Sounds pretty cool, Is it bio-degradable?

It's like carbon nano-tubes; they promise so much, but are too expensive to make in large quantities. Is "glassy metal" cost effective, Indy?

We talked about this on the Advanced Materials at the faculty... I actually held a piece of amorphic iron in my hand... Imagine my reaction when the professor told me what I'm looking at... It was nao quite moldable, but rather hard as hell, you could see trough it, and the texture was like it was covered in sand. Weird... It is produced by heating the iron (actually, steel, iron + 1.14% carbon) to 947 deg. centigrade, between Gamma and Delta stage of crystalisation, then cool it down extremely fast, while applying centrifugal force. The result - glassy iron and some graphite on it's surface... Not too expensive to make, but it's use is yet to be formalized. It does look promising, tho. Very good mechanical characteristics...


Careful what you wish... You just might get it.

sounds very interesting. i gotta make some for myself its like making plastice sulphur

Surely if the iron is made to form such a crystalline structure, it's fairly brittle too isn't it?

@Rec.

Brittle? When it cools and sets, it is as hard as if not harder than the traditionally cooled metal. That's true. It is not malleable like plastic once it is set. It is, however, very plastic and "injection" moldable like plastic which current forms of molten metal aren't quite amenable to doing.

The key, as Chet mentions, is to cause the metal or, more appropriately, alloy, to cool amorphously or, to cool in a way that crystalline structures are not achieved at solidification.

@Esqy.

One example of its qualities is that if a sphere is made of amorphously cooled steel, when dropped onto a hard metal surface, the sphere will bounce for more than two minutes.

Amorphous metals are less corrodable, have amazingly increased tensile strength, increased hardness and, also, decreased surface friction.

Current practical applications: Sprayed on cheaper metal parts to improve hardness as on boiler parts, oil well drill heads. Also, if you are a golfer, you may have heard of the LiquidMetal golf club. Its drivers are pinging away on fairways as it is believed that the increased bounciness it gives the club head will add distance to the drive (which it probably would do if, of course, you are able to hit the ball in the direction you want it to go in the first place ).




Fight Like Warlord

sorry, I misread what Chetnik had written

this sounds like it could be quite a breakthrough

Very kool. I wonder when we'll have T-101's wondering around....

Life: No one gets out alive.