New material called 'Proteus' is reportedly the world's first uncuttable material

[TBonez]

There is a zero percent chance this substance is literally uncuttable.

It's simply more resistant to a cutting wheel and dulls blades faster.

Obviously a bolt cutter that cuts with extreme pressure would work just fine.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

Ooh I get to be the guy to call out a typo in the headline. I think you mean it has only 15% the density of steel not for steel?

Dingdingding! You've just won 15% more thanks!

 

[Stiqy]

Ooh I get to be the guy to call out a typo in the headline. I think you mean it has only 15% the density of steel not for steel?

Not only a typo, but grammatically incorrect and misleading as well. It isn't 15% the density of steal, it is 15% less than steel, so it is 85% the density of steel.

From the article: "It is 15-percent less dense than steel..."

If it was 15% the density of steel that would be Star-Trek level impressive tech.

 

[Wizwill]

If you use abrasive tools to cut aluminum (such as the angle grinder shown being used in the opening photo),The normal voids in the surface of the grinding wheel that carry off the material created by grinding become clogged.

It's even worse when you try to sand aluminum with almost any grade of sandpaper. In all craftsman's trick is to load the sandpaper's surface asoft soap film which will keep the grinding particles from clogging the abrasive medium.

I would suspect if you used a relatively heavy duty hand-poweredd hacksaw you could get through that piece of aluminum.

 

[quadibloc]

I do suspect that it will be possible to design some kind of cutting tool that will be able to cut this material. Given its low density, it's quite hard for me to believe that its intrinsic toughness is really better than that of good old Hadfield steel, so it seems that its resistance to cutting depends on... tricks... that the right cutting tool would bypass. But of course I could be mistaken, as it's often hard to properly recognize the value of something new.

 

[quadibloc]

Can adamantium cut through it? Is it as strong as vibranium?

Given that Hadfield steel can't hold a cutting edge, it can't cut through it, but presumably it does resist standard tool steels... the closest things we have to such fictional super-hard materials.
But I'm surprised you didn't mention Inertron.

 

[neeyik]

Not only a typo, but grammatically incorrect and misleading as well. It isn't 15% the density of steal, it is 15% less than steel, so it is 85% the density of steel.

The actual statement from the researchers is as follows:

We have created a new architected material, which is both highly deformable and ultra‐resistant to dynamic point loads. The bio-inspired metallic cellular structure (with an internal grid of large ceramic segments) is non-cuttable by an angle grinder and a power drill, and it has only 15% steel density.

We produced sandwich plate specimens made of a cellular aluminum core (EN AW-6060) with an orthogonal layout of ceramic spheres (Fig. 1a,b,e,f) with steel alloy (DC01) faceplates.

The aluminum foam matrix had a density of ρf = 730 kg/m3 and 73% porosity (air content), which ensured sufficient flexibility of the matrix. Our metallic-ceramic hierarchical structure had ρf = 1140 kg/m3 density. Sandwich panels with two 2 mm steel face plates had 1780 kg/m3 density in a 40 mm thick panel configuration.

 

[Arbie]

So they're patenting grapefruit? Maybe I read it too fast...

 

[quadibloc]

Now I'm getting how it works. Aluminum clogs up abrasive cutters; the ceramic spheres are too hard to be cut by anything but an abrasive cutter; and a normal cutter won't just push the ceramic spheres out of the way, because as they move, they will squeeze the aluminum ahead of them until it can't squeeze any more, essentially making it harder.
How about using a cutting wheel of an alloy containing tungsten, spinning so fast that the friction melts the aluminum?

 

[Hadakajime]

Bolt cutters pinch right through this? so much for the silly "bike lock application" claim.

no/negligible vibrations.. you need to distinguish between the different technical methodologies of "cutting" something. Scissors cut differently to a knife, or an axe, or a torch, etc.

 

[trgz]

So it's designed to withstand physical cutting blades but what about explosives, guns, plasma cutters, or welders/torches?

or even boltcutters - or lasers!

 

[Porkous]

If I would name one strong aspect of current technology, is the way we connect. These universities collaborated with each other and they came up with something brilliant. Brain-storming is not something to neglect.

If anything. This technology is to be trusted because is almost alien like inspired. Nature has the mystery, power, and vast possibilities, its scale and vastness in universe is tremendous.

"Nature uses hierarchical structures for protection from extreme loads. The freefall of grapefruit from 10 m does not damage the pulp because pomelo peel consists of vascular bundles and an open-pored cellular structure with the struts made of parenchymatic cells. Arapaimas fish living in the Amazon resist the attack of piranhas’ triangular teeth arrays through the hierarchical design of their scales"

 

[Shadowboxer]

If you made a bike lock out of this and locked your bike up in Portsmouth, England and left the area. You would return to find the thing cut and your bike gone..

 

[navuho]

The title say "uncuttable" not "undestroyable"...

 

[Rayneofpayne]

Uncuttable. Until someone specifically finds a way to "cut" it (once it's popular enough). It's how everything seems to work lol

Maybe it has a heat/cold weakness, or some other weakness that isn't stated (or found yet). I wouldn't mind locks getting more annoying to cut through, but I am not holding my breath just yet...

You wouldn't have to, part of the issue with any metal or alloy is the more strength it has the more brittle it is, as an example titanium rods are incredibly terribly to machine, it's hard to put even a scratch in it, the trade-off is you can snap it over you knee, so a sledgehammer would shatter it quite easily.

 

[Erewhon]

2024, some Charlie will make a punk collar or whatever out of this stuff (people always go to the extremes available); 2026, some mega-Charlie will let their girlfriend fill the lock with solder or lose the key or something; 2027, they split with said partner, and come looking for how to remove it without generating a lot of (slightly uncomfortable) heat. See how that goes.