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Piezoelectric rock chisel II

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The idea linked below proposed using piezoelectric elements in a rock chisel to increase its effectiveness.

The MaxCo. R&D department looked at this, and - as one man - said "Pshaw!" This was probably because they had all recently been on a company-sponsored Outdated Ejaculations Awareness course. They then got down to work, and came up with something better.

A great many minerals are, in fact, piezoelectric. Quartz is an excellent example, and I'm sure I could think of more if I could think of more. But most rocks contain quartz grains.

It follows, thereforehence, that a brief pulse of high voltage, applied across a quartz-containing rock (think granite, basalt, sandstone, schist [no, schist]) should create a nice little shock wave more than capable of propagating a crack.

MaxCo's Really Excellent Chisel For Rock (we have a new marketing team - they thought the acronym would be "racey and viral"), therefore, is designed to deliver a brief, high-voltage pulse coincident with the hammer blow, to more increase and greaten its effect. Ironically, it may be simplest to generate the voltage pulse by means of a piezoelectric element, but located in the head of the chisel rather than (as with inferior piezoelectric rock chisels) in the tip.

MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 06 2017

The predecessor of this idea Piezoelectric_20Rock_20Chisel
much as archeopteryx was the predecessor of the eagle. [MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 06 2017]


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Annotation:







       In the third grade I got in trouble for saying "balderdash".
normzone, Dec 06 2017
  


 

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