| | |  Before and after arc-melting. This shows what happens when you blast some compressed rhenium powder (left) with a high-current electric arc in an arc melting furnace (under an inert argon atmosphere): You get a nice shiny button of solid rhenium (right).  Max Whitby made this button while visiting an arc melting furnace at Leeds university: It worked so well now he's working on building one himself, using a welder as the power source.
 
 He'll use it to make solids out of powders for a number of elements that are much cheaper in powder form, for use as samples in his commercial element set.
 
 Source: Max Whitby of RGB
 Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB
 Acquired: 12 May, 2003
 Text Updated: 11 August, 2007
 Price: Donated
 Size: 0.2"
 Purity: 99.9%
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