a box a small vial marked Copper Nickel Gold, with about 1/4" deep of very small metal balls. They are clearly gold, but must be Cu/Ni alloy based on the sticker. Does anyone know what these might be used for? I think they are ~10um in diameter but that's only an estimate. I'll do a measurement a bit later.

Anyway, now they are mine to figure out...
It's probably a brazing alloy, in powder or ball form, depending on the diameter.
-Gene

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