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Welding breakthrough could transform manufacturing
- platzer 8y agoHow is this advantageous over gluing?
- deweller 8y agoFrom the article: > At the moment, equipment and products that involve glass and metal are often held together by adhesives, which are messy to apply and parts can gradually creep, or move. Outgassing is also an issue - organic chemicals from the adhesive can be gradually released and can lead to reduced product lifetime.
- blattimwind 8y agoOn the other hand glass has been glued to metal in e.g. optical assemblies for a long, long time and those joints rarely if ever fail.
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- hprotagonist 8y agoadhesives break down, outgas, and leach degradation components into their environments when heated above their safe operating range. presumably this is going to be very handy for high temperature applications.
- bebna 8y agoSo how long till transparent aluminium?
- noir_lord 8y agoAlready exists under the brand name ALON (Aluminium Oxynitride). It's hard as hell for a transparent ceramic, obvious military applications but useful in other places as well.
- close04 8y agoSo ALON? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride
- AllegedAlec 8y agoSounds really interesting. The only potential downside I see is that metal and glass generally expand differently under heat and have different tensile strengths etc. I wonder how they plan to deal with that.
- crispyambulance 8y agoI think it depends on the application and scale whether or not that is an issue. For joints that are intended to remain at a constant temperature, no problem. For very small structures where thermal expansion amounts to very little relative displacements, also no problem. But, yeah, this isn't a solution for joining outdoor windows to metal frames.
- MichaelApproved 8y ago> But, yeah, this isn't a solution for joining outdoor windows to metal frames. Says who? Welds held up to pretty harsh conditions -50C to 90C.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoJust because a test joint of unknown size and shape held up over that range doesn't mean an actual real world assembly can hold up over that range. We know nothing about the nature of the weld they tested or the nature of the testing. Even with two of the same materials it's very possible to design a joint that doesn't work very well in the real world.
- ddingus 8y agoThat would work in much of the world on paper. Not that the world sees the upper range as ambient. The metal may well approach the upper range during a sustained heat exposure. Wonder what the safety factor actually is? There are three basic types of temperature exposures: One, a journey. Got super hot, or cold for a while, then returned to moderate, or acceptable range. Two, excursions. Got extreme and stayed there for a non trivial time. (Scaled to the properties of whatever it is) Three, wild ride! Journeys all over the place. In addition, these can be one off events, or cyclic. Windows get a kind of cyclic ride in many places. A bond holding "for a while" always has the question of what "while" really means. Microfractures due to highly localized stress and strain, pre loaded in as an artifact of welding, would be my primary concern.
- yetihehe 8y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19309121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19309121
- katakuchi 8y agoInteresting. I wonder if an architect/civil engineer could explain what the implications would be of the application of this technology in the field of construction?
- willyt 8y agoSteel structures deflect a lot more than glass and buildings are built to relatively loose tolerances. E.g. skyscrapers have flexible neoprene gaskets between glass cladding panels to allow for a few mm of structural deflection due loads caused by wind, thermal, floor loadings and construction settlement. To give a rough idea, if you take a point on the top of a 250m skyscraper it could be anywhere within a ~300mm diameter circle due to these loads. So while I'm not 100% sure, it sounds like this technique would be more useful for product design scale stuff like phones, nano machines, miniaturised optical systems.
- ryanmarsh 8y agoIt’s my understanding that adhering steel to glass has not been an issue for some time. The issue is that they expand differently with heat. Which is why you have a rubber/flexible seal.
- tk75x 8y ago“We tested the welds at -50C to 90C and the welds remained intact, so we know they are robust enough to cope with extreme conditions.”
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThat's a meaningless statement without knowing what kind of assembly they built, the shape of the joint between the materials was and if the test sample was heated evenly or unevenly.
- saiya-jin 8y agoWell car surfaces (or even interior) can get hotter than that for example. Also, 1 test doesn't cover a use case of 5-10 years of daily heating and cooling down ie on a car parked outside, or darker window frame on a sunny side of building.
- excalibur 8y agoEyeglasses with frames welded to the lenses would be kinda cool, and may even justify current commercial price points (not that they would be sold for them).
- gattilorenz 8y agoWouldn't it be impossible, then, to replace the lenses with new ones (in case of scratches, or with eyesight changes over time)?
- excalibur 8y agoThat would make it rather difficult. In my experience people usually replace the frames and lenses together, but ymmv.
- 14 8y agoI suppose but personally I have only ever heard of people changing the entire frames with the glass. What a wasteful time we live in.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoIf it saves human time, it’s not wasteful. Time is the ultimate nonrenewable resource, while we are awash in materials.
- ceejayoz 8y agoBeing wasteful with materials may cost future humans a lot of time.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoTrade offs. Don’t optimize prematurely.
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- benmcnelly 8y agoI would love to see some pictures.
- the8472 8y agohttps://www.lasersystemseurope.com/news/ultrafast-laser-used-successfully-weld-glass-metal https://www.lasersystemseurope.com/news/ultrafast-laser-used... https://sci-hub.tw/10.1364/AO.56.004873 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1364/AO.56.004873
- gibolt 8y agoSeems like they are working with pretty large scale objects
- Gravityloss 8y agoIf materials become composites, they can become hard to recycle. Pure aluminum or pure steel is easier.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoBased on their mechanical properties I don't see why the current recycling process wouldn't work. It's not like the metal recycling industry doesn't already deal with huge amounts impurities and other material entering the process. If you happen to have tons of metal welded glass to scrap you're not going to get as much money for it because it needs more processing so it will enter the supply chain at a lower price point. It's like the difference between scrapping a car and scrapping machine shop chips.
- gnode 8y agoIn what use cases is this superior to traditional metal-glass seals (e.g. vacuum tubes), or metal-on-glass deposition (e.g. mirrors)?
- floatingatoll 8y agoThis permits bonding a metal handle to a pyrex measuring cup. (It would only be safe up to boiling temperatures under the restrictions of the current process, assuming that the process described scales up to a measuring cup.) This is a constructed example to demonstrate the type of thing that could be done now that we've figured out a possible way to do it. It's probably not a good example, but it is clearly distinct from the thin-film processes we consider common today. EDIT: See below’s multi-paragraph writeup of why my “now you can do this” example is not a good example in practice.
- logfromblammo 8y agoOne of the advantages of borosilicate glass kitchenware is that you can put it in the oven, fridge, and microwave. Bonding metal to it with a joint that only works up to 90C obviates most of that utility. The only problem with borosilicate glass vessels as they are is that they don't work on inductive cooktops. That joint is going to have to handle 300C in order to make it into my kitchen. I might go for a glass/ceramic liner in an aluminum pan, particularly if the ceramic is BAM, but that's going to get hot. I'd actually look for this first in LED lenses bonded to aluminum heat sinks. A good bond there might allow for higher wattage through the electronic parts. An operating range between -50C and 90C encompasses the operating range of most consumer electronics, plus some margin.
- beauzero 8y agoI would hope that this would lead to reductions in adhesives, storage, disposal, and manufacturing.
- python_gt_r2 8y agoAnother innovation by black lesbian women
- elliekelly 8y agoAnother tired attempt at racist/sexist humor.
- python_gt_r2 8y agoanother smug liberal techie that gets TRIGGERED by pointing at facts
- _underfl0w_ 8y agoMore like "another attempt at getting quickly shadowbanned"
- _bxg1 8y agoJony Ive is foaming at the mouth
- pixelbreaker 8y agoAnd that was before he read this.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- taivare 8y agoglass welded to Titanium ,Stainless steel ,Aluminum and other metals could lead to high performance enamels for all types of industrial uses.
- hackerbabz 8y agoExcited for Apple to finally weld the screen to the chassis and produce a Macbook that you just throw in the trash when the keyboard breaks.
- bigbaguette 8y agoyou made me spill my coffee!
- _underfl0w_ 8y agoAnother commenter pointed to the similar implications for new iPhone models. Unless iFixit et al releases an affordable home glass-to-aluminum welding solution, I think Apple may win the cat-and-mouse 3rd party repair game for now. Sad, really.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoIf ever an article needed a video, this is it. There's maybe a paragraph's worth of actual information in the article.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 0xDEFC0DE 8y agoCould this be used to make interesting optical sensors?
- starky 8y agoI could definitely see the applications when it comes to optics, even just considering the assembly of camera lenses could be improved or automated more with a process like this. Maybe it could be used for automated optical alignment to improve optical quality and consistency. Current methods for doing this are very manual.
- boshomi 8y agoLink to archive while site is down: http://web.archive.org/web/20190410160012/https://www.hw.ac.uk/about/news/2019/welding-breakthrough-could-transform.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20190410160012/https://www.hw.ac....