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63.16.30.7
In Reply to: RE: The "$625 for set of four RIQ-5010 or RIQ-5010W Quartz Insulators" price posted by musetap on March 26, 2008 at 15:23:50
If you live near Arkansas, that state is the center of the quartz mining in the US. Granite contains large amounts of quartz crystals, and agate again is a form of quartz, but much more heavily contaminated.
The purest quartz was once mined in Brazil and was a closely guarded military secret in WWII, as those crystals, now mined out, were water clear, and stunning in their clarity. They were used in the Norden bomb sights as quartz is thermally very stable. I had seem some samples way back and should have bought them, except they were simply ground into cylinders. with optical flats at the ends.
Fused quartz is synthetically made and is used for many lenses and things like the windows of the space shuttle, again because of their thermal resistance.
If you take a quick look at a quartz crystal there are several planes to their structure, Depending where and how you slice a quartz crystal you develop certain resonant frequencies, which is how crystal manufacturers can tune their oscillators. In addition workers will take a small grinder and cut down the crystal to achieve certain frequencies.
Quartz specimens are readily obtained however and quite cheaply, too. If you have a local rock club in your neighborhood, they often will have members with access to things like diamond saws and polishing wheels. The local club here even has a small community workshop open to its members to cut and even facet stones if you so desire.
Also I find that harnessing the piezo effect means that you have to couple the quartz loosely, so that the the EMF fields can actually create movement in the crystal. Small pieces of tumbled quart work very well as they tend to have very irregular shapes (wider bandwidth and more prone to wobbling). You can use a piece of blue tack to hold the crystals down and the resilience f the blue tack is sufficient to dissipate some of the EMF field into mechanical motion and heat.
A friend who also uses the quartz reports that he has very good results with using a contact lens holder filled with oil or thin silicone to suspend the crystals. Be inventive and you can market you ides for $300 and make a killing.
Stu
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