Upgrade/RFFoil/WoodsMetal

Wood's metal is an allay with a low melting point, about 60 degrees C. A lot of information on Woods metal can just be found on WikiPedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood%27s_metal

Wood's contains cadmium and lead, and therefore is poisonous. However, there are a variety of alloys with similar low melting point. Not all of these are poisonous, for instance Field's metal. The latter is a lot more expensive, but that's probably not a problem since we don't need a whole lot of it.

A few things that I found so far (September 2014)

• non-toxic are field's metal (62 C) and cerrolow 136 *58 C)
• cerrosafe (74 C) is said to be specifically suitable for machining: this is probably because on solidification is first shrinks a little and then slowly expands again. after 1 hour it has almost exactly the same size as in the molten state
• cerrobend (basically Wood's metal) expands on solidification by about a factor 1.006
• solid field's metal has a thermal expansion coefficient that is very close to Aluminum (22 x 10^-6)

Where to buy

Wood's metal is sometimes sold under the name 'Cerrobend'. Mari form VDL pointed us to these companies:

• http://www.hitechalloys.com/hitechalloys_002.htm
• http://www.boltonmetalproducts.com/Specifications.html
• http://www.lowdenlimited.co.uk/

For Field's metal I found this company:

http://www.rotometals.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=fields+metal