Morgan - 24-6-2022 at 21:22
I want to know how stainless steel ice cubes/chilling cubes are sealed with liquid inside them. Is there some sort of pinhole that is quickly spot
welded and as they look pretty solid what happens if they are heated beyond what might be safe? Do they explode or have they some safety rupture
weakness designed in, maybe they rocket about or just split and nothing much happens? Just curious.
Fantasma4500 - 27-6-2022 at 04:50
i tried constructing something like that but had to give up on it- its plausible that they use some specialized welding technique for this, TIG didnt
seem to yield me luck- they might be a slight bit expanded and then pressed ... into shape- no? unless if they compress the air, maybe some kind of
expanding substance inside?
even quickly welding it up with flux core didnt bring me fortune
there are specialized welding methods that are quite like TIG, but has like few milliseconds of high power pulse, these can - seemingly - weld steel
to copper, and probably do many other abominable things
what is the mass of such a cube, and would that whole thing of pure steel not contain more heat due to the extra mass, than if it was a steel shell
with water? with a mass about 8x higher it would seem like if water actually can contain more energy it would be quite close in differences
Twospoons - 27-6-2022 at 11:55
Specific heat of water is 9x that of steel, 4.2 vs 0.46. But more important is the heat of fusion, which for water is ~334 j/g. Melting ice beats
cold steel.
The welding process for the steel could be ultrasonic.
Fulmen - 27-6-2022 at 13:04
Friction plug welding would probably work as well.
Fantasma4500 - 2-7-2022 at 09:39
i really doubt that, when water expands- it expands. when you weld you absolutely dont want water in your weld, you dont even want oxygen, not even
air. which is just a 20% mixture of oxygen and inert gas
its something abstract for sure. the hot water steam just punches right through the metal as its still warm
Fulmen - 2-7-2022 at 14:01
First of all, the cube needs some air space to prevent cracking when freezing. So it should be possible to weld without any direct contact with water.
And friction welding is actually a solid state process akin to forge welding. So the temperatures are much lower than with arc welding. Besides, the
weld isn't going to se significant loads.
Morgan - 3-7-2022 at 08:51
A couple of days after my post I noticed this came out which has some thoughts. Funny he didn't try to nitrogen freeze one just to see if it deformed
or ice bombed? I thought about setting up a test with a propane torch but I'm not sure how powerful it would be noise wise in the neighborhood and
confinement concerns if it goes bang or not.
I haven't tried to even freeze one to see if the non-toxic liquid (stated on my label) has a very low freezing point or not. As there is space inside
the cube the liquid probably has room to freeze anyway.
Are Steel Ice Cubes Better Than Regular Ice?
https://youtu.be/5MhmdM_hq8A
Update
I just now froze one and no sloshing so they do freeze solid. I had thought maybe they had some antifreeze or perhaps just freeze to a slush.
[Edited on 3-7-2022 by Morgan]