Thread: Aluminium Honeycomb

Write to Dai Sensai and ask if he’d be willing to sell some or share his source; he uses it for casting knife scales and pen blanks.

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

Write to Dai Sensai and ask if he’d be willing to sell some or share his source; he uses it for casting knife scales and pen blanks.

Cheers, I'll send him a message.

Yes I still have some left over, but not for sale I'm afraid, and I got it on a one off deal from a Chinese supplier.

OK what did I miss what is Aluminium Honeycomb ?

stuff the steel bees live in

Originally Posted by China

OK what did I miss what is Aluminium Honeycomb ?

Aluminium sheet pressed cut and unfolded to form a honeycomb shape. It is used in air-conditioning and aircraft manufacturing amongst other things.

It can be cast with epoxy, under pressure after acid washing, to form knife handles and pen blanks, see here Casting some Aluminium Honeycomb

Odd. . . .

When I was in 12th year, an engineer from one of the aerospace companies did a demo at our physics class. One of the things that they showed was Stainless Steel honeycomb. Reportedly the honeycomb was used in the Mercury program.

It was explained that the stuff was made by cutting sheets that would open up into a honeycomb about 25mm high. Then a sheet was silver soldered to one end. The same was done to the other end while keeping the soldered side cool.

He had brought a piece about 300mm square for us to play with. Amazingly light. I put it on the floor and jumped on it. No damage but the teacher almost had kittens on the spot. The engineer was laughing.

Thanks for that

A bit more trivia: to machine it for aircraft use, it was frozen in a large block of ice, then the block was machined, before the surfaces were bonded to it. That was 50+ years ago, not sure if that's still the method used.