RARE MINERALS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 1 September 1942, Page 3

RARE MINERALS

DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA

OUTPUT OF STRATEGIC METALS INCREASES Long-delayed efforts to increase the production of minerals essential to the prosecution of the war will have an important bearing on Australia’s capacity to maintain her munitions programme on its present scale, says a staff correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald.” For the first time since the war began there is an acute realisation of the threat involved by the world shortage of strategic materials. Since the Japanese seizure of Bur- : nia, Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies the rarer strategic metals have ! become more valuable that gold. Min- ! oral fields long unsuspected or for- ! gotten are now being feverishly combed for urgently needed supplies I of tungsten, antimony, mica, chromi ium, magnesium, manganese and I molybdenum. | To most people these metals are 1 little more than names. Chromium i is popularly known for its use in j motor cars and modern furniture. 1 Mica is an unbreakable substitute j for glass. Tungsten appears in the ; electric light filament. Magnesium is used in the photographer’s flash lamp. But for every commercial use these elusive metals have a score of wartime functions. They are essential to the production of guns, shells, and planes. NEGLECTED MINERALS A hundred years ago they had nothing to do with these things. Wars were then fought with a very limited range of metals, principally iron, brass, bronze and lead. To-day the armoury of the fighting man has become so complicated, with his multiple machine-guns, bombsights, predictors, variable-pitch airscrews, and , a thousand scientific adjuncts of war, j that lo the commoner base metals j must be added a score of others —the ! so-called rare strategic metals. AIL of them are scarce and all of them are j vital. Without them war on its pre- j sent machanical scale would be ini- . possible. Almost the only war metaJs which j are being produced in abundance in j Australia are iron and steel. The other base metals—copper, tin, zinc, and aluminium —are in short, supply. Aluminium, in fact, is not: made in Australia, despite the exis- i tence of abundant supplies of baux- j ite, the ore from which it is pro-1 cessed. Last year, for the first time in Aus- i tralia, magnesium was manufactured.; It is the lightest of the structural j metals employed in making aero en- i gines, incendiary bombs, flares and j tracer ammunition. One-third lighter than aluminium. Australian magnesium is being supplied in sufficient quantities to meet; the entire wartime needs of the Com- 1 monwealth, an important consideration in view of the serious shortage ' in America. Australia is now making 12 different kinds of guns and small arms, from field artillery to sub-machine guns. The , raw materials required for their manu- J facture are legion The hard tough steel used for mak- ; ing these weapons demands a variety of alloy elements, some of which are i becoming increasingly difficult to obtain Four of them are nickel, chro- , mium, molybdenum and manganese. Nickel is the most versatile of them, j It is u>ed throughout the entire arma- . meat industry. Alloyed to steel >t ! exerts tremendous resistance to shock, j hence its appearance as an indispen i sable ingredient of gun forgings, aero ! engines, armour-piercing shells, and buff ts. and armour plate for tanks. Large quantities of nickel are used in making the common .303 buffet. Alloyed with brass, it makes the hard j cupronickel shell ’hat gives the buffet its penetrating quality. NICKEL IS VITAL Without regular supplies of nickel I our guns and the shells we fire from i them would be of inferior quality. Only i negligible quantities of the metal are ! found in Australia, but fortunately one • of the world's richest nickel fields L I not iai away—in New Caledonia, from which most of our requirements come. From New Caledonia, too. comes most ! of the chromium we need This is an- I other of the famous steel alloying elements Like nickel, it is valued for its toughening and shock resisting proper lies Chromium steel is used m the manufacture of aeroplanes, guns, and the high-speed tools that make the guns, j When one-fifth of the steel is made up 1 of ehiomium the result is stainless steel. I used m peacetime for making cutlery, j but in wartime for a great variety of military equipment. Australian chromite, found for ex ample m large quantities in the Grafton dislrici of New South Wales, has been largely neglected, despite its enormous strategic value Molybdenum. a grey metal whose product'on in Australia was stopped after the lasi, war is added lo steel to pre- | vent brittleness and deterioration due to shock. It is essential to the manu ' lacture of gun barrels, high-speed tools and a great variety of military and Air Force equipment Both New South Wales and Queensland have yielded -nme of the world's finest specimens of the ore of molyb i den urn. but supplies stiff faff behind I requirements necessitating importation from America Its importance t" the armarn- nt industry may be gauged b.v the fact that it is now worth £SOO j : a ton. MANGANESE WINS WARS [ ' rp. J b<> soldier v, tin hat and the barrel ; of his rifle are made of steel, but an ; important constituent ot that steel is | manganese, another of the universal ; form alloying elements. It is largely I this insignificant earthy-looking mine- i ral that imparts the requisite strength | t to the metal When more than 10 per i cent, is mixed with steel it makes the 1 steel non magnetic, a fact which en- i ablcs Australia to manufacture non- I magnetic st°el plates for naval vessels. ! i Manganese is widely distributed throughout the Commonwealth. Con- ; t siderable quantities have been mined j g

in Queensland, and before the war there was a small export trade. Some |of it even went to Germany. But so | great is its war-time demand that in ; recent years it has been necessary to ; import supplies from India. Millions of buffets pouring from Aus--1 tralian ammunition factories contain 1 Australian antimony as an alloy of their heavy lead cores. Mica, formerly imported from Madagascar, but now I produced in Centra! Australia, is pro- | viding us with a new insulating material j which enables us to manufacture spark I plugs for our own aero engines. MAKING TUNGSTEN ~ Australia’s success in building up a i large machine tool industry, capable !of supplying our munitions factories : with much of the machinery they , need l’cr the production of guns, planes, ships, and shells, is dependent upon tungsten, one of the hardest and most magical of strategic metals. It has a strength of puff of almost 300 tons to the square inch. Without tungsten we could not make the cutting tools whose ability to pierce the hardest steel at high speed is the secret of mass-production. Nor could we j make wireless sets, electric lamps, or magnetos for aero engines. | Tungsten makes the strongest steel j known. It even retains its hardness j when friction brings it to a red heat. .Without it our machine tool indusI try would have got nowhere. It is ; produced from two mineral ores. • wolfram and scheelite, which, before •Japan’s southward drive. were obtained principally from China and s Burma. Now they are in short supply • the world over. Wolfram has been mined in small quantities in Queensland. Western Australia, and New South Wales, and jin the early part of the war we exj ported it to England. Efforts are | now being made to increase the Queensland output. Some idea of its [martial importance may be gathered from the tact that the world price • has increased from £l5O a ton before jthe war to £5.000 a ton this year. Australia is now producing her own I tungsten, processed from local wolfram [and scheelite. STRUGGLE FOR OUTPUT , Though ever-increasing quantities of the strategic metals are being produced, the situation on Australia’s i mineral front gives no cause for complacency. Two years of war were wasted before the supply problem was ; tackled with any degree of vigour, j Loss of territory in the Far East has j been a serious blow. Until a lew months ago metal prices were pegged jat such low levels that the recoverey .of all minerals except gold was discouraged. Old fields lay idle. New ‘ ones were neglected. Experienced • miners went into the Services and .tools and machinery were discarded. We could produce a lot more wolf!ram - mica. chromium, nickel. and I molybdenum. We could, and will, j produce a lot more copper and tin. I Chronic shortages in America may yet ; compel us to mine our bauxite deposits and manufacture our own aluminium. as we could, and should, have ! done three years ago. The dangerous ! shipping situation alone proves that a war-time policy of industrial selfI sufficiency is the only sale policy. To the task of making good our j deficiencies the Commonwealth Mine--1 rals Committee brings the combined i experience of some of Australia's heading mining engineers. On their j efforts great issues depend. Success I will ensure abundance of equipment • 'for the fighting forces. Failure would ! • spell bottlenecks. shortages and 1 diminished output.