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Miatamadness t1_jeerya8 wrote

Lithium reminds me of the story of aluminum, which too was only available via destructive and expensive bauxite mining in third world countries. Now most all aluminum is sourced via recycling and makes for much cheaper manufacturing than sourcing from raw materials like we did decades ago.

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chth t1_jefevrx wrote

Another fun story, electrical discharge machining or EDM was independently developed in the USSR and USA at the same time, but for extremely different reasons.

In the USSR they had an abundance of tungsten which is incredibly hard to machine using cutting tools, being as cutting tools are made of softer or equally hard materials most notably tungsten carbide. To make use of the tungsten, EDM was the only process available. In turn many structures and aircraft from the period have parts that would be extremely financially irresponsible to produce in the USA.

However the USA at the time had developed aluminum to build lightweight structures and products across basically every industry and the only problem they faced was that their tools kept breaking inside the relatively soft metal. The solution for this issue was using EDM to burn the broken tool bits out of the workpiece.

Now EDM is used for many purposes beyond these two, and you'd piss off an EDM machinist if you asked them to stop what they were doing to get a broken tap out of something.

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mtbsnow t1_jeg8jc5 wrote

I've seen shops have an old edm for burning taps out of things.

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chth t1_jegcmh0 wrote

There are even tabletop EDM tap removal tools these days. When you're a new guy to EDM you might show up to work with a few taps to remove for a while on the old Sodick, but the guy on the big ass Makino isn't.

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chippingtommy t1_jeg0h6k wrote

> Lithium reminds me of the story of aluminum, which too was only available via destructive and expensive bauxite mining

but lithium mining isn't expensive or destructive. Maybe you're thinking of shale oil mining?

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hunter5226 t1_jegk2nk wrote

Can you provide evidence of a non-destructive lithium mine? Not saying I don't believe you, but I have just never heard of lithium mining as anything other than destructive.

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Beyond-Time t1_jegq5ku wrote

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/24/1123564599/chile-lithium-mining-atacama-desert

This area is largely uninhabitable for people, has few wildlife (note: not 0) and is not suitable for growing crops or housing any reserves. It's about as environmentally friendly as it gets. Now, if you consider evaporating water off of brine in a high altitude, uninhabitable desert as environmentally destructive, and would use the same term for destroying forests with much bio-diversity, than the term is meaningless.

Point being, this is where a large chunk of the worlds lithium comes from and it's a desert, and I would consider it non-destructive.

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