Nitonol

www.youtube.com...


scholar.lib.vt.edu...

Jillcha Wakjira
(Abstract)
The invention of shape memory alloys spurred a period of intense interest in the
area of heat engines in the late 70's and early 80's. It was believed that these engines
could use heat from low temperature sources such as solar heated water, geothermal hot
water and rejected heat from conventional engines as a significant source of power. The
interest has since dwindled, largely because small prototype devices developed in the
laboratory could not be scaled up to produce significant power. It is believed that the
scaled-up designs failed because they were dependent on friction as the driving
mechanism, which led to large energy losses and slip. This thesis proposes a new chain
and sprocket driving mechanism that is independent of friction and should therefore
allow for large-scale power generation.

compare.ebay.co.uk...

?! Surely that design shown is easy as pie ... I'm gona go get a bike wheel!

just another cool technology suppressed by big oil.


we as a human race are never going to get anywhere with these powerful jerks suppressing everything that threatens their wallet.


CLEAN CHEAP EFFICIENT ENERGY!?!?? oh no! nobody will buy my gas!!! suppressssssss

whahhhh wahhhhhh they almost made me not so slightly rich anymore..... wahhhhhhh


if it weren't for these oppressive monsters, we might be living on other planets by now.

maybe we aren't ready. if junk like this is still going on, i can't imagine what a horrible place we would make the universe if we were to escape the prison that is earth.

the human race as it is now would spread like a cancer across the universe.

FIRST we need to get rid of people that make our lives difficult in society the way it is now, Then we can work to better ourselves as a race, before we think about making MORE people on MORE planets.

peace.

nevermind...

isn´t it called Nitinol?

Kind of old news. There are a few people on ATS who are actively trying to turn this into a feasible technology as we speak.

I wouldn't say suppressed as so much as no useful application has been found for it. Not to say there is none.

Originally posted by boncho
Kind of old news. There are a few people on ATS who are actively trying to turn this into a feasible technology as we speak.

I wouldn't say suppressed as so much as no useful application has been found for it. Not to say there is none.

hmmmm.....


im so surprised they haven't make a robot like a terminator you can shoot, and then set the robot on fire to make it hot, and suddenly it just regenerates all the bullet holes, assuming it shot while it was cold...


seriously now, i have no doubt that there are endless applications for this.


peace.

reply to post by ZeuZZ


Interesting video. Thanks for sharing




reply to post by boncho


Why couldn't this be used as a turbine connected to a magnetic generator system and transformer to create electricity?

Beautiful Find!

This has me wondering about two things now, other than HOW DO I GET ONE OF THOSE WHEELS!

- If using a spring as source of initial energy, like say in shocks on a vehicle, or even in a pump fashion where the coil constantly loosen and tightened, it could give a constant supply of water. Just have to find a way to heat and cool the spring holding the piston.

- that leads me to this.. Wouldnt the friction of the coil expanding and contracting be enough heat to be the heating side of it? Water being the coolant. A source of its own heat, if you will.

Speaking as one of the ATS'ers who's actively trying to find a power application where nitinol will be advantageous I can tell you guys a couple things.

Nitinol energy devices are not suppressed. While nitinol has some cool properties you'd be amazed at how hard it is to turn said cool properties into actual actively working devices especially considering the difficulty of machining and forming nitinol into any but the simplest shapes and form factors.

Throw in this difficulty of machining and or acquiring the size and shape of nitinol you want with the great expense of acquiring anything but high gauge nitinol wire and you start to see some of the issues.

Now add in that nitinol really isn't all that much more than 10% efficient at turning heat into motion and you really start to see the issues mounting.

Even with all of these strikes against it Nitinol can still be useful if used to it's strengths. We believe that by using nitinol based technologies to recover waste heat you could actually have something worth building.
We've even got a design we're working on ....
Nitinol generator

Even with this design though we're running into the same old problems that seem to crop up whenever someone tries to build a nitinol based motor. Namely that for the amount of energy you can actually generate the generator will be expensive unless you can find some way to scale the device way up.

IN addition you need an application where you're already going to have access to a large amount of heat in a pretty specific temperature range otherwise you can burn out the nitinol wire in short order.


ONce you've conquered all of these hurdles though nitinol can work wonders as long as you don't expect something of it that it's not capable of.

Now onto the whole building a robot with a nitinol skin and having it magically regenerate itself.... That just plain isn't within the capabilities of this material.

reply to post by article


No the friction of the coil operating would not be nearly enough energy to heat the coil. When nitinol undergoes it's phase change it's a relatively low friction situation. Once you reach phase change temperature in the material it changes very quickly from martensite to austenite configuration. There is not much heat if any generated in this very quick process.

for more information explained better than I can check out the wiki on Nickel titanium alloy which can be found here

reply to post by roguetechie


All too often documents refer to Nitinol being "invented". Nitinol was actually discovered accidentally in a Naval Research Lab. They were experimenting with a new alloy of Nickel and Titanium, and alloyed a billet. When it was dropped to the table surface it made a certain tone. The next morning when they were analyzing it, they dropped it again, and it made a lower pitch tone when it hit the table. This differential in "ring tone" was noticed by one of the two co-discoverers, and further analysis developed into the materials you see today.

I worked as a lab assistant to one of those scientists, and can offer some advice on the charachteristics of the material upon request.

reply to post by SoymilkAlaska

just another cool technology suppressed by big oil.

Nitinol suppressed by big oil... really?

They're doing a pretty lousy job of suppressing it... Jameco Electronics sells it to anyone who wants some (They apparently bought out the earlier source, Mondo-tronics). Nitinol was used, to great media fanfare, in the Mars rover Sojourner in 1997 as actuators, when Mondo-tronics was still a stand-alone company. Incidentally, I remember articles on the potential uses and design techniques of Nitinol in Popular Electronics, Electronics Today, Popular Mechanics, American Scientific, Discovery Magazine, and Time Magazine!

The only problem with Nitinol is the cost for the amount of force applied. Solenoids are much more cost-efficient, although less energy-efficient and responsive as well as larger and heavier.

Let me guess... the US Forestry commission is covering up the fact that leaves are green too, right?

TheRedneck

reply to post by TheRedneck


Nitinol's strongest asset lies within its "linear" capability, and strangely enough not as much development has been pursued in that direction. Most research is toward developing devices that change shapes (i.e. shape memory alloy), yet that same shape changing can take place in a different fashion. If you alloy the wire, and draw it out into a length, and then train it to remember that perfectly straight linear shape, your shape change will result in shortening, and lengthening. In that aspect, the power the wire produces is phenomenal. I train 12 mil wires in my shop, and built an on/off timer to supply electrical current from a Variac to the wire for the purpose of heating it just to its transitional state. Then the timer allows the wire to cool for a specific time. The result is a lifting and dropping of 3 kilos. And the more it operates, the better the wire structure becomes, because the crystalline structure has a tendency to perfect itself in repetitve operation.

The secret to this process is in the training procedure though. With correct methods 7% contraction in length is theoretically possible, but I consistently get a good 5% nonetheless. But in that 5%.....incredible draw capability. The downside of this operation is the speed of the cycle. Getting the heat into the wire is instant using electrical current, but the wire must fully cool before it can return to its original length. That is easily overcome by simply using an ice cube to quickly pass down the length of the wire. The weights will drop almost as fast as I can pass the ice cube along the wire. So you need to have your wires inside a coolant bath that is kept below the transitional temp of the wire at all times, and apply electrical current just enough to overcome the bath temp. Then you have extremely fast operation. And hence, robotic applications with great strength.

One other aspect that seems to not get much attention is the usage of Nitinol in the manufacturing of springs. Nitinol springs would allow mechanical designers a new avenue of mechanical operation. Because by using electricity, or any source of heat, you can turn a spring on, and off. The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination. Springs that are springs, only when you want them to be. And they collapse like butter when below temp transition. They can even be straightened out into a linear wire below transition, but when heat is applied by any method (electrical, aqua, sunlight, etc), they again become very strong springs.

I differ with the belief by some that Nitinol has little in the way of applications. Can it produce free energy? No. But it can provide dramatic new mechanisms for mechanical and robotic designers.

73

reply to post by roguetechie

Throw in this difficulty of machining and or acquiring the size and shape of nitinol you want with the great expense of acquiring anything but high gauge nitinol wire and you start to see some of the issues.

Now add in that nitinol really isn't all that much more than 10% efficient at turning heat into motion and you really start to see the issues mounting.

Rogue, obviously I was never under the impression that Nitonol was going to be a "free energy" machine or anything similar. But it's not to say that a truly revolutionary product can't be developed from it. The possibilities with its properties are near endless I imagine, but we will be in wait until a great inventor adds on to the uses already found.

Perhaps you will be that inventor, perhaps not...


Nevertheless it's good you are trying and doing so with a rational look at things.

Cheers.

-B

reply to post by sotaxme

I did a lot of research into Nitinol back in the late 90s, mainly concerning an interest I have in robotics. I was very impressed with the traits you covered, but the price held me back from doing any hands-on work with it.

I absolutely agree that it has awesome qualities; the only real drawback is the price.

TheRedneck

reply to post by TheRedneck

If your intention is to develop robotic muscle wires, the cost of manufacturing them can be quite low. The cost of the actual Nitinol wire is not expensive if you order it in raw die-drawn lengths on even a small reel. The high cost you speak of comes from purchasing Nitinol that has been developed for your application by an R&D firm, or laboratory. If you know how to train the raw wire to do the application you wish, the end cost is very reasonable. Cheap for that matter. In order to develop linear lengths of muscle wire capable of drawing incredible contraction strength, you need to build a simple training platform to transform the raw die-drawn wire into the application you wish. I regularly experiment with these wires, and built my platform for under $600. It is capable of 1200mm lengths, but for a low investment I could increase the lengths considerably. The training process takes about 3 hours per wire. 5% contraction is easily obtained. Since the wire contraction is so strong, you simply use leverage in your mechanical design to accomodate the short 5% into a workable movement. And if you need even more strength you simply use a larger diameter wire. I generally experiment with 4 different diameters. A human-type hand with 4 fingers, and one thumb can be driven with 19 wires in a bundled and coolant bathed tube, and need not be 1200mm long either. Again, leverage comes into play in the design. We have seen Prosthetic hand designs, and they are unbelievably bulky in design, and probably not very strong either. If you wish to discuss robotic applications of Nitinol I would be glad to contact you to discuss this further.

Also, when ordering your wire you need a supplier that will provide you with the correct alloy mixture as well. The alloy mixture percentages are a factor in the temperature transition of your application. Most people think that Nitinol is only Nickel and Titanium, and that is usually true. (Ni=Nickel, Ti=Titanium, NOL=Naval Ordanance Laboratory). But few people realize that there are other elements on the Atomic Chart that can be added , or "doped" into the alloy in small percentages to greatly influence the charachteristics of the end product.

73

Boncho,

I didn't figure you for a free energy supporter that comment was directed at other posters who seemed to think it has been suppressed or otherwise hampered for some reason. I just figured it needed to be pointed out that nitinol was not in any way shape or form a vehicle of free energy production.
Call me funny but it just slightly irritates me when people spout free energy nonsense about something that I've been researching for my own ends. I"m all fine and good with the search for free or cheap energy, as a matter of fact I think it's great, I just don't think nitinol will ever get someone there.

Now nitinol is amazingly cool stuff though. Whether it's being used as robotic actuators or glasses frames it's properties are truly an asset to many applications. Incidentally the Hydraulic couplers on the f-14 were made from specially trained nitinol that responds to very low temperatures.

reply to post by sotaxme

Back in the 90s, Mondo-tronics was the only supplier I could locate, and of course, as you say, they no doubt wanted their customers to go the most expensive way. If things have changed, I would be extremely interested in the exact alloy information, potential suppliers of raw wires, the technical specifications, and info on training the wires.

TheRedneck

reply to post by SoymilkAlaska


I completely share your point of view, and I think it's going to take a loong time to get rid of the current system. IF we can get rid of it and not collapse as a race in the process.

Cheers

reply to post by roguetechie


I'm thinking something to do with space Rogue. If it isn't being used already. Satellite components maybe? The temperature extremes there are rather, well, extreme.

Cheers.

ETA:

Well of course I feel stupid. It's all been done before.

-Sigh-

mrsec.wisc.edu...

Yeah the mars rover used nitinol in some of it's actuators as far as I know. And I think there might be other examples of nitinol used in space.

In addition to nitinol there's a newer material known as terfenol which reacts to magnetic fields like nitinol reacts to heat or electrical stimulation. Now can you imagine all the possibilities for that one?