161–170 of 249 posts
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.
Of course, maybe a core of this stuff with an outer shell of hardened steel.
> 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?
I wish there were a way to get a sample of this to the lockpickinglawyer.
I'm guessing he'd bust out a blowtorch and make short work of it.
The ceramic balls though, hoo boy. Here's one with a ceramic bearing ball vs a high speed air ram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6nvM7pYBGc
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Not to mention pre-cutting bike racks themselves (and handrails, etc. that people lock their bikes to ), and then putting some duct tape or something over the cut. When they get ready to take your bike they don't have to cut a thing. Just lift up the cut section, slip your chain/lock through the gap, and go.
Even without a pre-cut rack, its pretty common that whatever you've locked up to (sign post, bike rack, parking meter, handrail, etc) is a lower grade of steel than the ultra-hard stuff on the shackle of a good bike lock or chain anyways. No need to pre-cut that cheap galvanized steel sign post if you don't want to, a thief would have no problem getting through it quickly if something attractive was locked up. I'll u…
Way back in highschool this always used to baffle me. You'd get kids spending $50+ on super fancy locks for their lockers, but all these locks equally were fastened to the locker with a flimsy little hasp that you could cut with a pair of tin snips, assuming you didn't just bend back the door of the locker itself.
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In any major city really the solution is to never lock anything up in public that is worth more than $400 or so. I have two road bikes, the insurance replacement value of each would probably be $3000, and I wouldn't even dream of buying a lock. I literally don't even know where my lock is. The last time I saw a lock was when I put it in a box of stuff on a shelf in my garage 10+ years ago. If you have a nice road bik…
We definitely mind, we're just too polite to tell you. Knowing your friend spends thousands (plural) on their bike makes you feel bad about not wanting their "clean" tires, which definitely didn't roll through dog turds and cat pee on the way there, on your floors.
> 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.
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What does literary ability have to do with anything else a person has done? Would Macbeth or Pride and Prejudice have been worse books if they were written by Hitler for example?
This non-cuttable metal material sounds extremely useful: > "Security applications such as doors or barriers (as protection from forcible entry attacks) are obvious ones. However, our material technology could also be useful for enhancing the cutting resistance of shoe soles or protective clothing. Workers could benefit from non-cuttable elbow pads or forearm guards in environments with industrial tools." As someone…
This material is completely unsuited for making shoe soles or elbow pads; it's a two-inch-thick plate of aluminum foam with half-inch ceramic spheres embedded in it. Around that they welded steel plates to give it a uniform surface. It'd make a very heavy but uncuttable door, but you can't make hinges or locks out of it. It would be a good material to make safes out of; those already have thick walls of composite mat…
Is there any reason to think that it's impossible to scale it down? e.g. for PPE, 5mm ceramic spheres in a 1cm-thick Aluminimum foam with some 1mm steel plates on either side?
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I’ve watched a bunch of lockpickinglawyer videos and there are locks he cannot pick at all, and locks which take a hell of a lot of punishment from a Ramset gun. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that you could build a bike lock which would effectively deter thieves. After all, it doesn’t have to be indestructible, it just has to convince the thief that your bike is not worth the time and risk of attracting at…
One painful lesson I learned after having an expensive bike with an expensive lock stolen is that as you harden the lock at some point the weakest link shifts from being the lock to the thing the lock is attached to.