what is the best material to work with?

Question: what is the best material to work with?
- Keywords:
  material
Asked by mianf003 to Graham, Luke, Maksim, Ruth on 14 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by fahyda.
- Graham Wiggins answered on 14 Jun 2014:
  
  mianf003
  the best material ? Hmmmm can’t really answer that one ! and here’s why;
  
  Answer would depend on your intended use.
  Butter ( stay with me on this ) is soft and easy to cut + can be moulded to shape. It’s useless as a wheel though as it’s not strong.
  fibreglass ( or carbon fibre if you are rich ) is strong, light, and can be moulded to shape, so ideal for making lot of things. Hard to cut, and the dust is toxic, so not ideal if you need to adjust it later. not recyclable either.
  Some metals are hard at room temp, some are liquid…. most are recycleable, and some catch fire if they meet air ! so chosing metals is really difficult.
  some woods are soft, + easy to use, ideal for making aircraft from. others are so hard + dense they hardly float . wood rots in time, and some beetles like to eat it.
  Glass ? it’s a liquid, so never quite the same shape it was last year, is see though, but brittle, eg easy to break. great compressive strength though.
  Concrete – can be cut, sawn, moulded, can be made to float… dust’s nasty, cement powder is very nasty, big c02 footprint, not so good for aeroplane parts due to weight very good compressive strength, useless in tension.
- Luke Fry answered on 15 Jun 2014:
  
  Choosing the materials that you will use for a component is a big part of a designers job and there is a lot to consider when doing it. Not only the materials properties while in use but both the production techniques that can be used on it and how it will be disposed off afterward. Beryllium is a good example of this. We use it for a few different things on site although any machining that has to be done must be sent to Russia!
  My personal favourite material to work with is plain old aluminium! It’s easy to machine, cheap and offers great strength to weight ratio! I would say maybe 65% of the things I design are made from aluminium! although the remaining 35% is full of brilliant exotic materials!
  Just to point out that glass is interestingly enough considered to be an amorphous solid because of its properties and molecular structure. An interesting one to talk to your chemistry teacher about.
- Ruth Gregory answered on 16 Jun 2014:
  
  I work with concrete, steel reinforcement cages, plastic formwork and steel tubes. My favourite material is concrete because it is more interesting and it is like making a huge cake! The machine that we use to mix the concrete on the railway track reminds me of the chocolate factory in the film “Charlie and the chocolate factory”. It doesn’t help that you have to wear orange PPE, so our team essentially look like umpa lumpas.
  This substance is very difficult to control so it gives my job a lot of importance in making it the right strenth to place a structure on top of.
- anon answered on 16 Jun 2014:
  
  the best material to work with has probably got to be……
  Carbon Fibre, we used this to strengthen one of our concrete bridge. it is so lightweight and you dont have to use a lot to get a positive effect on the structure.
  
  you can find out some information about its use on another bridge here;
  
  http://www.vicphysics.org/documents/teachers/Innovative/littlebridge.pdf
  
  thanks
  
  claire

Comments

rattyvlogger commented on 16 Jun 2014:

In later years, will there be more natural materials discovered and more new more efficient materials invented? If so what special properties will these new materials posses? I have recently been fascinated by the new shape memory alloys which have been really useful in dental and cosmetic fields. Will there be any new special materials like this?

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Question: what is the best material to work with?