What might prevent metal “blowing” and other forms of shaping from working if gravity was not a factor? Let’s handwave-ignore the extremes of temperature as it relates to techniques and the present primitive space habitats and craft.

Is it possible to suspend a pool of molten metal, with a tube inside, spin while adding a gas to shape a container, and form more complex shapes through additional heat cycles in a repeatable process?

  • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    You can work glass and plastic the way you can because at a certain temperature range their plasticity and viscosity are conducive to working them in that manner.

    Iron has plasticity at a temperature, but lacks the viscosity until it gets too hot to have the plasticity needed. If you had a molten blob of iron in space and tried to inflate it, the material would get a hole blown in the side instead of inflating and stretching out because the working properties aren’t right.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 months ago

        Ditto goes for most alloys. Glass-like properties aren’t typical, otherwise metal blowing would be a thing.

        There might be alloys that can do this, but not the usual ones. Some of the low-melting ones can be gooey-seeming, off the top of my head.

      • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        An alloy would have to have the working properties needed, but all “metals” have the same problem of viscosity and plasticity not overlapping.