Liquidmetal Technologies Inc (LQMT)

[Watts Watt]

This was the first announcement of this process, which makes Steipp a bagholder, because he committed all of his resources to Engel. But then, that is not really anything new, when you review the APPL Deal, the Visser Deal. and don't forget the tremendous loophole that Materion has by marketing vitreloy formulations.......

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/business/05novel.html

THIS manufacturing process overcomes a drawback of metallic glasses: they crystallize quickly when heated, losing the microstructure that makes them so strong. But Dr. Johnson’s method is so quick that it circumvents the problem. The entire process of shaping and cooling takes only hundredths of a second, so fast that the material turns viscous and can be molded without crystallization.

The rapid heating is done by passing an electric current through the alloy. “Nature has been kind here,” Dr. Greer said of the process. “If you tried passing an electric current through most other materials besides metallic glasses, it probably wouldn’t work,” because current tends to concentrate in hot spots.

It was remarkable that the researchers “could demonstrate extremely uniform temperatures throughout the material,” he said. That makes the whole process easy to control and may have a big impact on manufacturing. “You do a simple calculation about how much heat must be put in to get the material to deform and flow like plastic,” he said. “Pull the switch and off you go.”