Sal: Silicon Carbide/Steel Blades for Spyderco?

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Sal, I was examining some of the properties of silicon carbide, the extreme hardness, strength, heat-resistance, lightweight, and other properties. It would make a great blade material if it could be produced in such a way as to give it more toughness and less brittleness traditionally associated with ceramics.

IF a method was developed by which silicon carbide in some form could be assembled into a knife blade, and it could be done economically/inexpensively enough and could be done in such a way as to build a Spyderco knife blade with the hole in the blade to open it, and where it was tough and reliable and would not shatter or chip or splinter within large extreme boundaries of stress, would Spyderco ever consider making such exotic hybrid or pure SiC blades, like, perhaps meshed in with steel alloys or other metals?

At this point this is all theoretics, but, I would like your viewpoint on it.

I can envision Silicon carbide or Silicon nitride knives or hybrid knives where the SiC or Si3N4 is blended in with VG10 steel or other steels, or, polymers, a Silicon Carbide Polymer Spyder Edged Knife that would actually bend if deformed and would not shatter or break like a broken coffee cup.

Some of the benefits to such knives would be:

- lightweight
- strong
- hard
-tough, and elastic if made properly with atomic precision control over the nano and micro and macro structure.
- any color. They could be made to look like any steel or metal or any color shade or combination of colors. Color is simply a function of light reflection of surfaces and once Spyderco could structure things with atomic precision, you could make ceramics that look like metals or plastics or plastics that look like metals or vice versa.

- rust proof.
Sharpenable with Diamond or Boron NItride Sharp Maker Rods.

Knives like this would make H1 look like straw in comparison, Sal.

It looks like the big key to doing all this would be to make Molecular Assemblers. Once we have molecular assemblers you could start cranking out these knives and similar designs like pancakes.

Thus here is one way to do this, and also change the world in such a drastic way as to literally revolutionize everything:

In Golden, Colorado, in the headquarters there, you could set up a division of Spyderco to create the first assembler, the "Spyderco Assembler Project" or also called "Project Nano Knife". Right now the main bottleneck is that we need the first assemblers. Once you have the first you can use those to replicate and reproduce endless copies and then the bootstrap bottleneck is conquered. Like bacteria, they would replicate when provided with energy and materials and soon you would have billions and trillions of the devices and you can program them to make all the knives you want.

No more centralized factories anywhere but Golden. You could literally then mass produce all of the knives in the main Spyderco headquarters and that is only the beginning, Sal.

Think about this: If Spyderco were to build the first working operational molecular assemblers, and we know they are possible and this is not violating any known physical or chemical laws (Bacteria, Proteins, Enzymes, Ribosomes, are ALL BIOLOGICAL Molecular Assembler systems that work everyday. You, me, and every one of us has them inside our body at this very moment. All that is being done here would be to make synthetic manmade versions of these beauties!), you could then license assemblers and nanofactories based on assemblers to governments, companies, corporations, cities, towns, and individuals across the whole world, globally.

Once the assemblers were reproducing and replicating we would have no more material poverty. What is poverty? Lack of sufficient material goods. What is the difference between a billionaire and a homeless person? The one has access to all the material he can desire, the other doesn't. Spyderco would have been responsible for bringing about the end of material poverty on the Earth. People could have assemblers and because they would replicate they would be dirt cheap, and they could make their own clothes, shoes, knives, tents, houses, cars, computers, solar cells, solar batteries, tools, toys, you name it, as long as it can be programmed into a CAD file or blueprint encoding, or as long as it can be scanned, and as long as the atoms and the energy to run the assemblers are there, you could make anything you want.

Infact, Sal, imagine this: A Nanocomputer, Assembler, and Nano Disassembler could work together to disassemble an object, scan its structure to the molecules, and rebuild perfect exact copies of it, ad-infinitum.

I already know of an entire group of people who would be willing to work with you all on this (nanotechnology people who's goal is to produce molecular assemblers) and would gladly get you in contact with them.

Can you imagine, Sal, if you could have an entire line of "Spyderco Super Ceramic Knives", from Dragonflies and Manbugs, to Delicas and Enduras, on up to Tatankas, and the fixed blades, made with shatter-proof diamond, ceramic, ceramic-metal composite, and other nanomaterials?

What do you think my friend?

PS: Here is one way to make the first assembler.
Presently we have non assembler technology. We have Scanning Probe Microscopes like Scanning Tunneling Microscopes and Atomic Force Microscopes. These are able to image individual atoms and molecules. The STM was made by IBM.

The main drawback at this point is this: The STM and AFM needs to be able to have a "Molecular Gripper" tip that is able to pick and place and bond molecules to a substrate in three dimensions. If you can somehow get the knowhow and people together and make a Molecular Gripper Scanning Probe Microscope, this is called the Proto Assembler. You then use the proto assembler, Sal, to build the early crude primitive assemblers. These crude primitive assemblers will then be used to build ever-better ever-more advanced assemblers unto you have full scale self replicating self reproducing nanotechnological assemblers and nanofactories to make the above dreams into tangible reality.

1 Proto Assembler (Molecular Gripper SPMs)
2 Crude Early Assemblers made with polymers and glasses and other materials.
3 Fullerene and Diamondoid Assemblers.
4 General Purpose Molecular nano Assemblers/Replicators.

We are presently right at the stage of the proto assembler, which we need. That is the starting point, or one starting point. Other teams are working with DNA based nano machines and self assembling macro molecular chemistry. But I would absolutely love to see you, sal, and Spyderco, be the ones to bring about the Nanotechnological Age.

[The Mastiff]

Wow!.....Just Wow!

and if 6 was 9 I'd be Jimi Hendrix.

https://youtu.be/vZuFq4CfRR8

[Bloke]

SEF,

Sounds feasible! I'd love a Sprint Run Millie, nano machined from a solid block of SiC. :cool:

I'm sick for SiC. :eek:

[avocadobbq]

Poe's law?

[tvenuto]

Poe's law?

Nope, you just haven't been around long enough to fully appreciate SEF. He's genuine to an extreme degree. Somewhat of an anti-troll, he's the Neo of the modern internet, a result of the equation trying to balance itself back out.

[avocadobbq]

[Tyrdle]

The thing is if a company like Spyderco could do it why hasn't someone with much more funding like Nasa done it yet? And for that matter, why haven't you?

[hudsonhawk]

SEF,

Have you read Prey by Michael Crichton? Molecular assemblers can have a dark side too . Living close to Golden, I don't know how I feel about 820 Spyderco Way being destroyed in a cautionary tale of achieving too far too fast lol. :p

[RadioactiveSpyder]

There are plenty of government agencies working on some of the items you describe already, and have been doing so for over a decade. In fact just across the street from my building is a DOE Center for Functional Nanomaterials (a super fancy building I might add!). Trust me, folks are on top of this already as best as they can do (plus you know, US investment in basic research isn't exactly stellar right now, lowest levels in decades in fact, just my luck! ). I think Sal has enough on his plate designing new knives and running his company anyway...

Please also note that items within a SEM are subjected to pretty intense localized electron irradiation, and as someone who studies this for a living, biological materials don't hold up too well when you keep continuously smashing their chemical bonds apart!

OK, back to work... Cheers, Radioactive

[demoncase]

I was- as before- going to type an extensive, concept-by-concept rebuttal of this- I will settle instead for "If ifs and buts were candy and nuts- we'd all have a very merry Christmas".

[anagarika]

SEF,

You'll be interested in bluntcut's CWF. He's trying to make steel matrix at least 65HRC (excluding carbides such as Vanadium, etc.), where silicates are. So blunting can be reduced a lot and we'll look at longer edge retention (at same toughness).

Check his work over BF

[SpyderEdgeForever]

anagarika, thank you so much for mentioning that! Yes I took a look at his work and I was definitely amazed. I recognize this as major knife/blade steel/metallurgical leaps forward. And infact, if I read some of his work correctly, one of his claims is that "ordinary carbon steel" and "ordinary stainless steel" could be increased in hardness levels to that range (65 HRC) without sacrificing toughness and elasticity. That is almost like getting a "diamond knife" as far as I am concerned. Thank you!

[Studey]

Can we go back to having theoretical material threads in off topic?

[anagarika]

SEF,

On the other hand, each person having molecular assemble is chaos unleashed on earth. Plus, in that case, no knife is ever needed, one simply disassemble an reassemble.

I do think this should be on Off Topic subforum.

[TazKristi]

I won't be moving this thread. SEF's discussion is aimed directly at Sal and his thoughts pertain directly to Spyderco. Just because something is theoretical doesn't mean it's not a valid discussion. Imagine how boring life would be if theoretical things were never explored? Spyderco was born from theoretical... born from things that had never been done before.

Kristi

[tvenuto]

Just because something is in Off Topic doesn’t mean it’s not a valid discussion either. I was under the impression the “General” forum was for Spyderco product discussion, and I also think theoretical materials are better discussed in Off Topic. It seems like there’s a certain stigma with Off Topic that I’m not getting? I’m perfectly ok with Kristi’s judgement on this, but as someone who has suggested threads be moved in the past, I feel compelled to note that such a suggestion is little more than trying to maintain organization, and not an implication that a thread isn’t valid.

[Accutron]

I happen to be close friends with a gemologist and master faceter who pretty much single-handedly invented the modern synthetic Moissanite gemstone industry. SiC wafers are very expensive (purchased directly from Cree and Siemens IIRC), with four-digit prices for a 4" wafer. SiC is also incredibly difficult to machine, with a process that takes something on the order of 12 hours to cut a single 52-facet gemstone on a computer-controlled faceting machine. The stones are cut with expensive diamond laps that can only cut flat facets. Even disregarding all of the gobbledygook about nanoassemblers and such, you're talking about a blade component that would cost something like $10,000+ to manufacture, and would be mechanically unsuitable for most knife tasks. Adding a multi-trillion dollar tech tree to make the process more efficient is not going to make it more affordable.

The technology you describe would probably make knives obsolete anyway. At that point we'll have wireless nanocomputers implanted in our brains at birth. When we want to cut something we'll simply think it, and a swarm of microscopic nanobots will magically perform the cutting for us. Then we can sit around on forums arguing about which type of nanobot has better edge retention.

There's nothing wrong with postulating such things, but what you describe is well within the realm of science fiction (and OT IMO.) It's not going to happen in any of our great grandchildren's lifetimes. You might as well post to the General Motors forum and ask the CEO if he would consider incorporating warp drive technology at some point in the future.

You'll be interested in bluntcut's CWF.

Speaking of science fiction...or perhaps that qualifies more as fantasy.