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Thanks. Going to order as soon as I decide color.
Lots of parts I can’t identify. Would be nice if we are selling some of them. I don’t see the guitar bridge pins.
Thanks for posting.
This is clearly s high risk/high reward situation.
I was encouraged by the resent tweets about the ongoing relationship with Top Battery and Ferroglobe.
I imagine there will be a blog post about the electrical upgrade. Who knows, maybe some contract is contingent on the upgrade being in place.
Since you’re ‘willing ‘ to listen. Medical instruments are costly and often disposed of after single use.
Here is a company that sells to the research end of medical:
https://www.finescience.com
I buy scissors from them about once a year for my research. They cost a few hundred dollars a pair. They need to be corrosion resistant and stay sharp through many rounds of cleaning and sterilization.
For clinical work, you don’t always clean and sterilize due to contamination concerns. But many surgical instruments are cleaned and reused. They are all expensive.
There has to be a good business there.
Sorry to hear that. I always enjoyed his posts. RIP
They are still in clinical trial. Although they talk about stainless steel at the website, not Liquidmetal.
„CoNextions flagship product, CoNextionsTR is an alternative to traditional suture repair techniques. This stainless steel and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene implant is designed for the approximation of tendons 1-4mm in thickness and 3-7mm in width.“
Clinical trial ends in June.
These foldable phones are cool, but I think the iPad would be a better place to start than the iPhone.
The mothership had a good day today, up over 5%.
https://www.macobserver.com/news/apple-advanced-manufacturing-fund-5-billion/
Read my last post. I’m talking about the manufacturing fund. Never said it would go to LQMT, just a hope.
Apple is a special customer, at least for iPhone related products. I think volume production, with redundancy, is/was a key block to commercialization. Can’t run if your still learning to walk. Maybe some bad blood as well over the Eontec takeover, but I’m just speculating here.
For other applications I believe high costs and the general barriers to entry have been the problem. A cheaper alloy formulation and China manufacturing hopefully have dealt with the cost problem.
My hope is that we are now dealing mostly with the general barriers to entry for new products, lead times for bringing out new products, and building awareness in the public.
They made a public statement about investing in American manufacturing. Never a mention of LQMT. I forgot the amount of dollars. At the time there was the ever present hope expressed by some on this board, including myself, that maybe LQMT would be one recipient as part of a scale-up to manufacturing. Never happened. But, I kept an eye on Apple’s announcements and never heard that all the promised funds had been allocated.
Yes, the only one that I can remember. Not aware if we ever heard a public declaration by Apple for all the money the promised to invest.
Yes, I got the same email. However, I never got emails about the other blog updates, whereas in the past I did.
For those that still don’t believe the effect of bridge pins, I invite you to watch this video:
You are correct that many acoustic guitars come with built in pickups so they can be played either way. Different pins, strings etc can produce volume and tonal differences. Much of what people like is a matter of taste. The increase in volume with the Liquidmetal pins is appealing to many, but how it affects tone is another issue. I’m looking forward to trying them out. I’ll buy the pins for now, and when the stock explodes I’ll buy the whole guitar.
Sorry if your not interested in the bridge pins, but considering the amount of “&$@& that gets posted here every day, I don’t see the problem with s few posts about an actual Liquidmetal product that is in production. I want a CE whale as much as any long-term investor., but right now Martin is talking about and producing product with Liquidmetal.
Also, plenty of people still play acoustic only.
They suggested they will become available.
Today I got an e-mail from ZZZounds-an online musical instrument retailer- that was advertising the new Martin guitars with Liquidmetal bridge pins. This is the first time I’ve received an advertisement promoting Liquidmetal out of the blue. I know it’s not a whale, but it is a decent fish, nonetheless.
Thank you Josh for you posts.
Wanted to add that your post was from a discussion in April 2016, since the text you quote mentions further discussions to be had with Apple. I assume they have occurred.
Quite often people have asked on this board how share price can drop when there are more buyers than sellers. Well, today is a nice example of the opposite.
Just looked at the chart. Obvious good news is that we have had 7 trading days with the price firmly above the 50 day moving average. We have not had that since last June, before we entered the long slide down. We are well positioned to keep moving up with some -any- news.
If anyone wants to read more about the 21700 battery format, I found this article interesting.
https://www.electricbike.com/new-21700-cells/
Other than answering the price question. I think it is interesting the discussion about the coatings being used.
I hope to buy a set one day with my LQMT profits.
About those bridge Pins ($150 a set):
https://www.guitarcenter.com/riffs/interviews/guitars/martin-modern-deluxe-series---first-look-with-fred-greene
Normally bridge pins would be made out of plastic. In some cases, they were made out of bone back in the old days. Then, prior to that, there were even some really old ones that were made out of ivory. Obviously, we can’t do that any more. These are actually made out of a material by a company called Liquidmetal. Liquidmetal is primarily a titanium alloy. So it’s not titanium, it’s an alloy of titanium.
We saw this material online and we started talking to those guys. They use the material primarily for medical devices, so it’s super, super dense, but very light at the same time, like titanium. The amount of energy it transfers is unbelievable. Go on YouTube and look up Liquid Metal. There you can see some videos where they’ll take a small BB of Liquid Metal and drop it in a tube and watch how long that BB bounces. It will just sit there and bounce for minutes because it’s able to transfer so much energy.
We said, man, this is really cool stuff. I wonder if there’s an application for this in one of our guitars. So we contacted them. They were really interested. We had them make us some bridge pins just to try it out. When we tested those bridge pins back in our R&D sound room, we were surprised. I mean we were getting two, three, four, sometimes five decibels of increased response from the guitar. It made every guitar we put them in louder. It didn’t change the tone of the guitar. It just made it louder.
We said, wow, that’s pretty cool. So we started working with those guys to see if we could develop these pins for commercial use. We’ve done them on some small runs of specialty Custom Shop guitars that we’ve taken to the NAMM show and sold onesie-twosie.
But now we’re at a point with the Liquid Metal folks that they’re going to make us several different versions of these bridge pins. We have what we call the red dot pins because of the red dot on the inside of them. In the D-28s, they have the bone-look pin, that cream-colored pin. It’s a powder-coated version that looks very traditional. On the 18-style, they have a gray color pin, which we call Turkish Emery. They’re basically the same pin, just with different finish coatings.
We’ll also be selling chrome and gold versions that people can buy for their existing guitars, if they want to buy it as an aftermarket piece. This would be the first time we’ve ever done that. These Liquid Metal pins will probably sell for $150 a set. They’re expensive, but they’ll never wear out. The guitar bridge will wear out before the pins ever do. I think these pins by themselves are going to become a hot aftermarket, hot rod part for your guitar because they’ll fit in any guitar and they’ll make every guitar louder. They’re really cool and come standard on every Modern Deluxe.
One of the new models is on the Martin website with a picture. The suggested retail price is just over $5k, which means list will be around $4k. Very much in line with quality high end pricing. Not sure were the $150k price comes from.
Yes, if you Google CNN Money is CNN Business.
Funny, the word of the day from dictionary.com is ‘grinch’.
Thanks for posting this. I know Martin is not going to make us rich, but I still see this as a good thing for LQMT. They are a respected company. A contract here and a contract there leads to actual revenue.
Are you talked about the Conmed order?
I am surprised by the lack of volume and share price increase. Maybe to much stealth in the news release on an election night. Also, at this point the bulls have been so severely beaten down that it may take a little while for the good news to sink in.
Maybe you can find the answer here:
http://techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/blog/apple-iphone-xs-teardown/
I’m guessing it is a fraction of the $18 for all connectivity and sensors.
Below 100k = we are still stuck in purgatory.
100-300k = something starting to happen.
>300k = beats my expectations, very good.
https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/03/iphone-x-teardown-two-cell-battery/
For comparison to Josh’s link.
Moreover, I have never heard a potential value attributed to said royalties. If we get a penny per widget, I don’t think it’s going to get us to NASDAQ.
My interpretation is that they are going to simplify the presentation (website for instance) to be less technical regarding all the options of materials and processes, and focus more on what kind of widgets can be made. Just my reading between the lines and assuming that things will change in the sales department after Hauck’s departure.
Cheers, I’m right on deck with you.
Still trying to understand the gap between what I see as so much potential for these metals and their inability to sell much.
I don’t expect much. It takes time to do the development research. They got 6 months and I expect it to take at least 6 months, unless they sandbagged the time line severely.
I don’t think this is about tree hugging. I would say more urban planning, safety, earthquake related issues.