Article: Metal shavings are scrap no more. (Sneak Preview).(Brief Article)

When machining, most people focus on the part or product they are producing. Purdue professor Srinivasan Chandrasekar and his colleague, Dale Compton, however, find the scrap most interesting. While studying machining processes, the researchers found that the metal chips produced were composed of nano-crystalline structures, which possessed characteristics such as high strength and wear resistance. "After that, we lost all interest in the more complicated processes and concentrated on the residue," Chandrasekar laughs. Typically the chips are collected as scrap, melted down and reused. But melting turns these natural nanocrystals back into ordinary bulk metals, removing ...

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