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Diamond-coated Steel
An anonymous reader writes "A Dutch chemist has successfully coated steel with a layer of diamond, opening the possibility for insanely strong tools that almost never wear out -- not to mention armor tough as, well, diamond-coated nails. From Science Blog."
This page has highly-magnified images of what this process does to steel. Here are direct links to the images:
Not wanted: graphite on tool steel
Wanted : a good-adhering diamond layer on tool steel with an intermediate layer of chromium nitride
well, they did mention that the initial use of chromium nitride was discarded specifically for that problem. they go on to mention that a surface treatment of boron causes the expansion coefficient to be much more similar to that of diamond, and that the effect fades as you get deeper down into the steel.
If you are in the business of 'stopping' something, you wouldn't really want diamond coated projectiles. When you fire a projectile at something, you want the energy of the projectile transferred to the object you are firing at. This means that you generally want your projectile to expand at impact. This also has the side effect of causing greater damage to the target, which is also sometimes an objective. A diamond coated projectile is going to tend to just pass on through, which is counter to both of the objectives.
I guess there might be some applications as far as armor piercing goes, but that is generally done by increasing caliber, which pretty much just adds energy to the projectile, hence its increased stopping power.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
For armor piercing, lately the goal has been to keep the caliber down, and increase mass and/or hardness with depleted uranium or tungsten, which are very dense and harder than lead.
In the civilian area, teflon tipped bullets (so-called cop-killer) made a big splash a while back, but it was mostly anti-gun hype, they were designed for law enforcement use, and never available to the public. They were designed to penetrate things like car doors, not kevlar.
The teflon was actually mostly to prevent excess wear on the barrel of the gun, since the bullet was made almost entirely from brass. No cop has ever been killed by the bullets so named (As far as anyone can tell). I'd imagine a diamond coated bullet would tear up a barrel in short order, and would be totally impractical.
An interesting factoid regarding expansion: hollow and soft tipped bullets are mostly banned in engagements of war by the Hague Peace Conferences, which the US didn't technically sign on to, but they follow this part anyway. The Geneva convention also bans "weapons that cause superfluous injury". I guess the point of war is to maim, not to kill.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
One issue:
Diamonds aren't particularly strong; the only meaningful industrial aspect of them is that they're very, very hard.
Hardness != strength.
A diamond-coated fuel cell, I might surmise, would perform about as well at the application as the same fuel cell would without diamonds.
Kid-proof tablet..
You're perpetuating the "stopping-power" myth perpetuated by companies with a vested interest in larger slower calibers. You want to "stop" the person you're shooting at, no doubt, but that has little to do with the ft/lbs of energy transferred to the target - the greater determinant is the extent of the damage the wound does to the body, and how quickly and severly this causes shock, rendering the target useless and usually dying. The "side effect of causing greater damage" is not "also sometimes an objective" - it is the primary objective. "Stopping power" (ft/lbs of force delivered) is a side effect and sometimes an objective - but you can make up for a lot of ft/lbs with better wounds.
Also, armor piercing is not done by increasing the caliber. You pierce armor by making either the jacket of the bullet or the whole bullet of a stronger material that the usual lead. The most common/cheap/effective method is full metal jacket rounds using a steel jacket over lead. The FMJ rounds used at target ranges have a jacket made of copper or another similarly soft metal, hence FMJ != armor pierce in general, but certain jackets do. Generally to pierce armor you want to get as many ft/lbs of energy as you can into the smallest caliber you can with the strongest outer jacket.
11*43+456^2
You remember as far as I could comfortably spit a rat. As for diamond. Diamond has the highest melting point (3820 degrees Kelvin)! I assume they are talking highest melting point of all minerals. I got the quote from http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/elements/dia mond/diamond.htm
And just so you know, 3820 degress Kelvin is about 3547 degrees Celsius or 6416 degrees Fahrenheit or 2837 degrees Reaumur for any frenchmen in the crowd or even 6876 degrees rankine for anybody who uses that.
Diamond is a lot like ceramics, very herd but also very brittle. Hit it the wrong way and you have diamond dust. I loved the RPG diamond armor - one the other guy! One swing and my opponent is naked. It would make a terrific corrosion prevention coating, if the piece doesn't flex outside of the specs.
Don't mind me, I have more fun this way!
Federal Machine Gun licenses are for required for the seller, maker and the buyer. In addition many states also have registration for machine guns.
i l& ID=60
Machine Guns are under TITLE II : Machine Guns, Destructive Devices, and Certain other Firearms of the National Firearms Act - Title 26, U.S. Code, Section 5801-5872
"On 1st engaging in business and thereafter on or before July 1 of each year, every importer, manufacturer, and dealer in firearms shall pay a special (occupational) tax for each place of business at the following rates:
http://www.nraila.org/GunLaws.asp?FormMode=Deta
"It is illegal to manufacture or sell armor-piercing handgun ammunition.