How to melt palladium filings

[Vasco]

I am a professional jeweller in South Africa and the last year I have been working quite a lot in palladium. I have accumulated substantial amount of filings which I would like to melt into a solid bars if this is possible. I have oxy/hydrogen torch and I have been melting my gold filings for years. However palladium is different story. The questions I would like to ask are:

What is the preparation procedures?
What is the optimum amount of metal per batch when using handheld torch?
Specific tools and fluxes
Any tips

Regards
Vasco

 

[samuel-a]

Melting Pd with Oxy/Hydrogen is pretty easy, the amount depents on your torch tip and BTU.
With most standart torch you could easly melt up to an ounce and even more, the point is that the metal pool will always stay under the flame.

For melting, you should use a natural ratio flame, that mean, to supply the exact stoichiometry amount to produce water, i.e - 1 volume of H2 and 0.5 volume of O2 per unit of time. A slight excess of O2 will help gain more temp'.
See this link and look at the difference of each type of flames (reducing, natural, oxidizing) if you didn't already knew that:
http://tinyurl.com/7q5k33c

Pooring bars may prove somewhat tricky , but it can be done.
probably better to make bottun and store that way.

When you back out the flame, switch to only hydrogen flame and keep it dancing above the bottun until it solidify. let the bottun and crucible cool down, at some point it will just crack out of it without damaging the crucible.
I have found the "wesgo" crucibles for platinum to be very satisfying and very cheap.

Show us pictures when you are done 8)

 

[dtectr]

Samuel
Thank you for that. Many of us are leery of taking that next step - the platinum sisters, as they react so differently to heat and other forces.
In your experiences, how does metallic rhodium melt in comparison?
Thanks
Dtectr

 

[lazersteve]

Have the filings been refined, or are you simply looking to melt the unrefined Pd alloy into one button?

Steve

 

[samuel-a]

Samuel
In your experiences, how does metallic rhodium melt in comparison?
r

Unfortunately, i don't own Oxy/hydrogen torch. With the very few times i did used Oxy/hydrogen (someone else's), i have melted only Pt and Pd.
I have never melted any meaningful amount of Rh by any means, though i did melted some (maybe 0.2g) with my own Oxy/propane...
But didn't like the huge cavity it left in my crucible.... :twisted:

As far as i know, Rh is less prone to absorb hydrogen, oxygen and carbon then Pd does.



Vasco

Steve got me thinking, if you consistently useing the same alloy and keep the filings clean from other debris, you could probably produce your own casting grains (if you are the one casting them later).