# The logistics of getting custom things made from fantastic materials **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 18, 2009, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805 "2009-01-18T01:13:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/1 "2009-01-18T01:13:16Z")
Over in the [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=502067) about tungsten carbide wedding rings, I asked about getting a ring made of another unusual material, rhenium diboride. This is something I’ve been idly pondering for a while. I am NOT in the market for any such thing: this is a purely academic question meant only for my own amusement. It’s also a pretty vague question. I appreciate your input both in answering and refining it. [Rhenium diboride](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11670-supertough-material-mimics-metal-and-crystal.html) is just an example of what I mean here. How difficult is it for a normal civilian to commission objects made of fantastic/extraordinary materials? I know that, given enough money, you can obtain pretty much anything (that can’t be used in a bomb), but I’m interested in whether you can do it with a non-astronomical amount of money. Let’s say I wanted a doorknob made out of [iridium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium). Now iridium is one of the rarest metals on earth, but you can, theoretically, buy it on the open market for a price [similar to platinum](http://www.curiousnotions.com/home/metals.asp). If I were an industrial crucible manufacturer, I could buy iridium for my factories, but where would a non-industrial person go to buy this? Rhenium diboride is a metal-like material discovered fairly recently that is harder than diamond. According to the scientists in the article, it can be produced “cheaply and easily.” Could I have a fancy fake tooth made out of the stuff for, say, under $10,000? Or would I first have to donate enough money to UCLA to have them name a new materials science building after me? Can I get a chess set made with yttrium and [aerogel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel)? How about some glasses frames made of solid teflon and a cigarette case made of bismuth? If my heart were really set on such a frivolous thing, how would I go about getting it? Would it be possible? How would it work? ---
**Author:** ![Public\_Animal\_No.9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Public\_Animal\_No.9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Public_Animal_No.9)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/2 "2009-01-18T02:22:23Z")
My guess is that you would follow the same general process that an industrial customer would follow. Find a machine shop or fabrication facility that has the capacity to work with the material of interest, generate a work order and a purchase order, and essentially contract with the industrial firm to get the object of your design created. There are a lot of firms that do custom machining and fabrication, creating prototypes and test items, and I’m sure they would make whatever you’d like as long as they have the capabilities (both people and tools) and you have the ability to pay for it. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/3 "2009-01-18T02:57:57Z")
> [@Randy\_Seltzer](#): > > How about some glasses frames made of solid teflon[…]? I already spend way too much time pushing my glasses back up my nose. This would just necessitate a sports strap being attached to them. ---
**Author:** ![Carson\_O\_Genic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cdc98d/32.png) [@Carson\_O\_Genic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carson_O_Genic)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/4 "2009-01-18T03:03:39Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > I already spend way too much time pushing my glasses back up my nose. This would just necessitate a sports strap being attached to them. We could attach chromium carbide non-skid cleats to the nosepiece. “How about some glasses frames made of solid teflon and a cigarette case made of bismuth?” These could be handily made at home with minimum tooling. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/5 "2009-01-18T03:10:00Z")
Solid Teflon is quite soft and a fairly useless structural material for items subject to wear and tear. It’s use is mainly in coatings, tapes, lab equipment and similar applications to provide a low friction, non-reactant surface or container. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/6 "2009-01-18T03:21:00Z")
> [@Public\_Animal\_No.9](#): > > Find a machine shop or fabrication facility that has the capacity to work with the material of interest, generate a work order and a purchase order, and essentially contract with the industrial firm to get the object of your design created. And the more esoteric the request, the more the contract starts to look like R&D… ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/7 "2009-01-18T03:40:59Z")
As far as Rhenium Diboride goes it looks like you would contact Sarah Tolbert and give a ton of money to her research. It is likely that she is the only group that makes it. Oddly, they only make mention of Osmium Diboride on her website. Perhaps there are proprietary deals in negotiation, in which case you are SOL unless you give another much larger donation to people in charge of that. Of course with this Rhenium Diboride, you have some major problems. They likely don’t make ingots in the shape of the ring, and what the hell are you going to use to machine it into a ring. It’s harder than diamond. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/8 "2009-01-18T15:45:33Z")
\>“How about some glasses frames made of solid teflon and a cigarette case made of bismuth?” There are more and more web sites where you can buy materials with your credit card. [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) offers bismuth, for example. The McMaster-Carr company may be the world’s most versatile hardware store ([wwww.mcmaster.com](http://wwww.mcmaster.com)) and you can buy “teflon” from them in many forms (“Teflon” is actually a trademark of DuPont for several different polymers including polytetrafluoroethylene and fluorinated ethylene propylene and, I think, perfluoroalkoxy resin). There are several companies whose specialty is selling all of the elements, often in the form of collections. You can find yourself an Alpha catalog and order pretty nearly any element and any of a wide variety of materials. I have bought, for example, rhodium foil from them, along with gold and nickel and tantalum and silver. How anybody can roll out brittle rhodium into a foil is beyond me. There are plenty of fabricators out there, too. But there’d be a more complicated task in finding and cultivating one to create a unique item. You can’t buy a unique element, but you can certainly want it in a unique form. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/9 "2009-01-18T17:46:23Z")
Fom the thread title, I was kind of expecting you to ask about getting something made out of mithril, or flubber, or green kryptonite. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/10 "2009-01-18T18:10:41Z")
Oh, mithril’s easy. The stuff’s so cheap any more that they use it for food packaging, and when folks are done with the food, they just throw the mithril away rather than cleaning it. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/11 "2009-01-18T18:15:26Z")
One of the products I designed is machined from a solid 4" x 2" block of Teflon. It costs about $50 in materials and $200 in machining… ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/12 "2009-01-19T19:04:16Z")
So the consensus is that the right machine shop will machine anything you want? Would the customer provide his own raw materials, if it were something unusual? Or would the shop have avenues for that already in place? If the customer has to provide it himself, where would one get it? I mean, yttrium? Iridium? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/13 "2009-01-19T19:16:42Z")
> [@Randy\_Seltzer](#): > > So the consensus is that the right machine shop will machine anything you want? Would the customer provide his own raw materials, if it were something unusual? Or would the shop have avenues for that already in place? If the customer has to provide it himself, where would one get it? I mean, yttrium? Iridium? First of all, many exotic materials are hard to machine. You can’t just stick a hunk of tungsten on an average mill and have at it (and tungsten isn’t even exotic). You might need to use so less-common machining techniques, like water-jet, EDM, or plasma. So, if you were serious, you would have to discuss it with your machine shop first. As for where to get exotic material, someplace like Fisher or WVR would be a good start. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/14 "2009-01-19T19:28:12Z")
In my experience, if it’s an exotic material, the machine shop may ask you to provide it. And if it’s not something they’ve worked with before, they may want some extra material to practice on. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/15 "2009-01-19T22:10:15Z")
I suggest an alternate method. Many companies organize their business around an exotic material or category of materials. For example, Mathy-Bishop (sp?) specializes in precious metals including platinum. They sell raw materials and also do shaping, such as maybe machining or grinding. They have the experience to work platinum, and they have the capture and recycling methods in place to retain the scrap dust and shavings and so forth, and purify it and recycle it. They generally don’t do any other fabrication work except as necessary to get the platinum into shape (so maybe they’d make the platinum and nonplatinum parts that must fit together in a certain way). I needed a 30 lb hunk of Tungsten (metal, not carbide) in a certain form years ago, and found a company that stocks and fabricates tungsten. When we started working with Invar a few years ago, we found material suppliers but our own machine shop wanted to try working with it. Invar is an iron and nickel alloy known for having a small coefficient of thermal expansion (its size is invariant with temperature) and it has a reputation for being messy to machine, as the shavings are wooly and ropelike and tend to get tangled and mar finishes. If you do web research on iridium you will find people like this. Expecially, try phrases like “iridium plate” or “iridium rod”. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/16 "2009-01-19T23:57:52Z")
They sell pretty much everything, including iridium and its alloys, [here](http://www.americanelements.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/17 "2009-01-20T15:14:52Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > One of the products I designed is machined from a solid 4" x 2" block of Teflon. It costs about $50 in materials and $200 in machining… What in Og’s name do you use a block of Teflon for (that wouldn’t work better as a block of steel coated in Teflon)? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2009, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/18 "2009-01-20T16:12:48Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > What in Og’s name do you use a block of Teflon for (that wouldn’t work better as a block of steel coated in Teflon)? We make specially pressure gauges for the semiconductor industry. One of our products is 100% teflon - even the sensor surface is teflon. It turns out that it’s worth the cost to make the body out solid teflon, rather than risk a scratch in a coating that might lead to contamination or corrosion. It’s a niche market, but when you want a pressure gauge that will withstand being placed in an environment contaminated by Sulphuric or Hydrofluoric acid fumes, there’s not too many choices. Here’s a link: [http://www.libertyaz.com/fluorobec.htm](http://www.libertyaz.com/fluorobec.htm) You can see the all-Teflon gauge on the right. ---
**Author:** ![steatopygia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steatopygia/32/3132_2.png) [@steatopygia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steatopygia)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2018, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-logistics-of-getting-custom-things-made-from-fantastic-materials/481805/20 "2018-08-20T08:47:23Z")
> [@skyspring](#): > > Thanks for sharing your information. Buy nanoparticles, nanopowders, micron powders, and CNTs (carbon nanotubes) in small quantity for research. visit us at : [http://ssnano.com/](http://ssnano.com/) skyspring, that is spam. Not allowed here. Reported