A family's day with Tungsten(6)

A family's day with Tungsten

He leaves the side street and enters the motor way. Another driver nearly collides with him, he blows the horn and the other car brakes hard. (It is early in the morning, some others obviously still sleep even on the road.) The horn is really loud and a lot of electric current is flowing. Such a horn needs special contacts be switched- they are made of pure Tungsten.

 

 Blowing the horn of a car

tungsten runs across us in everyday life when strong currents are switched; the best known example is the car horn; however, safety switches also contain tungsten.

 

When driving on the motor way he is happy to have this self darkening mirror to avoid being dazzled by the cars behind him. A thin layer of Tungsten bronze on the glass is responsible for the darkening.

A family's day with Tungsten(5)

A family's day with Tungsten

When he starts the motor, he remembers what a business partner has mentioned, that so called cemented carbide tools for machining the engine block are very good business and use a strange element called Tungsten as their main constituent. Perhaps he will look for stocks of such a tool company to invest his saving.

Cemented carbide tools are used for the machining the engine block of a car 

they use the high hardness of the tungsten carbide (WC) and constitute today more than 60% of the worldwide tungsten demand; by courtesy of Walter AG, Germany.

 engine block machining tools

The motor is a diesel engine, but one could barely feel that. He is really happy about his new 10cylinder engine-almost no vibrations. What he is not aware of is that almost 10kg of Tungsten heavy metal parts, located around the crankshaft are responsible for the perfect vibration damping.

 Vibration damping measures in cars 

Compact and space-saving design becomes possible by using high-density tungsten heavy metal as crankshaft balance weights; by courtesy of Plansee. Austria and Volkswagen, Germany.

A family's day with Tungsten(4)

A family's day with Tungsten

He enters his car. It is an icy morning and he is happy to have Tungsten filaments in the front and rear windows. Quickly the ice on the windows is removed and he is grateful for the unobstructed view.

Window heating system in the car

tungsten wires are used for car lighting but also for window heating; tungsten wires are also used for charged (corona) wires in laser printers or copying machines; thicker wires are used as evaporation coils for the metallizing industries.

laser printer components

tungsten metallizing coils

A family's day with Tungsten(3)

A family's day with Tungsten

So early in the morning it is good to have this old styled 15W incandescent lamp on his table. The warm and gentle colour of the Tungsten Filament in the lamp makes it easy to get up.

 incandescent lamp

In the bathroom he needs of course a more intense light, to shave closely for the business trip (it isn’t weekend, when he sometimes doesn’t shave at all). A set of Halogen spots with high performance Tungsten wires supply the light.

Dressed up, he passes quietly the rooms of the kids where an energy saving lamp- with electrodes made from Tungsten- has burnt the whole night. The little daughter is still so chicken- hearted, he thinks to himself.

Energy saving lamp in the kids’ room

tungsten is used in the form of wire, coils, coiled coils or electrodes in most of the modern lamp systems; power ratings are from a few watts to several thousand watts (lighthouse lamps; up to 10kW).  

tungsten wire for energy-saving lamp

A family’s day with Tungsten(2)

A family’s day with Tungsten

The story on a family’s day with Tungsten

Father:

It is early morning and the father has to leave for a business trip. This trip is really important and he doesn’t want to oversleep. On the other hand the alarm clock would be too loud and awake his wife and he knows that she has an appointment at the hospital and is already nervous and needs to sleep well. So he adjusted the vibration alert of his mobile phone and put it under the pillow.

Now he is awakened by the gentle vibration of a small Tungsten part rotated by an electric micro motor inside his handy phone.

Mobile phone with dismantled vibration alert;

the vibration are caused through a small unbalanced-mass motor made of tungsten heavy metal. The high density of this alloy (up to 18.5g/ cm3) renders an excellent size to vibration power ratio.

Tungsten Alloy Mobile Phone Vibrator

different shapes

The story to be continued…

A family’s day with Tungsten(1)

A family’s day with Tungsten

Tungsten-in our daily life

Our daily life is closely connected with the element Tungsten. Modern life would not be possible in the way it is without the unique properties of Tungsten, as they are:

• the highest melting point of all metals (3422℃)
• a high density like Gold (19.3g/ cm3) and
• a hardness close to Diamond, as Tungsten Carbide (WC)

scheelite(tungsten ore)

Although Tungsten has such outstanding properties it is curiously more or less unknown to the majority of people.

tungsten ore

Then let’s accompany a typical family with father, mother, daughter and son for one day to see how they run across Tungsten during their normal daily activities either directly or indirectly and frequently even without realizing it.

tungsten oxide & tungsten powder

Lewis out to topple Taylor

Lewis out to topple Taylor

World Champ keen to maintain hot streak against ' The Power'

Adrian Lewis: 3-1-1 record against Taylor in the Premier League since 2011

In the game which will take in Bournemouth on Thursday, Adrian Lewis, the World Champion, hoping to inflict a first defeat of the season on Premier League Darts leader Phil Taylor.

 

Since he become a world champion at the start of 2011, Lewis has two wins and a draw against with Taylor in his four Premier League and continue to keep his good form at the BIC.

"I can turn him over, I've done it before and I'll do it again."
Lewis on Taylor clash