Well, whoopy duck. You're going to make a laptop case out of Rc 54 oil quenched hardened steel. Not. You want to try machining that into useable shape after you've hardened it? Or harden it after machining and maintain it's shape and thinness without warping or distorting?
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Awarded a series of multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts by the Department of Defense, Liquidmetal alloys' technology is currently being developed for use as a Kinetic Energy Penetrator (KEP) rod. The KEP, the key component of the highly effective armor piercing ammunition system, currently utilizes Depleted Uranium (DU) because of its density and self-sharpening behavior. Ballistic tests conducted by the Army have proven that the Liquidmetal® tungsten composite KEP exhibits self-sharpening similar to the DU KEP. As a result, the Department of Defense is working closely with Liquidmetal Technologies to develop a new class of effective and environmentally benign KEP rods.
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Look, I will try to be as nice here. You’re just posting marketing burble. You don’t actually know much about the materials science or manufacturing here, or the competing technologies in metallic injection molding today.
The upside Apple is going after here is reducing their manufacturing costs, just as the manufacturing of smaller machined parts is going to MIM instead of CNC machining. There are no materials problems or issues with the aluminum they’re using in their cases now, other than the speed of manufacturing. I’m sure Apple is looking at their sales volumes and doing some math on the CNC cycle times, and then the capital costs of adding more CNCs to increase production.
After all, it was only two yeara ago Apple was trumpeting how much waste they reduced by going to CNC machining of their new cases to gain some rigidity. They were so proud of their new case manufaturing technology - and it was entirely modern and a good job. The video they had of the CNC run was impressive for those of us who do machining.
I’m sure that they’ll trumpet the first products cases with this material to high heaven with the usual attending Jobs Reality Distortion Field, but it doesn’t do anything for me, an engineer who knows a couple of things about metals and machining, bending, casting and forging them.
If they wanted to impress a guy like me with how tough their cases are, they’d put out a case made of Inconel. But that ain’t gonna happen; there is absolutely no need for it. 7075 aluminum is entirely sufficient for the job at hand if we discount the CNC cycle times.
For me, the net result will be about as impressive as going from a gun receiver made of a machined forging or billet to a stamped and welded sheet metal receiver. Sure, they both work, but we know the real reason for going to a stamping: speed of production at a low cost.