Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/01/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Douglas, the future is already composite sandwich for high tech items. I glibly say in my lectures about the use of high tech materials in road vehicles that nature chose composites but the manufacturing process is a bit slow. We can make rather good parts ( many times better than magnesium :-) ) in short carbon fibre reinforced polycarbonate. These are nowhere near as good as can be obtained from long fibre structures but are much cheaper (but not as cheap as magnesium) Full honeycomb-cored sandwich carbon epoxy structures are still way too expensive to make for any consumer item, though probably about 1/5 the cost of 25 years ago. There are a couple of cars by Porsche and Mercedes using a very simplified version of the type of structure we build and they both sell for ?300,000+. I have read that Manfrotto have made a basalt tripod, I am not familiar with this material so I am not able to comment on its suitability for the purpose - sounds cool though :-) Titanium is a very interesting material so are ceramics but I have already ranted too much OT. Frank On 20 Jan, 2006, at 22:55, Douglas Sharp wrote: > Thanks Frank, > so I assume the future will be carbon fibre sandwich materials, > resins ,glass derivatives or industrial ceramics (TiO2) - or > something totally new in the way of plastics. > I read recently that one company is even already making tripods on > the basis of basalt- was it Manfrotto?. > Interesting to read that titanium also "protects" itself with an > oxidation surface layer, I thought the stuff was resistant to just > about anything nature could throw at it. > cheers > Douglas