9 ms·
Proteus Technology: New Material Is Strong, Light and Non-Cuttable
- abeld 6y agoLink to scientific paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65976-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65976-0
- unstatusthequo 6y agoWaiting for this to exist in an Abus lock so my storage unit can stop being broken into my tweakers.
- beenBoutIT 6y agoIt 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 6y agoLike, say, a Hytek 6000W fiber laser cutter?
- mc32 6y agoAt least it eliminates the majority from contention.
- waste_monk 6y 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sturmeh 6y agoIf it has a keyhole it can be picked, a lock made of diamond wouldn't resist.
- tzs 6y 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.
- PetahNZ 6y agoThis one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4f1H6mYHOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4f1H6mYHOI
- xelxebar 6y agoBosnianbill's YouTube channel has featured some nifty "unpickable" designs: * Inaccessible keyhole: https://invidio.us/watch?v=OLsJDELd4lo 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 https://invidio.us/watch?v=1ey2SFHbZV8
- Bobbcatt 6y agoWill this work as armor?
- jachee 6y agoI believe that answer hinges on whether "cut proof" is the same as "puncture-proof".
- senectus1 6y agoSword players will still be interested...
- db48x 6y agoNot really. Armor made of this material has to be much thicker than ordinary steel plate. Furthermore, ordinary steel plate is entirely effective against swords, except at the joints and articulations.
- pmlnr 6y ago> entirely effective against swords Against the immediate cutting, probably. But it also bends. And with bending, it could damage you really bad, including the part that removing them could become quite a trouble.
- db48x 6y agoTrue, but cutting is what we're talking about here, and since the material they've invented in this article is made of aluminum foam, it'll bend even easier than steel of the same thickness.
- db48x 6y agoIf your attacker is wielding a grinder or a drill, and you don't mind wearing a 2-inch-thick metal plate, then sure.
- MrLeap 6y agoPorous Aluminum eh? Wonder how well it stands up to gallium, or acetylene, or MAP gas, or a grind wheel instead of a cutoff wheel.
- hwillis 6y agothe 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 6y agoThis 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- db48x 6y agoThis 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 6y agoI 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?
- db48x 6y agoYes, there is. They hypothesize that this material works because the ceramic spheres vibrate inside the flexible matrix of the aluminum foam, damaging the grinding wheel. A thinner foam will have less ability to flex, and smaller spheres will be have less momentum to use against the wheel. Plus, if you watch the video of them grinding the material (https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-020-65976-0/MediaObjects/41598_2020_65976_MOESM1_ESM.mov https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...), you can see that the grinding wheel penetrates over half an inch before it begins to be destroyed.
- azinman2 6y agoSo how do you shape/use it during manufacturing?
- patmorgan23 6y agoHeat? Chemistry?
- jakeogh 6y agoDiagram: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65976-0/figures/2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65976-0/figures/2
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- waffle_ss 6y 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 6y agoI'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.
- catalogia 6y 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 6y agoWonder what a blow torch or other commonly available chemical agents would do to it.
- steffan 6y agoMy first thought was "New bike lock material" My second was: "New non-cuttable bike lock defeated by ______" {freezing, shock, heat, _ }
- mparlane 6y agoMore likely it will be picked rather than cut at that point.
- josephg 6y agoLuckily 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.
- walrus01 6y agoDefeated by small hydraulic jack
- stubish 6y agoacid to disolve the aluminium in the structure
- lordlimecat 6y agoIf you wanted to go the chemical route, galium would do it.
- ceejayoz 6y agoYeah, I wanna see what happens when you thump it with a hammer.
- admiral33 6y agoThis 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.
- deleted 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tsomctl 6y agoHow 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.
- kbenson 6y agoIsn't a plasma cutter actually melting an area out of a material and not actually cutting it?
- sk5t 6y agoIt does both!
- kbenson 6y agoMy point is that if you look at that definition of "cut", it's not just rendering one item into two pieces, other wise tearing or cracking something would be cutting it, and those aren't cutting either. I doubt this material is impervious to shear force, or being lowered in temperature until it's brittle and cracked. But those aren't methods of cutting.
- Brian_K_White 6y agoI don't see the distinction. Everything but shears removes material at the cut. A plasma cut is no different in that respect from a saw, grinder, water-jet, laser, torch.
- kbenson 6y agoCutting something with scissors, or in the case of thicker metal a press with a bit, doesn't remove material. Tearing something in two doesn't remove material. But you're right, any sawing type cut, as with a grinder, does remove material. What I was really getting at though is that if you look at the definition of "cut" you'll see in most (all?) sources it defines it has being achieved through a sharp object or tool. I understand that's not often how it's used colloquially though.
- greesil 6y agoThis would be great for bike locks!
- catalogia 6y agoI'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 6y agoMy 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.
- teruakohatu 6y agoThis 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.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThis 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 6y agoHow does that work?
- sudosysgen 6y agoEssentially, the powder actuated piston fires a blank round and uses the pressure in order to propel a mass, that hits the lock and, assuming that the lock is restrained in the opposite direction, creates an immense force that destroys the internals of the lock and forces it open, all in less than a second.
- wincy 6y agoIs this sort of like the weapon the guy in No Country For Old Men was using?
- ummonk 6y agoI wish there were a way to get a sample of this to the lockpickinglawyer.
- userbinator 6y agoI 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 6y agoI'm guessing he'd bust out a blowtorch and make short work of it.
- Godel_unicode 6y agoOr 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_ 6y agoNah, 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6nvM7pYBGc
- epicureanideal 6y agoPhysical shields for spacecraft? Bullet proof vests? Ammunition?
- mod 6y agoMotorcycle protective gear.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoCombined with an energy dissipating foam it would make for some interesting ballistic armor. Especially at 15% the density of steel.
- jupp0r 6y agoIn Star Trek, they called it transparent aluminium!
- Avamander 6y agoThat's a real thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride
- cvg 6y agoSounds 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 6y agoHuh? Plenty of things go in landfills that won't go away for many lifetimes
- liability 6y agoThat'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 6y agoSpace elevator?
- flemhans 6y agoIt’s too heavy
- Jedd 6y 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 https://doi.org/10.1088%2F1748-3190%2F11%2F4%2F045002
- ars 6y agoAlso submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23903596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23903596
- abiogenesis 6y 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?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kbenson 6y agoThere 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_usual 6y agoThey 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.
- hwillis 6y agoIt'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.
- senderista 6y agoI use diamond metal blades because I don’t want my blade turning into shrapnel.
- CamperBob2 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_lance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_lance
- weregiraffe 6y agoThat's a cheat code.
- sigmaprimus 6y agoNeat 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.
- gruez 6y 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 6y agoThe 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 6y agoCan someone define "cuttable" and "non-cuttable" in this context?
- liability 6y agoIt's resistant to angle grinders and drills.
- yladiz 6y 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 6y 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 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."
- LoSboccacc 6y agoit'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 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 6y agoThat’s pretty cool. can it be cut with bolt cutters or such?
- spajus 6y agoThey have used a cheap angle grinder disk, what would have happened if they took a proper diamond one?
- joe-collins 6y agoI feel like it says a lot about the HN audience that the biggest reply chain is about bike locks, of all things.
- IshKebab 6y agoWhy? Bike locks are surely the most common thing people have experience of being cut that they don't want to be cut.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoDid 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.
- IshKebab 6y agoYes I did watch the video, and yes I agree it would be fairly useless for bike locks. Though there is a very expensive bike lock that has an aluminium surround the try to foil small angle grinders (the idea is that it is too thick for the discs to get through). Would be useful for that.
- mikx007 6y agoWhat about cicular saw with diamond blade? You can cut cement, ceramics and granite with it... What about demolition hammer or hammer drill?
- almost_usual 6y agoLooks like a conventional cut off wheel in the video, not a diamond blade.
- rasz 6y agoHeard that one before https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2p7a6d https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2p7a6d
- 01100011 6y agoAluminum. A highly reactive metal prone to rapid decomposition in household drain cleaner. Yeah, this isn't going to revolutionize bike locks.
- cl3misch 6y agoI 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 6y agoNothing in there on its electrical properties. Can it be cut using a plasma cutter?
- repiret 6y agoGiven 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 6y agoI'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)
- IshKebab 6y agoAgreed - that angle grinder got through it fairly quickly I would say. I mean, slower than other material, sure. But it still cut it.
- flippyhead 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibranium !
- exabrial 6y agoOne 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_BubbleTime 6y agoYea. 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.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoI 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.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoYou do not (cannot) weld steel to aluminum. This looks like aluminum billet to me. And other than the grinder stopping, it looks like it’s cutting exactly like aluminum.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoSure, it doesn't really matter if it is steel or aluminum. They are cutting into the plate that is welded to the material. It still appears to stop once it gets through the plate.
- syllable_studio 6y agoCan Proteus be cut by Proteus?
- blackrock 6y agoInteresting. 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 6y agoThis resists mechanical forces, but what about EDM milling or plasma ?