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“Liquidmetal Technologies produces an amorphous metal called Vitreloy, which is primarily composed of zircon,” Fox reports. “Used mainly for sporting equipment so far, the company has also produced components of cell phone cases in the past, said William Johnson, former vice chairman of technology at Liquidmetal Technologies, professor of materials science at Caltech and inventor of Vitreloy. ‘The material is durable, hard, scratch resistant, and can be processed thermo-plastically at relatively low temperature,’ Johnson told TechNewsDaily.”
Fox reports, “Vitreloy ‘tends to be lighter than steel, a bit heavier than titanium. You can produce complex, three dimensional shapes pretty well.’ By replacing the current metal and plastic cases with Vitreloy, Apple can drastically increase the toughness of their products while reducing the weight.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Rumor has it that a UFP chief engineer named Montgomery Scott just sort of appeared one day and gave Liquidmetal the formula in exchange for a plexiglass whale tank.
Awesome, awesome take, you old Trekkie nerds you.
“There be whales captain!”
Apple, skating to where the puck will be 10 years in the furture.
Very smart investment by Apple. It’s these things that will keep Apple ahead of the game while everyone else is busy copying Apple while stuck with the same POS hardware and designs.
Well I for one am energized by this discussion thread.
May fortune favor the foolish.
Peace.
There are a number of things in that article that aren’t true.
The main one is that other metals can’t be die cast. Totally wrong! Many objects made of metal have been die cast for quite some time. Anyone ever see tin soldiers, actually made of zinc? Well, they are die cast. Cameras that have metal, or partly metal bodies have those metal parts made from die cast aluminum or magnesium. In fact, the precision of those casting are so high that machining in many cases isn’t required.
Just type “die casting metal” into Google. The equivelant in plastic is injection moulding. I’ve been doing both for decades.
No gaggle, use Duck Duck Go.
Mr Scott dissed the Mac. Must have been a user of Ballmer Memorial Version of Windoze Se7en.
Couldn’t find it in English. Any help out there?
@Bream Rockmetteller:
Only if you have a lighter to sterilize them with.
James Doohan aka ‘Scotty’ has a small portion of his ashes orbiting the earth. So he’s looking down on you mofos.