- Joined
- Sep 29, 2014
- Messages
- 2,102
I recall seeing what I'm pretty sure was a Thermite weld setup in use when Portland, Oregon's light rail system was being built, not that many years ago. There's also some kind of copper-based Thermite variant still used to make joints in large copper cables. The ground wire "grid" in a new production building at Hewlett-Packard made use of this method.... railway lines used to be welded by building a clay/asbestos box around the join, filling it with Thermite and touching it off - in about a second the aluminium reduces the iron oxide to molten iron, itself turning into alumina (sapphire!), once cool the ends of the rails have been melted and fused with the fresh iron. THOUSANDS of degrees temperatures. It's done electrically now, 5000 Amp arcs are a lot safer.