When You Would Use Copper Screws

By Bonnie Contreras


It is a little-known fact that copper screws are the simplest type of motor called a linear actuator. While conventional electric motors produce circular motion, a linear actuator creates motion in a straight line. As the head of the screw is twisted around in a circle, the tip of the screw is driven forward along its axis.

The shaft of a screw has a single helical ridge, called a thread, wrapped around the cylinder. These threads cut a helical groove when driven into a softer material. Some screws are designed to fit inside a complementary helix, the internal thread, such as in a nut. Screws are commonly used to hold things together and to fix them into position.

A little-known use for a copper screw is as a contact screw in a tattoo machine. You can easily make these yourself in your garage or workshop because the metal is very soft. What you need is a length of thick wire, a die with the appropriate internal thread, a set of pliers, fine sandpaper that you get in a hobby shop, a vise and a small bottle of acidic gun bluing solution. The bluing solution, when used with iron metal, protects it from rust and corrosion. Here, it just makes your screw look pretty.

The soft, malleable reddish metal, roughly the same the color as an Irish Setter, has an atomic number of 29 and the chemical symbol, Cu. It readily conducts both heat and electricity. For this reason, it is used for the bottoms of sauce pans and frying pans and as the main constituent of electrical wiring. It is highly ductile, which makes it easy to shape in to whatever you want to make it.

During the Roman era, Cu was mined in Cyprus. This is where it got its original name of cyprium, eventually shortened to cuprum, which is how it ended up with the chemical symbol Cu. It is a trace element in the human body, where it forms part of cytochrome, an important enzyme. Also, whereas humans use the red, iron-containing hemoglobin to carry oxygen to the body and return carbon dioxide out to the lungs, crustaceans and molluscs use a the cupric compound, hemocyanin, which has a blue color.

Cuprum is mainly found in human muscle, liver and bone. Cupric compounds are bacteriocidal, i. E., they kill germs. This is why it is used in wood preservatives and in fungicides. It is also sometimes used as a liner for laboratory incubators used for tissue and cell culture.

A copper screw is used in a tattoo machine. They are pretty little machines that are very good for screwing into wood, particularly if it is likely to be exposed to the elements, where iron or steel would turn to rust. Cuprum is also used to coat steel. Sometimes zinc, nickel, brass or cadmium is used instead.

Well, there you have it. Copper screws, tiny linear actuators that look red and pretty and kill germs. Because they are soft, you have to place them carefully. It is probably not a very good idea to use them to hold together metal panels used in passenger aircraft.




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