[TheForge] amorphous steel

[David E. Smucker]

Don't hold your breath waiting for this material to arrive in the market
place in large volumes.

Lot of reasons why.

It takes are real cost advantage to replace an existing material and its
installed infrastructure.  It took between 50 and 100 years for mild steel
to replace wrought iron and it had a great cost advantage and some would say
a material advantage.  (I know wrought iron has better corrosion
resistance.)

Another example.  Aluminum did replace steel for beer and beverage cans -- 
it was what was called knock out technology.  The total finished cost was
less and the aluminum can had much better shelf life.  In Europe the steel
can remain in volume use because they had a steel manufacture that learn how
to produce the product at lower cost and kept aluminum from gaining large
market share.  (By knock out technology I mean that steel beverage can
making lines were replaced with new aluminum beverage can making and the
steel lines scraped.)  PET bottles have since replaced many aluminum cans
because people preferred the resealable bottle -- even at high cost.

While amorphous steel may be very strong (but there are also some very high
strength alloy steels) it does not have any greater stiffness that other
steels.  Many applications require stiffness, not just strength to meet the
design requirements.

One of the great advantages of mild steel is that it is ductile and give
warning of failure -- brittle materials do not.

I an not against new materials -- they just take time and lots of money to
develop and reach a strong place in the market.

Dave Smucker

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andy Vida" <osan at netlabs.net>
To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 7:16 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] amorphous steel


> Oh, OK... I didn't gather that from the article.  It seemed to imply
> that the addition of Yttrium was the key to its properties.  Perhaps
> the Yttrium only enabled to amorphous structure to arise with some
> very sophisticated heat treatment, but I didn't get this impression
> from the author.
>
> Ries Niemi wrote:
> >
> > I had heard that it is not forgeable- that heat ruins its structure, so
> > it cannot be heat treated or forged.
> >
> > ries
> >
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>
> There's a brand new talk, but it's not very clear,
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