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- Apr 30, 2001
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The first official Liquid Metal (LM1) knives have been finished. I just finished up a batch of 10 knives for a Board of Directors meeting Tuesday afternoon. They will be picked up sometime early in the morning.
A little background on the LM1 saga.
Earlier this year I ran into the info below (in red) and decided that I would like see if LM1 had any promise for a knife material.
New Metal Alloy Is Super Strong.
NEW YORK (AP) - July 5, 2002 -It could be the new superhero of metals.
More than twice as strong as titanium and steel, it doesn't rust and it can be cast like plastic and honed to an edge as sharp as glass.
The fruit of a 1992 discovery at the California Institute of Technology, the alloy, called Liquidmetal, has already been used in golf clubs. And it may soon show up in cell phone casings, baseball bats and scalpels.
Liquidmetal Technologies, the Lake Forest, Calif. company that is trying to commercialize the alloy, is not shy about calling it revolutionary.
"It combines uniquely a material with exceptional properties and the ability to process the material to exceptional shapes," says Dr. Michael Ashby, professor of engineering at Cambridge University in Britain and an advisor to the company.
Liquidmetal's surprising properties come of a structure different from ordinary metals.
When a conventional metal cools, it forms grains, each a small crystal where the atoms are oriented in a grid. The boundaries between these grains are a metal's weak points ? it's where cracks can form and rust starts, for instance.
Scientists discovered in 1959 that if some alloys are cooled very quickly the atoms don't have time to form crystals. Instead, they remain jumbled, as in a liquid or in glass.
However, the only way to cool the molten metal fast enough was to make it in thin strips or as a sprayed coating. The strips couldn't be joined, because they were hard to forge, and heat allowed the atoms to crystallize again.
Because of their unique magnetic properties, the strips still found use in the anti-theft tags used by retail stores and in electrical transformers. The metal was also used to spray-coat oil drill pipes to protect them from wear.
In 1992, Dr. William Johnson and Dr. Atakan Pekers at the Caltech discovered a way around the cooling problem.
They made an alloy of elements that fit very poorly together: titanium, copper, nickel, zirconium and beryllium. These elements' atoms are of different sizes so they don't readily form crystals, even when cooled slowly. Pieces up to an inch thick could now be made.
Liquidmetal Technologies seized on the opportunity, and together with Caltech and Howmet Metal Mold of Whitehall, Mich., developed casting techniques.
In the mold, Liquidmetal reveals another quality: it doesn't shrink when it solidifies. Ordinary metals do, meaning the product is rough out of the mold and needs machining.
"What happens with Liquidmetal, in essence, is that you can form parts sort of the way you form plastics," says John Kang, chief executive of Liquidmetal Technologies.
Liquidmetal can be cast with a precision down to 1 micron, or 1/25,000th of an inch, according to Johnson, now an advisor to Liquidmetal Technologies. Given a good die, it is possible to cast a scalpel blade and have it come sharp out of the mold.
Liquidmetal Technologies' first product was golf club heads, because of another exotic property of the metal: it transfers more of the club's energy to the ball than steel or titanium, at least in theory.
But golf equipment is a fiercely competitive field, and Liquidmetal has since decided to stop making its own clubs and is working instead with major golf club manufacturers because, in Kang's words "we came to the realization that we are not in the consumer products industry."
At the same time, it is looking to expand the uses for the alloy. Using money from an initial public offering in May, it is building a factory in South Korea ( news - web sites) to make, primarily, casings for cell phones.
While cell phones are not the first use that comes to mind for a super-strong metal, Kang says Liquidmetal's strength and ease of casting makes it ideal.
"Cell phone makers want to go smaller and thinner ... we create an ability for cell phones to be smaller than any other material," he says. The project has attracted interest from cell phone giants Motorola and Samsung.
Liquidmetal Technologies is also working with Rawlings on baseball bats and HEAD on skis, for much the same reason they tried their hand on golf clubs ? Liquidmetal gives good bounce.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is also investigating several different uses of the alloy. One project is looking at using it in armor-piercing shells as a replacement for depleted uranium, which has been a focus of health and environmental concerns.
For all its promise, Liquidmetal is still largely untried, which is why the company is concentrating on industries where there is a readiness to explore the new.
John Perepezko, professor of materials science at the University of Wisconsin, says making sports equipment is a safer place to start, than, for instance, the aircraft industry.
"Nobody is going to fall out of the sky, no ship is going to sink if you make a mistake," he says. "If you break a golf club, you usually brag about being too strong, rather than blame it on a weak club."
Then there's the issue of heat.
Much like glass, Liquidmetal softens when heated ? the earliest alloy at about 750 degrees Fahrenheit. By comparison, steel becomes malleable at about 2,100 degrees. Some newer amorphous alloys are, however, much more resistant to heat, Johnson says.
Cost also limits Liquidmetal. The raw materials run at $10 to $15 a pound, about as much as titanium, while aluminum costs about 50 cents a pound.
Caltech researchers are trying to create alloys consisting of cheaper metals.
"If we can make a processable amorphous iron alloy with a raw material cost of a dollar a pound, it could be an enormously pervasive material," Johnson says. "It could even make its way into cars."
Perepezko, who is not affiliated with Liquidmetal Technologies, believes that even at its present cost, the alloy is likely to see widespread use once its reliability has been proven.
"It's not going to replace the aluminum in soda cans, it just doesn't work that way. But in critical applications, it will happen. Perhaps the most important use out there is one we can't imagine yet," he says.
At first the company was pretty resistant to providing me with any material to work with. But, after alot of phone calls and red tape I got my bars.
Since that start there have been at least 2 dozen knives made from the stuff. Many went to CalTec or Korea for "offical" testing but many also stayed with me for some "un-offical" testing. Together with another maker I put this stuff through hell. We sliced quarters in half, pieced even more quarters with the tip, dug big holes in 2Xs, chopped through Elk Antlers and lots of other fun stuff. We finally decided that it was time to put it on film (otherwise no one would believe us). On the tape we cut through 500ft of three ply carboard, made 100 push cuts through 1" manilla, chopped through a 2X4 four times and even cut through a Goodyear tire. We tried to butcher a cow but could not convince the cow to get in the truck with us. The blade still shaved up to the point of cutting up the tire. After the tire's steel belts the blades edge was dulled but it still sliced paper cleanly. Later that day we decided it would be a good idea to cut up some steel paint cans (x4). After that the blade needed some sharpening.
The tape has not yet been edited but I am hoping to have it going by Expo. All the test results show that LM1 blows all the other non-magnetic blade materials out of the water. I would even say that the LM1 blade I have been carrying for several months would be the equal of steels such as 440C or ATS. But thats just me and is not backed by any lab results.
But tommorow is the big day. All the test results will be reviewed by the entire board and they will decide what to do with the info. Well here is a photo of six of the ten proto types. These are not the actual designs being proposed but are just working LM1 blades based on my current models. I am hoping to have models for sale by Expo but that is up to LMTs Board.
The future is looking bright for blades!
A little background on the LM1 saga.
Earlier this year I ran into the info below (in red) and decided that I would like see if LM1 had any promise for a knife material.
New Metal Alloy Is Super Strong.
NEW YORK (AP) - July 5, 2002 -It could be the new superhero of metals.
More than twice as strong as titanium and steel, it doesn't rust and it can be cast like plastic and honed to an edge as sharp as glass.
The fruit of a 1992 discovery at the California Institute of Technology, the alloy, called Liquidmetal, has already been used in golf clubs. And it may soon show up in cell phone casings, baseball bats and scalpels.
Liquidmetal Technologies, the Lake Forest, Calif. company that is trying to commercialize the alloy, is not shy about calling it revolutionary.
"It combines uniquely a material with exceptional properties and the ability to process the material to exceptional shapes," says Dr. Michael Ashby, professor of engineering at Cambridge University in Britain and an advisor to the company.
Liquidmetal's surprising properties come of a structure different from ordinary metals.
When a conventional metal cools, it forms grains, each a small crystal where the atoms are oriented in a grid. The boundaries between these grains are a metal's weak points ? it's where cracks can form and rust starts, for instance.
Scientists discovered in 1959 that if some alloys are cooled very quickly the atoms don't have time to form crystals. Instead, they remain jumbled, as in a liquid or in glass.
However, the only way to cool the molten metal fast enough was to make it in thin strips or as a sprayed coating. The strips couldn't be joined, because they were hard to forge, and heat allowed the atoms to crystallize again.
Because of their unique magnetic properties, the strips still found use in the anti-theft tags used by retail stores and in electrical transformers. The metal was also used to spray-coat oil drill pipes to protect them from wear.
In 1992, Dr. William Johnson and Dr. Atakan Pekers at the Caltech discovered a way around the cooling problem.
They made an alloy of elements that fit very poorly together: titanium, copper, nickel, zirconium and beryllium. These elements' atoms are of different sizes so they don't readily form crystals, even when cooled slowly. Pieces up to an inch thick could now be made.
Liquidmetal Technologies seized on the opportunity, and together with Caltech and Howmet Metal Mold of Whitehall, Mich., developed casting techniques.
In the mold, Liquidmetal reveals another quality: it doesn't shrink when it solidifies. Ordinary metals do, meaning the product is rough out of the mold and needs machining.
"What happens with Liquidmetal, in essence, is that you can form parts sort of the way you form plastics," says John Kang, chief executive of Liquidmetal Technologies.
Liquidmetal can be cast with a precision down to 1 micron, or 1/25,000th of an inch, according to Johnson, now an advisor to Liquidmetal Technologies. Given a good die, it is possible to cast a scalpel blade and have it come sharp out of the mold.
Liquidmetal Technologies' first product was golf club heads, because of another exotic property of the metal: it transfers more of the club's energy to the ball than steel or titanium, at least in theory.
But golf equipment is a fiercely competitive field, and Liquidmetal has since decided to stop making its own clubs and is working instead with major golf club manufacturers because, in Kang's words "we came to the realization that we are not in the consumer products industry."
At the same time, it is looking to expand the uses for the alloy. Using money from an initial public offering in May, it is building a factory in South Korea ( news - web sites) to make, primarily, casings for cell phones.
While cell phones are not the first use that comes to mind for a super-strong metal, Kang says Liquidmetal's strength and ease of casting makes it ideal.
"Cell phone makers want to go smaller and thinner ... we create an ability for cell phones to be smaller than any other material," he says. The project has attracted interest from cell phone giants Motorola and Samsung.
Liquidmetal Technologies is also working with Rawlings on baseball bats and HEAD on skis, for much the same reason they tried their hand on golf clubs ? Liquidmetal gives good bounce.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is also investigating several different uses of the alloy. One project is looking at using it in armor-piercing shells as a replacement for depleted uranium, which has been a focus of health and environmental concerns.
For all its promise, Liquidmetal is still largely untried, which is why the company is concentrating on industries where there is a readiness to explore the new.
John Perepezko, professor of materials science at the University of Wisconsin, says making sports equipment is a safer place to start, than, for instance, the aircraft industry.
"Nobody is going to fall out of the sky, no ship is going to sink if you make a mistake," he says. "If you break a golf club, you usually brag about being too strong, rather than blame it on a weak club."
Then there's the issue of heat.
Much like glass, Liquidmetal softens when heated ? the earliest alloy at about 750 degrees Fahrenheit. By comparison, steel becomes malleable at about 2,100 degrees. Some newer amorphous alloys are, however, much more resistant to heat, Johnson says.
Cost also limits Liquidmetal. The raw materials run at $10 to $15 a pound, about as much as titanium, while aluminum costs about 50 cents a pound.
Caltech researchers are trying to create alloys consisting of cheaper metals.
"If we can make a processable amorphous iron alloy with a raw material cost of a dollar a pound, it could be an enormously pervasive material," Johnson says. "It could even make its way into cars."
Perepezko, who is not affiliated with Liquidmetal Technologies, believes that even at its present cost, the alloy is likely to see widespread use once its reliability has been proven.
"It's not going to replace the aluminum in soda cans, it just doesn't work that way. But in critical applications, it will happen. Perhaps the most important use out there is one we can't imagine yet," he says.
At first the company was pretty resistant to providing me with any material to work with. But, after alot of phone calls and red tape I got my bars.
Since that start there have been at least 2 dozen knives made from the stuff. Many went to CalTec or Korea for "offical" testing but many also stayed with me for some "un-offical" testing. Together with another maker I put this stuff through hell. We sliced quarters in half, pieced even more quarters with the tip, dug big holes in 2Xs, chopped through Elk Antlers and lots of other fun stuff. We finally decided that it was time to put it on film (otherwise no one would believe us). On the tape we cut through 500ft of three ply carboard, made 100 push cuts through 1" manilla, chopped through a 2X4 four times and even cut through a Goodyear tire. We tried to butcher a cow but could not convince the cow to get in the truck with us. The blade still shaved up to the point of cutting up the tire. After the tire's steel belts the blades edge was dulled but it still sliced paper cleanly. Later that day we decided it would be a good idea to cut up some steel paint cans (x4). After that the blade needed some sharpening.
The tape has not yet been edited but I am hoping to have it going by Expo. All the test results show that LM1 blows all the other non-magnetic blade materials out of the water. I would even say that the LM1 blade I have been carrying for several months would be the equal of steels such as 440C or ATS. But thats just me and is not backed by any lab results.
But tommorow is the big day. All the test results will be reviewed by the entire board and they will decide what to do with the info. Well here is a photo of six of the ten proto types. These are not the actual designs being proposed but are just working LM1 blades based on my current models. I am hoping to have models for sale by Expo but that is up to LMTs Board.
The future is looking bright for blades!
