h a l f b a k e r y"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random
news, help, about, links, report a problem
browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
register,
|
|
|
Please log in.
Before you can vote, you need to register.
Please log in or create an account.
|
if high-pressure water jets can cut steel, they can surely cut through rock; so no cutting teeth to wear out. the jets would be in a cross-hatched pattern to reduce the cuttings to an easily pumped slurry. the jets could also have ultrasonic transducers for really hard-going stuff, computer-tuned to
the appropriate frequency to shatter the rock (just like kidney stones)
[link]
|
| |
i'm not just talking about mining, but a cheaper more economical way to make road or rail tunnels...with a big tunnelling machine (the machine could also create the tunnel walls as it goes by fusing the rock at high temperatures into artificial obsidian. but that's getting really half-baked) |
|
| |
See the book "Novel Drilling Techniques" or perhaps it is "Novel Drilling Methods". I forget which. The second edition gives cutting rates of several meters PER SECOND. No explosives required. |
|
| |