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Unfortunately, my old iPhone 4 is definitely not made of BMG.
But surely someone has access to an XRF analyzer or a buddy at a university with access to a mass spectrometer and/or SEM to settle this debate?
Hah. Apple won't be manufacturing much (if anything) with e-motion 110s.
I think LQMT's PPS will perform better as "just a patent holding company". Ever since they started "manufacturing", investors have been waiting impatiently for them to manufacture something, and the share price has reflected their level of satisfaction.
At least we know for a fact that the parts are already integrated into a finished product. Production volume will be too low to yield any meaningful revenue, but there are a lot of potential applications in high-end audio and this could be a foot in the door.
I think we all see so much promise in the technology that the level of incompetence required to completely screw this up forever seems to be far beyond even that of current LQMT management.
That, and there's no point leaving this stock until we see what happens after Apple finally uses the technology (and they WILL make major use of it).
I suspect you are correct because everyone here agrees that there is nothing to list.
I still say sell silverware to Nordstrom while the machines are idle.
The iPhone 7 will probably not introduce a full-face display (yet). Apple's display configurations are always one of the first changes to leak for new models, since they have less control to impose secrecy upon the manufacturers who they purchase from. If there were to be such a major display change in the 7, we'd likely know about it by now.
Also, the designer who created those images suggested in one of his slides that Liquidmetal can "change its transparency". Rather silly.
Materion's LM alloy prices quoted from official events have ranged from €100/kg to $250/kg. I'm sure that a customer like Apple will pay less than €100/kg, and random yahoos inquiring at events will pay $200+/kg.
If future Materion starts shipping thousands of tons of the stuff, without having to purchase expensive hafnium-free zirconium, that price could potentially drop well below $100/kg or even $50/kg for all buyers.
Reading further into this has been fascinating. Both within the same group, hafnium (period 6) has chemical properties nearly identical to zirconium (period 5)—despite being about twice the atomic mass—because of a phenomenon known as lanthanide contraction. Though despite being chemically similar, the two elements are highly useful in nuclear reactor construction for completely opposite reasons and must be painstakingly extracted from the same ores in order to obtain each in a state of extreme purity.
For consumer BMG applications, neutron-capture cross-section couldn't possibly matter less. What is interesting is that the lanthanide contraction gives the two elements similar chemical properties because it renders atoms of both elements nearly identical in size. Anyone who has read a bit about the science of BMG formulation knows that the real trick is mixing together the correct proportions of differently-sized atoms to produce a dense fluid that can be supercooled without crystallization. Since hafnium atoms are virtually chemically and physically identical to zirconium atoms, in theory hafnium should be a near-perfect substitute for zirconium in most of our alloy formulations.
Why does this matter to LQMT shareholders? Because extracting the hafnium from zirconium is an extremely expensive process that, while absolutely necessary for nuclear applications, may not be necessary to the formulation of BMG alloys. There is potential in this patent to reduce Materion's BOM for zirconium BMG alloys well below $20/kg and get us squarely into commodities range.
This part has been around for years, so perhaps this is a very old mold, and Dauntless is not referenced as a "certified mold maker" because we no longer work with them. Still does nothing to explain the invisibility of the other two companies.
The photo was a nice catch either way.
Brilliant. Hafnium is an impurity that is typically removed from zirconium during processing. Apple is actually patenting the use of less pure zirconium as a cost cutting measure, while apparently having found that BMG containing more Hf than LM-105/106 is as good as or better than our current formulations for their applications.
Historically, the most important use of zirconium has been inside of nuclear reactors. For this application, the purity must be extremely high. This is pure speculation, but perhaps hafnium-bearing zirconium may not have been heavily researched for BMG formulation because traditional thinking was always that the purest zirconium is the best zirconium.
Non-existent revenue aside, the company is already heavily undervalued based on the IP portfolio alone.
I'm glad that we've stuck a tiny foot in the door of the high-end music business. I've often thought that the unique specific strength and CoR of BMG might make it the absolutely perfect material for top notch audio drivers (loudspeakers)—in every frequency range from subwoofers to tweeters.
Maybe now people will consider tinkering with that idea, and it seems like a product category that Apple may allow them to make some money with.
They'd certainly want to keep the structural mass of the optical component below 100g, so only about $11 worth of Liquidmetal for tremendously more strength than 100g of plastic. Insignificant cost for the material advantages.
Apple VR Headsets
This may be an application where Apple will want to leverage the exceptional strength to weight ratio of BMG to produce incredibly light enclosures and structural components for electronic headwear.
$8.18 worth of alloy for a 75g bracelet that they would sell for $500+?
I'm curious if amorphous alloy has any ability to be made resistant to directed energy weapons. Sub-micron surface texturing may lend some ability to control the reflectivity of specific infrared wavelengths. Could keep missiles in the game for a few more years before everything is just pew pew lazers.
I wouldn't want a buyout, anyway. I want major production contracts and licensing agreements that will generate $100M+ in annual revenue, pushing the PPS up to $5.
Then maybe a buyout.
These are always great theories, but none of them account for the fact that to Apple, purchasing LQMT would be a comparable expense to you or I buying a Big Mac. If they intended to ever do so, there would be no conceivable reason to wait, manipulate share prices, or make deals with other companies.
Really strange that they would go to the trouble to set up employee pricing through an online store for their one product, for their couple dozen employees.
Like, really strange. Baffling.
Liquidmetal cufflinks:
I'm sure that someone has posted these, but I haven't seen them before:
http://amzn.com/B00QLG1SEO
http://amzn.com/B00R3JME0U
I agree that it's not really a "consumer" product, but technically a business can be a "consumer" of consumer electronics products. The MTA does state in 10.(a)(iii):
Now that's interesting, since this is definitely consumer electronics. Even more interesting that it used to be sold through Apple's online store, but is no longer.
https://www.socketmobile.com/products/series-9-hands-free/overview
http://socketstore.com/collections/crs-series-9-barcode-scanners/products/rs5519-1075
I agree completely.
Although interesting factoid: it's the force touch display, and not the new casing, that makes the 6S heavier:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/12/9315471/iphone-6s-new-aluminum-doesnt-make-phone-heavier
Engel signs exclusive Liquidmetal agreement
The iPhone 6s Plus casing weighs 33g. That's $3.59 worth of Liquidmetal. Certainly worth the material advantages.
Always fun to re-read the MTA. Here's something that I've never seen discussed here:
I still want the snap bracelet Apple Watch with the wraparound display.