Slashdot Mirror
Top Gadget of 2006 — The HurriQuake Nail
eldavojohn writes "Popular Science is naming its Best of What's New of 2006 and the one at the top doesn't have much to do with circuitry or computers. Instead, it's a nail. Not your average nail though, the HurriQuake nail [flash] spent six years in development." From the article: "As the Bostitch team tweaked the head-to-shank ratio, Sutt and metallurgist Tom Stall worked on optimizing high-carbon alloys, trying to find the highest-strength trade-off between stiffness and pliability — the key to preventing snapped nails. 'Meanwhile,' Sutt says, 'we were focusing on how to keep the nail from pulling out.' The team machined a series of barbed rings that extend up the nail's shaft from its point, experimenting with the size and placement of the barbs. 'You want the rings to have maximum holding power,' he says, 'but if they go up too high, it creates a more brittle shank that shears more easily.'"
I can't wait to use this in Quake.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
They are called screws, and they have been known for a few thousand years to be vastly better then nails. Most any floor that's nailed down squeaks for example. And if you want something really good, you use bolts.
And their "patent pending" features you'll find on most all the masonry nails in the hardware store.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
No, they just forgot to put a microchip in the nail. Maybe a RFID tag for finding them after the storm...
The issue is not that the structures can't handle the winds. It is that the construction codes are not being followed by the builders. Construction is so poor because of cost-cutting by contractors and/or unskilled labor and cutting corners. This was true with Andrew (Miami) and continues to be true. If contractors built to the code and inspectors held them to it, alot of the damage seen would not occur. I have a house that was only 5 miles from the eye of Hurricane Charlie (140+ mph winds) and suffered minimal damage (a few pieces of soffet blown off, no shingles or other damage). But ... we watched the contractors and ensured that they did everything by the book. Neighbors saw their (oftern much more expensive) homes literally blown to the ground. Older structures (60's/70's) also saw little damage.
... just make sure the builders build to the code. Adding a better nail won't cure sloppy cost-cutting construction.
So
They patented the fat head technology. I'm sure many people in Hollywood or Washington D.C. could claim prior art on this one
You just got troll'd!
And the construction industry will beat a path to your door. Yes screws are a better fastener but they take much longer to install driving the labor costs up. This is a case where they applied complex tech to the design of something simple and improved it.
The team machined a series of barbed rings that extend up the nail's shaft from its point
Boat Nails have been around quite a while; barbs on nails is not new.
disclaimer: no affiliation with linked-to company in any way; just using as a reference.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
I don't think any house is built to standard these days. If the standard says 3 nails per stud, you're lucky to get two nails per. The resulting house is so flimsy that you can literally grab a house by the corner post after the framing in done and wobble the entire structure back and forth. Sometimes even after the sheathing in put on. Sheathing isn't supposed to be the main factor in structural stability, it's there for insulation. Housing inspectors aren't a help here. They're incredibily corrupt.
IIRC, a lot of the damage from hurricanes was to houses not built to existing code. So unless they use these nails on the builders themselves, I don't think they'll do that much good.
They are marketing these nails as superior fasteners that will withstand a high wind environment. However, they are only fasteners, and the rest of the structure is still just as vulnerable to threats such as fire, water, termites, and so forth. For a truly robust, energy efficient, and long-lasting structure, the obvious solution is concrete.
Insulating Concrete Forms are basically like Legos made out of an insulating foam. You stack them together, insert rebar, and fill with concrete. The cost is estimated at 5% more than standard wood frame houses, and are superior in every way.
As the earth warms, storms will continue to become stronger and stronger. "An Inconvenient Truth" goes into more detail, and if you haven't seen it, you really should. In any case, it is about time that we started building more durable structures.
I am not trying to annoy anyone here with this comment, just sharing an opinion. A house made of wood feels somehow un-solid (and unsafe, given the strictly positive probability of a fire that is always present). Plus, immediately after arriving in Canada (my first encounter with N. America), I was struck by the fact that all houses I visited (I was looking for a room to rent in Victoria, BC, Canada, and visited quite a few houses in my first several days there) had a strong, pungent, "chemical" smell. First I thought it has to be some commonly used cleaning substance. Later I decided that it has to be some chemicals that the wood had been treated with, probably to repel wood-eating insects or to prevent the wood from decaying. Interestingly, after having lived there for months I stopped feeling the smell -- but going back to my homeland for a vacation and then back to Canada, I would be struck by the peculiar smell again.
I realise wooden houses are cheaper and faster to build, but, IMHO, they are a poor substitute for brick-and-concrete ones.
It's a bit like asking why so many computers keep getting sold with such flimsy or poor quality components. It's all about the profit margin, and targeting a certain demographic.
People want certain amenities in their houses, but are only willing to pay a certain amount, so they go with housebuilders that meet their price points.
Of course, that means shortcuts behind the scenes, perhaps even the corruption other people here seem to say is endemic, too.
Not to mention, a lot of people are just ignorant of what goes into quality building, and some just buy a house thinking they'll move with their job in 5 years or so, anyway, so why bother?
I only know anything about home construction because I watch a lot of home repair shows. Which means I really don't know much.
I'd pay $100 or more for a real, regularly updated text that explains what the newest, best housing materials and methods are, and how to manage a builder, so that when I finally go buy a house, I can look for a builder who will build with those things. I'm sure I'll need an architect, too, but I don't even know that process, either.
One of the primary purposes of sheathing is to brace the wall against sheer forces. A square plate and stud wall has no strength against sheer forces unless it's braced diagonally corner to corner. Plywood sheathing properly attached acts as that diagonal brace. Otherwise the top and bottom plates are free to slide parallel to each other and turn the wall into a parallelogram.
This
I can just picture it now... President Bush delivering a speech in New Orleans to the flood victims proclaiming his administration successfully found a solution to the problem thanks to good old fashioned American ingenuity. Of course, during this time military aircraft will do overhead drops of "Freedom Hammers" and "Salvation Nails". Pound it in the name of freedom, baby.
Even a screw gun / power driver with self-tapping screws takes a lot longer to drive each fastener, than a pneumatic nail gun. I don't think there's any way that you can drive a threaded fastener with anywhere near the speed that you can drive in a nail. In the time a person can drive in a screw, you can put in a handful of nails.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So instead of your roofing blowing off, now your whole house blows away!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The average contractor's response won't be "Great, I'll be buildinding something twice as strong". It will be "Great, I can use half the number of nails."
So the buildings will still fall down when a hurricane hits.
If a house is built to substandard specifications it's because the building inspectors in your municipality aren't doing their job. The standard job of a building inspector is to verify at each state of construction that the house is built properly and to specification; if the house is not built to spec, the building inspector has the power to demand that the house be torn down and rebuilt.
My parents are in the construction industry and I've seen a few times where building inspectors demanded a foundation be torn up and repoured, house framing demolished and rebuilt, and siding reapplied to a house so that it meets code.
Now in many areas of the country houses are not built to current code. But note the key word here: current. The Unform Building Code is regularly updated every two years or so, so it is possible a house built ten years ago isn't up to today's code--after five revisions to the code, eventually something is going to be considered "substandard" today that was up to code before. My house, for example, does not meet current code; today's building code in the Glendale area requires that all residental structures have an automatic sprinkler system in the house to meet today's code. But because my house was last remodeled in the 70's, there were no requirements then to install an automatic sprinkler system.
Are you aware that local governments already set construction standards? Or do you think that companies should just be able to build whatever, whenever and however, without regard for safety? Have you never heard of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow (please, I know that it was an apocryphal story)?
The thing that burns in a house fire is the contents. It doesn't really matter if the house is fireproof or not, the contents will burn just as well. If the occupants aren't prepared, they will die just as well in a fireproof house. In urban areas, most house fires don't result in irreperable damage to the structure.
Most municipalities have laws that require smoke detectors in every dwelling. It is also standard to require construction that prevents a burning house from igniting its neighbor. The result is that death by housefire is far behind death by traffic accident. http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/causes.html
As far as being permanent, wooden structures last forever, as long as they are kept dry. Check out the thousand year old timber churches in Scandanavia.
The odor problem comes about because we permit all kinds of nasty things in our building materials and consumer products. Carpets and particle board are major offenders. Maybe what you're smelling is formaldyhide.
What idiot dreamed up the name "HurriQuake"? That is amazingly poor.
How about something builders won't feel like a homosexual saying out loud? The less syllables the better.
Permafix
NailBolt
PermaNail
Relianail
SureNail
Safe-T-nail
SaferNail
SafeNails
PosiNail
FirmaNail
StrongNail
XtraNail
XtremeNails
TuffNail
OMG WTF LMAO BBQ nail
Schwarzenail
Nailinator
Securinail
SecuraNail
PermaFix
PermaHold
EQnail
S-Nails
T-Nails
There are lots more too.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
I'm interested to hear what the Slashdot crowd has to say about them patenting this. Six years is a long time to spend researching something. I'm sure they dumped a truck of money into it. (Without reading the article,) I'm guessing that it's probably relatively reverse engineer a nail and knock it off in a Chinese factory.
I find the whole mostly-European "the best building material is stone or concrete" idea pretty funny. So far, I've owned two houses, both wood, and both old (the previous one was built in 1937, the one I currently live in was built in 1917). Both houses will last at least a hundred more years. Of course, it is true that if they were built of stone, they might last another 1000 years. It's hard to say, but regardless they're permanent structures. I have a feeling that this is much more about the types of home you grew up in rather than what the "best" building material actually is.
The other thing is that stone and brick are definitely not fireproof. You still need beams to support the floors and those are usually wood. Here in Baltimore there are a ton of brick row houses and they occasionally have terrible fires. A small fire starts inside and burns the furniture/floors/books/whatever and that ends up catching the beams on fire and you end up with an empty brick shell. Of course, since they're row houses, the fire ends up spreading through the brick walls to the neighboring houses and you lose 3 or 4 homes at once. Even though they're made of brick. Fire is a problem for everyone.
Wood is a great building material, or a poor one. As someone else pointed out, it satisfies many demands simultaneously. Market forces (cost and home type), environment (earthquakes, severe weather and other factors not existing in the UK, for example) and personal taste (ease of retrofit, etc.) all contribute to building material choice.
One of the factors that's interesting is that the quality of wood used in construction differs quite a lot from the long-lasting timbers in the old wood-frame houses. I owned an over-hundred-year-old house which had lasted through two of our age's most severe earthquakes, with aplomb. In a termite-endemic area the naturally pest-resistant, tight-grained old-growth redwood timbers and planking (it had solid heartwood plank sheathing, not OSB or plywood) had no damage (the "modern" addition, built with current farmed-fir 2x4s, was not so fortunate). I have no doubt that, properly maintained, the house will last another hundred years or more (possibly with more than one generation of modern-construction additions).
But that wood construction is not typical of current practice. By today's standards (it was built to no code but the good judgment of the original builder) it would be horribly material-hungry and overengineered. The pace of building in the U.S. demands cheaper materials and techniques--in fact, to do otherwise would be a criminal waste of limited natural resources; as to why low-quality timber is being used instead of more poured concrete--I bet it has much to do with consumer demand and tradition (that is, what contractors are used to working with and homeowners are used to buying) and little to do with actual economics.
demi