Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

scitechdaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 249 posts

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#141

Post by xelxebar »

tzs wrote: post #105
sturmeh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it has a keyhole it can be picked, a lock made of diamond wouldn't resist.

> If it has a keyhole it can be picked What if you can't get your picks into the keyhole? I saw a lock that had a tubular key, and an airlock-like mechanism between the place the actual keyhole and the opening for you to insert the key. You would insert the key, and then activate the airlock-like mechanism which would transport the key to the keyhole. There was then a mechanism to rotate the thing that was holding th…

Bosnianbill's YouTube channel has featured some nifty "unpickable" designs:

* Inaccessible keyhole: https://invidio.us/watch?v=OLsJDELd4lo

Sounds related to the lock you describe, except this one is purely mechanical.

* Serpentine keyhole: https://invidio.us/watch?v=1ey2SFHbZV8

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#142

Post by nettdata »

floatingatoll wrote: post #136
richardw wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say throw it up to the appropriate height. You don’t need exactly 10m and it’ll replicate the drop event perfectly.

Note to grapefruit tossers: Please practice safe science. If you're going to throw an object 10 meters straight up in the air and see how it impacts the ground, you need to not be the ground it impacts, or at the very least your science will be ruined, if not your day as well.

If we learned anything from Lawn Darts, it was this.

Maybe.

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#143

Post by repiret »

fmakunbound wrote: post #131

Nothing in there on its electrical properties. Can it be cut using a plasma cutter?

Given that its ceramic beads embedded in aluminum foam, I would guess any heat-based cutter would make short work of it. But then again, I would also guess a diamond blade meant for ceramics would go farther than the standard abrasive cut-off wheel meant for soft metals that they showed in the video.

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#144

Post by jeffrallen »

nettdata wrote: post #142
floatingatoll wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note to grapefruit tossers: Please practice safe science. If you're going to throw an object 10 meters straight up in the air and see how it impacts the ground, you need to not be the ground it impacts, or at the very least your science will be ruined, if not your day as well.

If we learned anything from Lawn Darts, it was this. Maybe.

Those who survived lawn darts learned nothing.

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#145

Post by hwillis »

abiogenesis wrote: post #57

> The blade is gradually eroded, and eventually rendered ineffective as the force and energy of the disc or the drill is turned back on itself, and it is weakened and destroyed by its own attack. What about an angle grinder disc made of this new material?

It would probably not be very good at cutting, and would just get very hot. Just because the blade doesn't wear away doesn't make it good at cutting.

One way to make something resist abrasives is for it to be/sustain very high temperatures. If you can survive a hotter temperature than the abrasive (quite low for diamond, higher for sapphire) then it will be much less effective.

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#146

Post by adrianN »

adrianmonk wrote: post #126
teruakohatu wrote: post #21

This could be a revolution in bike locks. Right now compact battery powered cutting tools can remove just about any bike lock quickly and can easily be concealed.

Forget locks... just make my tires out of this.

Punctured tyres are not a problem in practice anymore. Puncture resistant tyres are fairly cheap and very reliable. I cycled thousands of kilometers without getting a flat.

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#147

Post by LoSboccacc »

teruakohatu wrote: post #21

This could be a revolution in bike locks. Right now compact battery powered cutting tools can remove just about any bike lock quickly and can easily be concealed.

watch the video its resistant to grinding and its resistance come from vibrating back at the grinder and for that it requires a hefty thickness, so far there's little indication it would resist at bike lock thickness or against bolt cutters

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#148

Post by hwillis »

almost_usual wrote: post #129
abiogenesis wrote: post #57

> The blade is gradually eroded, and eventually rendered ineffective as the force and energy of the disc or the drill is turned back on itself, and it is weakened and destroyed by its own attack. What about an angle grinder disc made of this new material?

They don’t mention what kind of blade was used in the experiment? Interested if it was a diamond blade or a conventional blade. When pausing the video it looks like a conventional cut off wheel.

It's an alumina fiber reinforced blade, same ceramic as in the material. It's the most common grinding wheel material.

Diamond blades are not especially good at cutting. They only used when absolutely necessary, ie when your material is extremely hard. Diamond sublimates at low temperatures, it dulls quickly because of the fracture planes, and it's so weak and brittle that only tiny grains can survive being used to cut.

The alumina spheres they use are softer than diamond, but handle the cutting environment much better. Zirconia wheels handle cutting even better (up to 10x better) than alumina, but its softer. No idea what would be ideal.

Loading a power washer with some expensive abrasives would still cut this fairly quickly, and a thermic torch would cut it very quickly. Kind of requires you to not care about what's actually on the inside, though.

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#149

Post by frequentnapper »

danicgross wrote: post #120
ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> produces particularly pithy progeny > fantastically fastidious on fruit quality Great alliterations. Great writing all around. This just made my night.

Seconded. This could have been written by Churchill.

[flagged]

Re: Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable

#150

Post by LoSboccacc »

trhway wrote: post #81

>ceramic spheres encased in a cellular aluminum structure sounds like the modern "ceramic in a metal matrix" tank armor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour "The (pulverised) ceramic also strongly abrades any penetrator. Against lighter projectiles the hardness of the tiles causes a "shatter gap" effect: a higher velocity will, within a certain velocity range (the "gap"), not lead to a deeper penetration but…

it's more similar to older composite armour, the t64 used something similar before they switched to the multilayer armour with glass reinforced plastic

https://m.imgur.com/NA8gcCE

It was abandoned not because ineffectiveness but because construction difficulties, uniformity of the embedded spheres was hard to maintain

Post reply on HN