Graphite & it's uses

[Charley Davidson]

got a chunk of graphite 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 X 4 1/2 at an estate sale today for .50 cents. What's it good for?

Turns out the guy who's father-in-law died has a family owned machine shop and I'm meeting up with him there Monday to look at a Bridgeport head he took off of a tracer mill that he scraped and a few other pieces he has laying around.

 

[brucer]

got a chunk of graphite 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 X 4 1/2 at an estate sale today for .50 cents. What's it good for?

Turns out the guy who's father-in-law died has a family owned machine shop and I'm meeting up with him there Monday to look at a Bridgeport head he took off of a tracer mill that he scraped and a few other pieces he has laying around.

Charley,

It was probably used for making electrodes for edm machines.


You can probably wipe your finger across it and warpaint your face with it

 

[Charley Davidson]

Charley,

It was probably used for making electrodes for edm machines.


You can probably wipe your finger across it and warpaint your face with it

Now that's funny :lmao::rofl:

The guy actually used it for something in molding fishing lures

 

[ScrapMetal]

Interesting. My grandfather used that kind of material to carve new contacts/brushes for electric motors that had died.

-Ron

 

[Tony Wells]

A shop I used to work for did metallizing, or spraying, and whenever we had to spray up a shaft with a keyway in it, instead of recutting the keyway, we cut a faux key out of graphite and sprayed over it. Then when we turned the shaft back to size, of course the soft graphite cut easily and didn't cause any chipout of the buildup. Knocked it out after turning and had a finished keyway.

 

[OldMachinist]

I use round pieces in holes of cast iron parts that need brazing. Just did one last week, it was a mounting ear with a 3/8"-16 tapped hole. I threaded a piece of graphite put it in the old threads and clamped the broken piece over it. Brazed it up and knocked out the graphite.

 

[British Steel]

I've used graphite as electrodes in my experiments with an anodizing tank, works really well, and as the anode in the EGBERT (Electrolytic Gungey Bubbling Encrustation Removal Tank) for rust removal, much cleaner than scrap steel and doesn't crust over or dissolve into the water/soda electrolyte like steel - I was warned off stainless anodes early on, due to the dangers of hexavalent chromium (exceedingly nasty stuff, carcinogenic and toxic to liver and kidneys). It's also a superb material for lead casting moulds (for cannonballs etc.), and was one of the first "strategic materials", in Henry VIII's time it was an act of treason, punishable by hanging, drawing and quartering, to export Scottish graphite!

 

[brucer]

you can also use it for welding up threaded holes that are pulled out in any type of steel, never tried on aluminum... We use to repair these huge punch dies for semi wheels, tapped holes would pull out of the face of the die shoes, and they would need them turned around asap (within the same shift), so we would turn up carbon (graphite) threaded inserts, thread them in the hole, and weld them up, when you got done, most of the time you could unscrew the carbon out of the hole and, run a tap in the hole and Shazzam, repaired threaded hole..

I've also done the same thing repairing large clevis' and link pin holes on various heavy equipment.

 

[Calandrod]

Any fun ideas for what I should use this giant block of graphite for?

 

[piper184]

Get some wood and make a carpenter's pencil for Paul Bunyon?
May I ask where that came from or what it was originally used for?