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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."
The article focuses on how this is a more "peaceful use" for the EMP. I disagree: when the robot apocalypse finally arrives, and a rogue T800 drives after you in into a steel mill, it will be damn useful to have an EMP device used for shaping steel rings handy to stop the cybernetic killing machine. As an added benefit, an EMP would destroy the cpu, meaning no Cyberdyne Systems, and I get my 5 hours back wasted on T3 and Terminator Salvation!
The mechanical press was, like, so 1984.
The site the wear on machine dies as a factor, but what's the expected number of discharges that these super-capacitors can be expected to survive, the coils?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Luckily for us, humans aren't terribly good conductors and thus would be essentially unharmed by an EMP.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
He is our governor now, you insensitive clod!
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.
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.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Not all burrs left by a punch press need to be removed by hand. Small pieces may be burnished, rotoblasted, or vibratory finished. Still takes time, I guess.
Hi. I'm a metalworking professional, with a heavy background in tool and die work.
>metal presses, which can leave burrs which must be removed
The burr side, if you've got sharp tooling, doesn't have much of a burr. Also, when you assemble the product, the burr side goes away from the user. Speaker grille material, for example, is always mounted on the finished speaker burr side in. If you've got a large burr punching holes in steel, then you have dull tooling and/or wrong punch-to-die clearance.
>.2 seconds per hole
Too slow. Much, much too slow. Call me when it can equal 600 strokes a minute on a conventional press.
>by hand
Someone's never heard of tumbling, flame deburring, electrochemical mass finishing, etc.
>This article is written as if there's no tooling involved and there's no die or stripper plate to back up the steel as it's distorted by the EMP. It goes on to say that it can do away with molds. LOL QUE?
Total misunderstanding by the journalist.
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BMO
The device works because it induces a current in the conductor (steel in this case) which creates a magnetic field which opposes the field that caused the induction in the first place. This is why you could also punch through non-ferrous metals like Aluminum with the EMP "press." The reason it wouldn't punch a hole through a human is entirely due to the fact that we are poor conductors of electricity which means that it is essentially impossible to induce an electric field strong enough to allow the device to punch a hole.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Nonsense. The human body has an average resistance of 300-1000 ohms. Not great, but far weaker than modern electrical insulation.
Evidence has been shown that some frequencies in the EM spectrum indeed do cause damage to DNA and in some cases that damage is propagated to future divisions of that cell, meaning the damage is permanent.
From an industrial point of view, this is very interesting. Laser cutter machines are expensive to purchase, but upkeep isn't high and they are very versatile. A machine like this doesn't seem to have the versatility of a laser and might even consume more power. Punches are very fast but manual deburring is expensive.
I noticed in the article they said this works based on magnetic repulsion, and also that it works on stainless steels. I'm curious if this works on the largely non-magnetic 300 series SS.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Everyone I know in the metal manufacturing field is currently using water jet technology to cut holes. Easier, cheaper, and neater than lasers; and cuts any arbitrary shape, unlike a die punch. And - very importantly - safe for the operator.
So how come no comparison in TFA with water jet? EMP doesn't sound like it can do intricate shapes, and they're only going through very thin steel. Why replace a proven inexpensive technology with a new inferior one?
You're the sort of wet blanket who during the space battle scenes of Star Wars leans over and whispers, "There's no sound in space," aren't you?
The magnitude of the induced current depends largely on the inverse of the resistance for which steel is magnitudes lower than human flesh. That means that the field would need to be truly colossal to do the same thing to a human being that this punch is doing to the steel.
ionizing EM radiation certainly. Terahertz can also create bubbles in the DNA helix which can impair proper cell division but there is *zero* evidence that the fields involved in the EMP press do any of this.
The punch works because it induces a current in the metal which creates a magnetic field to oppose the one that induced the current in the first place. It does not depend on the magnetic properties of the metal. This means that roughly anything that is highly conductive like Aluminum, 303 stainless, copper etc. could be punched with the device. Largely non-conductive materials like humans can not be punched with the EMP punch.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
When I was a small boy, I had a friend who lived on a farm. This lad tried it and relayed to me that it's just as bad as it sounds. (Also, in my observation, urine streams do not tend to break apart, and urine also is VERY salty.)
The government can't save you.
I'm wondering just how much a strong magnetic field like this could accelerate a bullet-like metal object.
(...and urine also is VERY salty.)
uhh, thanks for sharing.
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.
This is my sig.
Better check whether the state's budget problems are due to a slightly excessive allocation to Cyberdyne Systems via front companies or dummy government departments.
Contrary to the thoughts of George Lucas, no sound in space is much more dramatic.
Stanley Kubrick understood this with 2001.
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BMO
Humans are not usually very magnetic.
Are you sure? There are some humans that I have found to be highly repulsive...
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
The upper limit on a .45ACP is 21,000psi or 1,400ATM.
The "EMP press" generates 3,500ATM.
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BMO
How about disabling their vehicle, or punching a hole in their tank to facilitate an ambush or use of other weapons?
I doubt it would be very effective. Here's what's happening. A large power source builds up a charge in a bank of supercapacitors. This charge is fed into a coil, generating a magnetic field. The coil induces an equal but opposite field in the steel. The two fields repel each other, and since the coil is fixed in place, the steel under the core of the coil gets flung out of the way.
Now, if you had the large power source, the supercapacitors, the massive coils, and the supply of steel out in space, the whole shebang would indeed be moved by the steel slugs moving away. However, due to the mass of the "engine" and the weak "thrust", the whole thing would be impractical. In short, the device is a coil gun. You'd get more thrust out of a magnetoplasmadynamic device (same basic parts, but vapourize the steel instead of punching out holes. Higher velocity==more thrust).
The main problem, as with all electric rockets, is the power source. You need megawatts of power to get a few hundred measly newtons of thrust. That kind of power source does not come light. You need a nuclear reactor, or hundreds of square metres of solar panels. Massive.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
To add something new to what the other repliers have said, human body is mostly transparent to EMP. It's not mostly transparent to bullets, knives, and a variety of other lethal tools. The EMP punch wouldn't add anything new to the huge list of ways to deliberately kill people.
humans can not be punched with the EMP punch at present energy levels.
There, weaponized that for you.
THL phish sticks
This, as the article points out, is basically a beefed up version of magnetic forming. Magnetic forming has been around for decades. It's useful mostly for compressing cylindrical objects, so it's used on couplings, tube joints, and similar round objects I've seen it used in making hydraulic spool valves. It's a way to apply a completely symmetric radial squeezing force, which is hard to do at high precision with stamping dies or presses. Here are some examples of parts formed by magnetic forming.
But for punching holes, there's no obvious advantage to magnetic forming.
"urine streams do not tend to break apart"
Interestingly enough, I have done the appropriate experiment to really determine whether that is true. I was in a bathroom where a strobe light was running (at a science-themed party, no less), and by tuning its frequency, I could get a good view of the nature of my urine stream. Initially it is continuous, but it breaks up into small droplets fairly quickly--perhaps after a foot or so. With the strobe set correctly, the droplets appear almost stationary.
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.
A real scientist would get a post-grad student to taste his urine.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You must be popular at rave parties...
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
humans can not be punched with the EMP punch at present energy levels.
There, weaponized that for you.
Speaking of weapons, the tool sounds like it should appear in the beam-weapons list for a MechWarrior 4/Mercs add-on pack under "lostech weapons". Maybe another hardpoint "can-opener" weapon choice to compliment the short-ranged-but-powerful "Assault Laser" (IIRC).
An EMP device that would cut through metals would not do much to a human. It's mainly a matter of energy absorption. For a human-killer, it loses in two ways. The frequency of the EMP energy needed to resonate in metals efficiently enough to punch a hole is far different than the frequency that would best transfer energy to a human body. Even if one were to find the overall best frequency, the human body is a poor inductor as well as conductor. Not only would the weapon need huge amounts of energy, it would be *extremely* short-ranged.
What it *might* conceivably be useful for is as part of a bunker-buster type weapon to penetrate extremely thick armor after a shaped charge ahead of it clears possible rock & debris. It could prove more useful than conventional shaped-charge, formed-rod penetration system when the target has very thick armor.
The EMP punch system, if used as an armor-piercing system, has the potential to time the length & frequency of the pulse, the shape of the pulse, pulse strength, as well as possibly firing two rapid pulses, enabling it to efficiently penetrate extreme armor thicknesses and be optimized on-the-fly to differing armor types, since pulse frequency, strength, number, and shape are all variables that conceivably be set by a human before launch, or by a targeting computer that uses the weapons' sensors to automatically adjust it up to last-second for best results.
All this fantasy of course assumes having the ability to store sufficient energy onboard to operate it while being small & light enough to be practical. We ain't there, yet.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
A real scientist would get that post-grad student to taste the urine of the whole staff, to see if there is a difference between gender, age, race and diet. Oh, and he'd get more then one post-grad to do that, or else your pool of results would be to insignificant
Could be worse. You could have the governor where I live... you know, the one whose staff thought he said "I'll be hiking the Appalachian Trail" when what he actually said was "I'll be getting some Argentinian Tail."
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Right, just turning sound off in space doesn't automatically make it more dramatic. We agree.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Why a rail gun? They are awfully inefficient after just several shots your railgun is fried. Build a gaus gun(also known as Coilgun), same idea less friction.
No need to store energy just make use of Explosively pumped flux compression generator. In a few words it's an emp generator that uses highexplosives, single use instant emp.
Third rails are about 750V with lots of amps but animal fences are like 10KV with almost no current. The third rail is a lot more dangerous but the urine path is high resistance.
As someone said, its volts that jolts but mills (as in mA) that kills!
See my journal, I write things there
Especially if you can stick them all in the airlock at once and then toss them out.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A better name might be Magnetic Punch. There's nothing amazing about it. They are just magnetising the steel as part of a solenoid. Like a motor or rail-gun.
And yep, it'll still be forcing the steel through a punch tool. So, burring will still occur. Just a case of speed and strength, no different to any other punch.