What’s it like to drill, saw, grind or otherwise machine gadolinium metal? Especially, what would it be like to drill a 1/4" hole through 1/2" or 1" of stock? If I take it to a machine shop and say “It’s gadolinium, treat it like <steel/aluminum/brass/(insert other analogy here>”, will they succeed?
Gadolinium is a rare earth metal that looks and feels about like steel and is supposed to be ductile. I have filed it a little bit and it felt about like steel but this was not a good or extended or careful test. It corrodes slowly in moist air but is pretty stable in dry air. Machining some rare earths and their alloys releases energy because they oxidize rapidly, for example I think europium, but gadolinium wouldn’t be like that. Supposedly its dust can be irritating, but there is an old demonstration suggested for high school physics classes that involves grinding it to see the shower of sparks (I don’t actually know why one would seek out this somewhat exotic engineering material to show sparks but maybe they are colorful or something) and I never heard of them killing a hall full of kiddies this way.
So, can anybody give me a useful mental picture of what it would be like trying to get a hole drilled through a little chunk of the stuff?
Thanks!