Beryllium

[Guest]

Beryllium

You found out my evil scheme! Imagine what would happen when we arrived:

Event organiser: So why are you Swedes wearing full biosuites?
Swedish roboteer: What do you mean? This is normal clothing in Sweden.

That wouldnt be very cool though. I mean literary, it would be very warm in there! Better make sure to have air condition in it. Which also would lead to an intressting dialogue:

Even organiser: You need any help?
Swedish roboteer: That reminds me, where could I find a place to plug in my charger? The batteries for my biosuit air condition is getting low.

[mightymouse]

Beryllium

Some bright spark engineer at work suggested Beryllium for some high pressure windows in our oil logging tools.

The only people we could find who were prepared to machine it were in Germany and it was done in a sealed environment - the machinist had to step into an environmental suit.

When it arrived at our factory everyone who was to handle it was given face masks and gloves and told that if any dust got into a cut it would never heal. The foreman then chiped in that a few years earlier in a previous job he visited a factory where a machinist had cut his finger, the cut didnt heal, and he had his hand amputated. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but we all bottled out and promptly told them what they could do with their new wonder material.

On the other hand, it is stronger than Titanium and half the weight. When held in the hand (with gloves - and face mask) it was amazingly light.

[david_sellick]

Beryllium

So Beryllium is a no no then

[stb]

Beryllium

Sounds like a terrific material. Strong and light. They are probably just exaggerating the hazards. Just use a pair of gloves when you are grinding it.

[Guest]

Beryllium

Strong and light, but brittle and very susceptible to fatigue.

I know that if you want to produce anything out of Beryllium in the US, youll have the Environmental Protection Agency breathing down your neck.

It has comparably low impact hardness and is only somewhat stronger than 6061 Al. Im sure there are stronger alloys of Be, but its strength is not its strength . Rather, its structural efficientcy (stiffness/weight) is whats so attractive.

So its not going to help you except in the frame of your robot and other things where weight and stiffness are important. Definately not a good candidate for armor.

Solid parts are not dangerous, but machining them is and is a bit more difficult than other structural materials (its susceptible to tool-induced microcracking that can lead to fatigue problems).

And its not legal.

Stick with Aluminum and Titanium for structure...or even high strength steel. If you need light weight stiff components that dont need to be tough, use unidirectional laminated carbon fiber . Its much cheaper and safer than beryllium.

Mack

[Guest]

Beryllium

Speaking of really expensive materials, I also like materials with extreme microporosity on a micron scale (the stuff Im talking about is http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/tech/aerogel.html>

[_jl_]

Beryllium

Its not _that_ expensive, considering its low weight. Could be possible to use in ants?

[fluppet]

Beryllium

Hmm. I too had wondered about aerogel, the idea being to fill the inside of the robot with it completely (other than the amount required for ventilation) to prop up the armour.

Thing is, a) its very brittle (one hit and youd have something resembling glass powder in your motors), b) its strong for its weight, but then its weight is almost nothing, and c) I hadnt realised it was quite this expensive.

Mind you, one kilo would probably be too much with which to fill a robot.

IIRC NASA used it to trap comet dust. I strongly suspect the stuff has less esoteric uses, but Im not sure they intersect with combat robotics.

Okay, what use do we think Eds going to find for (scuse spelling) Buckminster-Fullerine?

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Fluppet

[fluppet]

Beryllium

The brittleness might be a problem in ants, since it would be hard to shield; might work as sacrificial armour, perhaps.

Back to metals, Rhodium (not sure I trust my spelling at all today - is that right?) is very hard - white gold gets coated with the stuff. I believe its the hardest pure metal (so Im told), which probably makes it useful for plating things, but I dont know how it compares to strange alloys. Plus its a tad pricey.

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Fluppet

[Guest]

Beryllium

Rhodium is a platinum metal, hence the high price. Its not that hard though, just very strong (even stronger than 6AL-4V titanium).

[fluppet]

Beryllium

Really? Strange. I was going off what I was told by a jeweller, who Im prepared to believe had a limited knowledge in structural metallurgy. I can see the point in coating something with a hard substance, but less with coating something in a strong substance. Mind you, compared with silver/gold alloy, I suppose its still quite hard.

Having said that, most of its worn off - the ring isnt the colour it used to be, and looks more like it has some gold in it.

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Fluppet

[anukhet]

Beryllium

€œAn experiment by Eva Obersdrster at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas which introduced fullerenes into water at concentrations of 0.5 parts per million found that largemouth bass suffered a 17-fold increase in cellular damage in the brain tissue after 48 hours.€
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullereneshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerenes

Ed is probably either going to poison fish or suffer enough brain damage to go lie in a large electricity substation during a rainstorm in order to test out C60s superconductivity properties

[fluppet]

Beryllium

Actually, thats a thought. A YBCuO variant superconducting electromagnet might cope with the traditionally suggested business of picking up your opponents (with the traditional problem of by what?) Of course, not breaking the electromagnetic interference rule in the process might be a challenge.

Okay, what havent we covered yet. Gold. We need gold heat exchangers. Then Garys motor wouldnt overheat. :-) (If its good enough for McLaren...)

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Fluppet

[jim]

Beryllium

Well, theres also depleted uranium and unniloctium, both very heavy metals for when you need some really dense ballast material.

[fluppet]

Beryllium

Well, osmium is your friend, and a little less radioactive IIRC. (I have a vague recollection of the kids on Chocky playing with a ball of osmium which, frankly, theres no way they would have been able to lift - but at least theyd have been sterilised by the radioactivity, so given how annoying they were theres an upside.)

Not that Ive yet found many roboteers looking for ballast...

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Fluppet