Melting Nickel

[Bill Kahn]

I have not been able to find a source for bars of nickel. But, I have a source for small 99% nickel balls (like 1/4"). I would like to find someone that I can ship like 6 pounds of nickel balls too and who can melt them into a 1"x2"x6" (minus nothing, plus is fine) bar. What sort of job shop does something like this? Where do I find them? (After the nickel I have some other metals too I need reformed similarly). Thanks for any pointers. -Bill

 

[vtcnc]

I would be surprised if you (easily) find a job shop that will (gladly) do this for you. You are talking about $60 worth of material and a small operator working with a toxic metal for a few hours of work. It sounds like you want to recycle some reclaimed metals into bars for hobby machining (wild guess - reading between the lines)? If that is the case, I would invest in a few hundred dollars of a small home hobby furnace/kiln that can reach the temperatures you want. My only word of caution is that you are dealing with some extremely dangerous temperatures when you start dealing with bronze, nickel, cast iron, etc. So do some research on safety, toxicity, fume extraction, etc.

The other approach is to find someone who sells ingots. A quick Google search turned up a few suppliers who sell ingots - the downside is they don't post pricing online and want you to contact them. Two reasons: nickel pricing has been moving a lot in the past few years and because Nickel is a regulated toxic metal and they need to get you on file for chain of custody reasons. With that said, they may have scrap or samples they could sell you. It's probably worth a phone call you may get lucky.

 

[john.k]

Nickle is regulated?.....is nickle electrodes for cast iron welding still available?

 

[vtcnc]

Nickel is readily available. It is a regulated toxic substance in the US. It doesn't mean that you can't use it, it is regulated like lead is. You can't just throw in it away like steel or aluminum.