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

https://scitechdaily.com/proteus-technology-new-material-is-strong-light-and-non-cuttable/

by abeld • 6 years ago

196 213 6 years ago

scitechdaily.com

abeld• 6 years ago

Link to scientific paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65976-0

unstatusthequo• 6 years ago

Waiting for this to exist in an Abus lock so my storage unit can stop being broken into my tweakers.

beenBoutIT• 6 years ago

It only protects you from tweakers armed with cutters. Industrious tweakers with better tools at their disposal might be able to crush it or melt it.

Wistar• 6 years ago

Like, say, a Hytek 6000W fiber laser cutter?

mc322• 6 years ago

At least it eliminates the majority from contention.

waste_monk• 6 years ago

industrious tweakers with better tools

They're probably breaking in hoping to steal tools to sell. If they had decent tools they would have already sold them. It's not impossible but well-equipped tweakers are far less likely than other kinds of thief.

On the other hand they're batshit crazy enough to try other means, why bother trying to break into a storage unit when you can chain the door handle to your (also stolen) car and rip the whole unit door off.

sturmeh• 6 years ago

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

tzs• 6 years ago

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 the key so as to unlock the lock.

The actual keyhole in this lock was never exposed to the outside.

Bobbcatt• 6 years ago

Will this work as armor?

jachee• 6 years ago

I believe that answer hinges on whether "cut proof" is the same as "puncture-proof".

senectus1• 6 years ago

Sword players will still be interested...

db48x6• 6 years ago

If your attacker is wielding a grinder or a drill, and you don't mind wearing a 2-inch-thick metal plate, then sure.

MrLeap• 6 years ago

Porous Aluminum eh? Wonder how well it stands up to gallium, or acetylene, or MAP gas, or a grind wheel instead of a cutoff wheel.

hwillis5• 6 years ago

the ceramic inside is alumina, so same material as both a cutoff wheel and a grinding wheel. They mention that it's not the best purity and hardness, but it's pretty good.

mindfulhack• 6 years ago

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 who cares so much about digital security, physical security feels good.

db48x6• 6 years ago

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 materials designed to blunt drill bits.

throwaway9d0291• 6 years ago

I think that's a premature judgement.

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?

theelous3• 6 years ago

If you make a secure doorway with the hinges on the threat side, well, you're already toast. No need to make hinges out of anything special.

rudolph9• 6 years ago

I want a bike lock made of this stuff

8note• 6 years ago

I'm sure lockpickinglawyer will still open it just fine.

FuckButtons• 6 years ago

Since it uses an aluminum matrix, abrasive cutting may not work, but plasma or gas cutting certainly will. A propane tank and a torch aren’t too difficult to get if someone knew they would need them.

whoopdedo• 6 years ago

"Digital security" is now how I will refer to safety boots and gloves.

azinman2• 6 years ago

So how do you shape/use it during manufacturing?

patmorgan23• 6 years ago

Heat? Chemistry?

jakeogh• 6 years ago

Diagram: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65976-0/figures/2

waffle_ss• 6 years ago

... hardness may not be a fundamental property of a material but rather a composite one including yield strength, work hardening, true tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and micro properties such as strength of atomic bonds.

Now that is pretty interesting.

It seems they tuned the material to resist the angle grinder, drill and water jet but it would be interesting to see its ballistic resistance.

hinkley• 6 years ago

I'm not sure why anyone would want cut resistant shoe soles, but I know lots and lots of people who want puncture resistant shoe soles. Isn't that a similar process to ballistics?

I note that they didn't really cover that territory, and wonder if that was lack of facilities or avoiding the tough questions.

catalogia4• 6 years ago

Isn't [puncture] a similar process to ballistics?

Maybe in a sense, but I think not really. Bullet-proof vests aren't necessarily (usually?) stab proof. (And vice-versa of course.)

NegativeLatency• 6 years ago

Wonder what a blow torch or other commonly available chemical agents would do to it.

steffan• 6 years ago

My first thought was "New bike lock material"

My second was:

"New non-cuttable bike lock defeated by ______"

{freezing, shock, heat, _ }

mparlane• 6 years ago

More likely it will be picked rather than cut at that point.

josephg• 6 years ago

Luckily for us, most people who are very good at lock picking (or good at learning new skills) can find better work that becoming a bike thief. Making bikes harder to steal results in fewer stolen bikes.

walrus017• 6 years ago

Defeated by small hydraulic jack

stubish• 6 years ago

acid to disolve the aluminium in the structure

lordlimecat2• 6 years ago

If you wanted to go the chemical route, galium would do it.

ceejayoz• 6 years ago

Yeah, I wanna see what happens when you thump it with a hammer.

admiral33• 6 years ago

This says nothing about the momentum of the cutting tool. My immediate instinct is: "New non-cuttable bike lock defeated by - Cable Cutters - "

Great engineering regardless, would love to work on a project like this.

omgtehlion• 6 years ago

"... a tool bosnianbill and I made."

lordlimecat2• 6 years ago

Ramset.

tsomctl• 6 years ago

How about a plasma cutter? I know a plasma cutter will cut through normal silica. (I cut through some steel plate laying right on top of large gravel.) Silicon dioxides melting point is 1700 C, and aluminum oxide is 2100 C, a little higher.

kbenson4• 6 years ago

Isn't a plasma cutter actually melting an area out of a material and not actually cutting it?

sk5t• 6 years ago

It does both!

greesil• 6 years ago

This would be great for bike locks!

catalogia4• 6 years ago

I'd bet against it. It seems to hold up well against abrasive tools, but an aluminum foam with ceramic balls embedded in it doesn't sound like the recipe for an all around robust lock shackle. How would it stand up against bolt cutters (shearing cuts, not abrasive cutting), a manually operated hacksaw, or impact? A hacksaw might have the finesse to thread the gap between the ceramic.

FreeFull• 6 years ago

My guess is that the hacksaw wouldn't work particularly well, but the bolt cutters or anything else that just exerts a strong, steady force without much motion should work. At that point, it shouldn't be any stronger than just regular aluminium.

teruakohatu2• 6 years ago

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.

sudosysgen5• 6 years ago

This is an absolutely amazing innovation, but bike thieves have already progressed to using powder-actuated pistons in order to break the internal mechanism of a lock. Much faster and easier than cutting anything.

throwawaysea• 6 years ago

How does that work?

teruakohatu2• 6 years ago

Maybe in YouTube videos but I have not heard of people using Ramsets to steal bike in real life. Firing a gun is a good way to get people call the cops.

Edit: I am wrong!

mindcrime• 6 years ago

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.

mattigames• 6 years ago

Locks should have a layer of explosive material inside, so firing the powder-actuated tool (PAT) may ignite the explosives and destroy the PAT itself, and it would help too by making some very strong noise so people may hear something is going on.

walrus017• 6 years ago

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 bike with very clean tires people generally will not mind you bringing it into places with you consistently.

No matter how good your lock is, if somebody REALLY wants the bike (for the value of its components) they'll just saw the frame in half.

floatingatoll2• 6 years ago

I hope this thread results in an FP post about this, because I am super curious now and there's only tidbits here ("engine pistons?" "what's a ramset?").

mc322• 6 years ago

Prison cells (whose rooms are cast concrete over rebar). AT machines. Vaults, safes... Lots of things. Roll-up shutter doors... fences around construction equipment.

liability3• 6 years ago

Not enough people are tunnelling their way out of prisons to justify the expense of building prisons out of anything like this. And it's too bulky for shutters or fences.

Safes and vaults might be a good application.

quickthrowman3• 6 years ago

What construction equipment could possibly need an indestructible fence surrounding it?? Most construction sites have chain link or orange plastic fences, and they’re not to prevent theft. You hire security or insure the equipment against theft to protect against theft.

Anyone that owns heavy equipment carries insurance covering damage, theft, and liability. Otherwise it’s rented and Sunbelt or whoever is on the hook to replace it.

Safe and vaults, sure.

strken• 6 years ago

Looking at the paper, the material is 13mm ceramic spheres (about the width of a finger) suspended in a foam of aluminium and a small amount of titanium. The bike lock would have to be quite thick, particularly the armour around the locking mechanism.

adrianmonk2• 6 years ago

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

adrianN3• 6 years ago

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.

Cthulhu_4• 6 years ago

Why would you want aluminium foam tires?

LoSboccacc2• 6 years ago

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

Cthulhu_4• 6 years ago

It's aluminium; it wouldn't stand a chance against a pair of bolt cutters or even a pry bar. It'll have weak tensile strength.

Of course, maybe a core of this stuff with an outer shell of hardened steel.

snarfy• 6 years ago

I wonder how well it handles cold.

I remember hearing about thieves spraying down those u-lock style locks with refrigerant, then tapping them with a hammer. They would shatter like glass.

ummonk• 6 years ago

I wish there were a way to get a sample of this to the lockpickinglawyer.

userbinator• 6 years ago

I was thinking of the Hydraulic Press Channel...

It's odd that the title says "non-cuttable" and the tests they carried out in the article are all attacking it from one side, when most people will think of something like scissors that exert a high compressive force to shear the material.

To me, this material sounds more like it's highly abrasion-resistant than "non-cuttable".

tootie• 6 years ago

I'm guessing he'd bust out a blowtorch and make short work of it.

Godel_unicode3• 6 years ago

Or just pick the (literal weak link in the chain) cheapo lock attached to it. I'm pretty exhausted from listening to people boast about the amazing lock they put in their door, which has full-length windows on both sides. Or their super sturdy door with a generic kwikset lock. The evergreen penetration testing motto is appropriate here: the goal is simply to get on the other side of the door.

Cthulhu_4• 6 years ago

Nah, the hydraulic press will make short work of it, the material holding things together is just aluminium after all.

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

epicureanideal• 6 years ago

Physical shields for spacecraft?

Bullet proof vests?

Ammunition?

mod• 6 years ago

Motorcycle protective gear.

ChuckMcM• 6 years ago

Combined with an energy dissipating foam it would make for some interesting ballistic armor. Especially at 15% the density of steel.

jupp0r• 6 years ago

In Star Trek, they called it transparent aluminium!

Avamander• 6 years ago

That's a real thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride

cvg• 6 years ago

Sounds amazing, but how will we dispose of this? Looks like 760 C is required to form this. I imagine it will need to be heated above this to dispose of.

jeppesen-io• 6 years ago

Huh? Plenty of things go in landfills that won't go away for many lifetimes

artonge• 6 years ago

Seems legit to ask whether we can prevent adding more things to those landfills.

liability3• 6 years ago

That's hardly more than the melting point of aluminum (which is a large part of what this is made with.) It's much less than the melting point of copper, glass, or steel.

zrkrlc• 6 years ago

Space elevator?

flemhans• 6 years ago

It’s too heavy

Jedd4• 6 years ago

The freefall of grapefruit from 10 m does not damage the pulp[1] because pomelo peel consists of vascular bundles and an open-pored cellular structure with the struts made of parenchymatic cells.

I have a Marsh grapefruit tree, fruiting now (southern hemisphere) as it happens, and I note that it produces particularly pithy progeny. (Ignoring for the moment that Pomelo is one of the parents of the modern grapefruit.)

I don't have a convenient 10 metre drop to test this, and while I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this citation, I'm now consumed with curiosity why this plant has evolved to have this feature.

I expect it's quite an expensive adaptation, and given that modern specimens are the result of a lot of cross-breeding over the years to have juicier pulp and a lower ratio of skin/pith to pulp (ie. reduced resistance to damage) it presumably was even more expensive in ancestor plants.

Standard fruit purpose is to have animals unwittingly propagate the plant -- entice something to eat the fruit, and some time / distance later, deposit the seeds in a fertiliser ball. How does protecting the pulp from these kind of damage assist with that -- unless ancestor trees were spectacularly tall, and ancestor consumers fantastically fastidious on fruit quality.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1088%2F1748-3190%2F11%2F4%2F045002

andai• 6 years ago

Maybe a damaged fruit would rot before the animals got to it, becoming offputting?

ryan_j_naughton• 6 years ago

produces particularly pithy progeny
fantastically fastidious on fruit quality

Great alliterations. Great writing all around. This just made my night.

danicgross• 6 years ago

Seconded. This could have been written by Churchill.

hyperion2010• 6 years ago

Don't miss proPagate the plant!

oblio• 6 years ago

I'm always amazed by the Anglo-Saxon attraction for alliterations :-)

hackerindie• 6 years ago

Wow didn't realize it till you pointed out. It's like I just had a Princess Caroline moment watching Bojack Horseman

julianz• 6 years ago

I have a 5-6m high grapefruit tree, and they... do not survive the fall. This material sounds cool but I hope it's better than my grapefruit.

DoofusOfDeath2• 6 years ago

This material sounds cool but I hope it's better than my grapefruit.

Flavor-wise it undoubtedly is.

maxerickson• 6 years ago

Pomelo has a bit of a different ratio of rind to fruit than most grapefruit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomelo#/media/File:Citrus_gran...

floatingatoll2• 6 years ago

While researching a reply, I uncovered USDA Technical Bulletin No. 1413: "Thermal Properties and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Marsh Grapefruit". Please enjoy:

https://hortscans.ces.ncsu.edu/uploads/t/h/thermal__51bf44b0...

Jedd4• 6 years ago

Goodness, that is interesting.

It's not clear why this matters from the paper, in that it sounds like (but not spelled out) that they are perhaps trying to refrigerate fruit for transport, where the transport itself is not actively refrigerated, merely insulated, so the reduction to target temperature has to occur before shipping. However this was published in 1970, and I'd assume in that part of the world refrigerated shipping and (large) storage was not uncommon?

Aside #1 - undamaged grapefruit will happily store at room temperature for 6 weeks or more, and be the tastier for it.

Aside #2 - received wisdom is that grapefruit, and perhaps most citrus, benefit from one or more frosts to 'sweeten up', though I have never understood the mechanisms for this claim, or how high-water fruit does not burst its vesicles and then deteriorate rapidly.

TFA and this paper you cited may speak to the latter (the fruit content does not freeze overnight as the thermal inertia is so high), and might partially debunk the former.

cainxinth• 6 years ago

"I'm now consumed with curiosity why this plant has evolved to have this feature."

Grapefruit didn't evolve naturally. In fact, it's only a couple of hundred years old. It's the way it is because of human intervention.

Jedd4• 6 years ago

Absolutely. I also have a pomelo tree, though it's still in a pot in the shadehouse, and produces a single (enormous) fruit each year.

Grapefruit are a cross, probably, of pomelo and a sweet orange - as you say, not all that long ago. While some grapefruit varieties are quite pithy, pomelos (that I've seen) are very pithy - hence the 'this can only have been even more expensive a protective layer in earlier versions of this plant'.

The question still stands - why is this adaptation useful, given it's probably expensive. (That assumption of mine may be entirely wrong.)

Early species would have been shorter, and all species in the history of this would have fruited long before the individual trees reached 10 metres (I'm guessing even in ideal conditions that implies 10+ years growth). Most would-be consumers of the fruit would be able to reach fruit within the first metre or so (if unable to climb or fly) and anywhere in the tree otherwise.

rkagerer• 6 years ago

Gotta love HN; I click comments and am met with screenfulls about grapefruit.

ars• 6 years ago

Also submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23903596

abiogenesis• 6 years ago

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?

kbenson4• 6 years ago

There seems to by multiple different types of material incorporated, and I'm not sure that would work in a blade, where it's really the tip/edge that comes into contact.

almost_usual2• 6 years ago

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.

hwillis5• 6 years ago

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.

hwillis5• 6 years ago

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.

taneq3• 6 years ago

Pretty sure once this new material gets hot enough the aluminium substrate will melt and it'll cut just as well as anything else.

Cthulhu_4• 6 years ago

It's aluminium foam, meaning it wouldn't do very well with heat or tension.

CamperBob2• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_lance

weregiraffe• 6 years ago

That's a cheat code.

sigmaprimus• 6 years ago

Neat idea, very similar to concept of running a chain through a pipe to prevent cutting, but in three dimensions. I do wonder what effect freezing would have on it though.

gruez2• 6 years ago

Neat idea, very similar to concept of running a chain through a pipe to prevent cutting

People do that? Also, how does it work?

praptak• 6 years ago

The grates that protect prison windows are often made of pipes with a bunch of loose rods inside. Cutting through the pipe itself is relatively easy, but the rods inside are unfastened, so they tend to roll under the cutting tools.

Edit: The principle is actually somewhat similar to the anti-drill protection on door locks - a small disc in front of the lock with a slit that the key goes through. The disc makes it hard to drill through the lock, because it spins together with the drill.

nwallin• 6 years ago

Can someone define "cuttable" and "non-cuttable" in this context?

liability3• 6 years ago

It's resistant to angle grinders and drills.

yladiz• 6 years ago

The cellular structure showed significant deformability, exceeding 20% of engineering strain as expected from previous studies of cellular metals

This only talks about the cellular structure, not the overall material structure, but would this mean that the material would start to deform under a heavier strain? Does that mean it would make sense to not use this material alone, but rather with other materials to make a strong product, e.g. a bike lock with this material on the outside of a thin but rigid pure metal core?

trhway• 6 years ago

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 destroy the projectile itself instead."

From the article on the material

"Water jets were also found to be ineffective because the curved surfaces of the ceramic spheres widen the jet, which substantially reduces its speed and weakens its cutting capacity."

Not just water jet, the ceramic/metal armor withstands even shaped charge jet :

"Because the ceramic is so brittle the entrance channel of a shaped charge jet is not smooth—as it would be when penetrating a metal—but ragged, causing extreme asymmetric pressures which disturb the geometry of the jet, on which its penetrative capabilities are critically dependent as its mass is relatively low. This initiates a vicious circle as the disturbed jet causes still greater irregularities in the ceramic, until in the end it is defeated. The newer composites, though tougher, optimise this effect as tiles made with them have a layered internal structure conducive to it, causing "crack deflection".[2] This mechanism—using the jet's own energy against it—has caused the effects of Chobham to be compared to those of reactive armour."

LoSboccacc2• 6 years ago

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

mint2• 6 years ago

That’s pretty cool. can it be cut with bolt cutters or such?

spajus• 6 years ago

They have used a cheap angle grinder disk, what would have happened if they took a proper diamond one?

joe-collins• 6 years ago

I feel like it says a lot about the HN audience that the biggest reply chain is about bike locks, of all things.

IshKebab3• 6 years ago

Why? Bike locks are surely the most common thing people have experience of being cut that they don't want to be cut.

SV_BubbleTime4• 6 years ago

Did anyone actually read the article? The aluminum foam material has to be thick and the ceramic beads are large.

Also, even if you just looked at the angle grinder video, you can see the claims aren’t really as presented. It’s very cutable, it just happens to eventually dull the cutter eventually. That’s what, a 2” billet they have there?

For their demo on a similar thickness steel plate, I think that most people would have an extremely hard time getting that far in 17-4PH steel let alone SS6xx like Inconel or any one of 100 different steels.

Mostly you would stop from boredom even in a world where the grinder wasn’t similarly full or broken by the time you gave up.

mikx007• 6 years ago

What about cicular saw with diamond blade? You can cut cement, ceramics and granite with it... What about demolition hammer or hammer drill?

almost_usual2• 6 years ago

Looks like a conventional cut off wheel in the video, not a diamond blade.

rasz• 6 years ago

Heard that one before https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2p7a6d

01100011• 6 years ago

Aluminum. A highly reactive metal prone to rapid decomposition in household drain cleaner. Yeah, this isn't going to revolutionize bike locks.

cl3misch• 6 years ago

I can't see the improvement of this vs. walls of high end personal safes. They have used mixed material walls for ages, made from some hard small component (e.g. ceramic) embedded in a more flexible mass (hard rubber).

Being accepted in SciRep this material has to have some merit but I am unable to see it.

Is the structure even scalable to smaller objects? The other comments talking about bike looks did not read the paper it seems.

fmakunbound• 6 years ago

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

repiret• 6 years ago

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.

raverbashing• 6 years ago

I'm not sure "non-cuttable" is the best description, it is cuttable, but it messes the tools

"Cutting resistant" might be a better description, and it is an interesting material regardless

Sounds like it works for applications where you need something to absorb "stopping" energy but without wearing out (too much)

IshKebab3• 6 years ago

Agreed - that angle grinder got through it fairly quickly I would say. I mean, slower than other material, sure. But it still cut it.

flippyhead• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibranium !

exabrial• 6 years ago

One may need to use an angle grinder correctly in a video to convince me. The demo where they plunge the angle grinder straight into the material is no different than the effect on hardened steel. Typically you would start at an edge to minimize the contact area of the cut. That's why lock shackles are rounded.

SV_BubbleTime4• 6 years ago

Yea. I can absolutely guarantee they wouldn’t get nearly as far as they did with a really hard steel like 600-series stainless (Inconel).

I’m certain this is a novel approach with their “jelly filled with nuggets” but it’s still jelly... let me know when they embed nugget in steel.

jeffreyrogers2• 6 years ago

I think they are cutting into the steel plate that they welded to it. Doesn't look like they get that far into the actual material. I agree with the point about using the grinder correctly though.

syllable_studio• 6 years ago

Can Proteus be cut by Proteus?

blackrock2• 6 years ago

Interesting. Now this is worthy of a patent.

So the material stops the cutting action, by having air sacs inside itself, where the particulate inside would melt from the friction, and cause the cutter blade to jam itself up.

agumonkey• 6 years ago

This resists mechanical forces, but what about EDM milling or plasma ?

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

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