LQMT .99 And moving up. The leading manufacturer of baseball sports equipment, Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, Inc, an Official Supplier to Major League Baseball for over 30 years, has teamed with Liquidmetal® Technologies to introduce a new standard in high-performance materials to the world of baseball products. Liquidmetal engineers and Rawlings designers developed a baseball bat that offers superior durability while dramatically reducing the energy loss experienced with other materials upon impact with the ball. Liquidmetal technology is currently exclusive to Rawlings for baseball and softball bats.
SanDisk Corporation, the world’s largest supplier of flash storage card products, has introduced their latest SanDisk Cruzer® Titanium flash drives featuring the Liquidmetal alloy for its case. With more than twice the strength of titanium and the ability to precision net shape cast the high tolerance part, the Liquidmetal® Alloy provides the flash memory drive with the strongest case that withstands scratching, and wear and corrosion.
Liquidmetal is the only material that can fully exploit the energy that is released during a turn-without any losses whatsoever. At the same time, the special molecular structure guarantees fastest response and markedly improved ski rebound for optimum turn initiation. Skis made of materials with conventional molecular structure lose too much power during turns as a result of heat and strong ski deformation.
In telecommunications and electronics, Liquidmetal Technologies has created markets for scratch-resistant and slim-but-strong cellular phone casings. Vertu Limited, a luxury personal communication company, features the alloy in the bezel and battery cover of its new Vertu® Ascent Collection, available in fine jewelry and department stores worldwide. In an effort to answer consumer demands for smaller, thinner, and more aesthetically pleasing cellular phone designs, Samsung Electronics Company produced a Liquidmetal super-thin liquid crystal display screen frame component for its SCH-X199 mobile phone model. More recently, Samsung has focused on developing small, net-shaped parts such as hinge assemblies, and is incorporating these parts into cellular phones and other devices. The small, functional parts exploit the high strength and elasticity of Liquidmetal while using the alloy’s ability to be “plastically processed” to obtain precision hardware at cost structures competitive with plastic parts.
In medicine, Liquidmetal Technologies is working with DePuy Orthopaedics, a division of Johnson & Johnson, to develop orthopedic implant products such as hip and knee replacement devices, as well as scalpel blades that are stronger and sharper than steel, less expensive than diamond, and longer lasting than modern blades.
For industry, Liquidmetal Technologies offers a complete line of alloy coatings and powders for equipment and machinery that provides the exceptional benefits of an amorphous surface in tough environments of high wear, temperature, and corrosion. These products possess the right properties to significantly extend part life, including low coefficient of friction, low shrinkage, wear resistance, and high-temperature performance. With established applications in oil drilling thousands of feet beneath the sea floor, refining, pulp and paper, food processing, and agriculture, the coatings are a dependable solution to everyday wear and tear.
Spinning back to the Space Program, NASA and Liquidmetal Technologies worked together on four Space Shuttle missions, enabling NASA scientists to study the alloy firsthand in the microgravity conditions of space. The technology is also being considered for several upcoming aerospace applications, possibly helping to get the 3rd Revolution even further off of the ground.
Credit: Liquidmetal Technologies |
