Using EMP To Punch Holes In Steel

angrytuna writes "The Economist is running a story about a group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantages over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (0.2 vs. 1.4 seconds), and by metal presses, which can leave burrs that must be removed by hand."

Comments

Re:Weapon?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that occupational hazard specialists wouldn't recommend kissing one; but the ability of a strong magnetic pulse to deform a material depends on that material being conductive enough to have an induced current and a (temporary) magnetic field of its own. Metals qualify, humans are pretty iffy.

Humans, being gooey sacks of largely salt-water, are slightly conductive and they do do some electrical signalling internally; so a very strong magnetic field could well have an effect(TMS exploits this fact to noninvasively alter the function of brain tissue). A very strong magnetic pulse to the brain could have odd effects, a very strong pulse to the heart might be an issue, and a really strong pulse just about anywhere might be enough to cause electrical flailing or burns.

That said, though, the weapon potential would be absurdly poor. Magnetic field strength falls off quite quickly with distance, so you would need some truly heroic equipment to have any effect on somebody more than a few centimetres away. You'd be much better off simply discharging the capacitor bank through the victim rather than the coil. Or just hitting them with a wrench.

All the alternatives to good old-fashioned chemical propellants and sharp objects face serious challenges on the road to practicality; but strong magnetic fields aren't even in the same league.

Hard to see it being practical

[peacefinder]

I won't say never, because people who say "That'll never be practical!" are inevitably made to look like idiots at some point. That said, it's hard to imagine this working well for punching applications.

This process seems to have some inherent disadvantages for punching holes. Compared to an ordinary turret punch, the tooling will be very expensive and will take a tremendous amount more power to operate. It is also not clear if EMP tools will be able to punch arbitrary shapes, or how the press would operate in an industrial setting without damaging its own working area or doing Something Unfortunate with the waste metal, or if it can operate at anything like the speed of a flywheel-driven punch. The may of course be certain applications where it will become valuable or even indispensable, but for general-purpose punching, I don't see it.

For forming applications it's a very interesting idea, though.

Is the laser comparison fair?

[tjstork]

I have to ask the question, if, the EMP can punch so much faster than the laser, couldn't the guy that makes the laser just make one that is more powerful, and therefor, cuts faster? It seems to me that this comparison in the article is more of a selling pitch than a legitimate comparison of EMP vs the laser for metal working.

Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory?

[bmo]

Contrary to the thoughts of George Lucas, no sound in space is much more dramatic.

Stanley Kubrick understood this with 2001.

--
BMO

Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory?

[interkin3tic]

Contrary to the thoughts of Stanley Kubrick, no plot in space is much more boring.

George Lucas understood this in the 70's but then forgot it in the 90's.

Re:Article Has No Meat.

[grimJester]

>.2 seconds per hole Too slow. Much, much too slow. Call me when it can equal 600 strokes a minute on a conventional press.

600 a minute is .1 seconds per hole, not so far from .2. Did you misread it as 2? Presumably a process without physical moving parts can be speeded up more easily as well.

Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Right, just turning sound off in space doesn't automatically make it more dramatic. We agree.

Re:Water jet?

[atamido]

Also rubber - I cut a lot of rubber with it.

I feel like there's a great joke in here that I can't quite put my finger on.