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So back in the 90's a friend and regular attendee at the HBRC club meetings had started a company promoting nitonal wire which they had called "Muscle Wire"[1]

So back in the 90's a friend and regular attendee at the HBRC club meetings had started a company promoting nitonal wire which they had called "Muscle Wire"[1] they apparently still have a web site. I have a couple of their educational packs and have built their hot/cold water engine which uses a coffee cup with hot water and a coffee cup with cold water to run. It really is quite fun and I ended up building a simple actuator with one of the kits. These days it would be fun to put a cell phone camera on an "antenna stalk" that could be turned and pointed using this stuff. For most of their applications a current was applied to the wire that would heat it up and cause it to spring out straight, then as it cooled the wire would recover. Not particularly fast actuation but quite controllable. [1] https://musclewires-com.3dcartstores.com/Muscle-Wires%C2%AE-Technology_ep_44.html https://musclewires-com.3dcartstores.com/Muscle-Wires%C2%AE-...

herewulf 4y ago
Coincidentally I'm familiar with a company called Dynalloy[1] that appears to have commercialized the same thing on a significant scale with the main application of simplifying mechanisms. Their website says that Muscle Wires and Flexinol are their registered trademarks so there must be a connection? [1]: https://dynalloy.com/index.php https://dynalloy.com/index.php
- lgats 4y ago
  https://uspto.report/Search/muscle%20wires https://uspto.report/Search/muscle%20wires i suspect Dynalloy nabbed up the trademark in 2004 after the original owner of muscle wire (1992) failed to keep up the fillings in 2003.
zafka 4y ago
I worked at a company in the late 90's that made some of (or first) Braille computers. The braille dots were actuated with Piezo driven at over 200 volts. The piezo compound was proprietary and supposedly the blending process was done by two or three old women in Germany. Anyhow, we had a retired French physicist (French civilian nuclear program) working on driving braille cells with Nitinol under a SBIR grant. Unfortunately we were not able to get past prototype stage. The was a very interesting place to work. Almost forgot the lead- I still have a package of "Muscle wire" that he gave me.

herewulf 4y ago

Coincidentally I'm familiar with a company called Dynalloy[1] that appears to have commercialized the same thing on a significant scale with the main application of simplifying mechanisms. Their website says that Muscle Wires and Flexinol are their registered trademarks so there must be a connection? [1]: https://dynalloy.com/index.php https://dynalloy.com/index.php

lgats 4y ago
https://uspto.report/Search/muscle%20wires https://uspto.report/Search/muscle%20wires i suspect Dynalloy nabbed up the trademark in 2004 after the original owner of muscle wire (1992) failed to keep up the fillings in 2003.

zafka 4y ago

I worked at a company in the late 90's that made some of (or first) Braille computers. The braille dots were actuated with Piezo driven at over 200 volts. The piezo compound was proprietary and supposedly the blending process was done by two or three old women in Germany. Anyhow, we had a retired French physicist (French civilian nuclear program) working on driving braille cells with Nitinol under a SBIR grant. Unfortunately we were not able to get past prototype stage. The was a very interesting place to work. Almost forgot the lead- I still have a package of "Muscle wire" that he gave me.