Titanium snails

[quoted original message omitted]

Instead of having shells of metallic titanium, you might want to look into
ceramics and cermets. Take a look at the hardness of various Ti-bearing
compounds like titanium boride (TiB2), titanium nitride (TiN) or titanium
carbide (TiC), for example... They make cutting tools out of this stuff to
mill steel with, so you can imagine how hard it is.

Ceramics have a number of weaknesses, too, like being fairly weak against
physical or thermal shock.

Personally, I would find these more likely than metallic Ti. And your wasps
could have a substance that works on the Ti content regardless (I have no idea
how reactive Ti itself is, however... Could collapse the whole argument!).

FWIW.

And to make it more interesting, if these snails are reasonably common, you
might have people "mining" them for the Ti, like people mine guano on earth
for fertilizer...

For a really hard coating you want calcite grown on a polymer framework as in
the nautilus (sp) which has to be cut with a diamond saw, which makes it
pretty damn hard!

Calcite is Calcium carbonate (aka chalk), which is pretty easy to get hold of
in an ecosystem, but when grown on the (organic) polymer framework it is
extraordinarily hard.

Its amazing what they teach us chemists

I think the basic stimulus to the evolution of these things was to come up
with something capable of making holes in titanium-alloy weapons.

on 02.6.28 0:03 AM, Richard Kirke at richardkirke@hotmail.com scribbleth:
> For a really hard coating you want calcite grown on a polymer

On 28-Jun-02 at 00:41, Edward Lipsett (translation@intercomltd.com)
wrote:
> I think the basic stimulus to the evolution of these things was to

No, just some small insect that could take out a tank that J.A. couldn't just
blast off with his pressure washer.:)

BTW, I know next to nothing about tanks, but I can't recall much on a
bulldozer (other than the exposed engine) that a pressure washer could hurt.
I've never seen a zirc fitting let water into the inner bearings.

Just out of curiousity, do you use a steering wheel on a tank or two levers
like a 'dozer? I'm guess the levers may have once been used but not currently.

> At 9:01 AM -0400 6/28/02, Roger Books wrote:
wrote:
> I think the basic stimulus to the evolution of these things was to

Its not the Zerc fitting, its the bearing seals where the shaft comes out. You
can get water inside the dust and grease seal. Believe me.

> Just out of curiousity, do you use a steering wheel on a tank

Depends on the tank and the transmission. Some things have T handles (handle
bars) like M114s and M1 Abrams. Some things have brake levers (2 pairs, 1 pair
is a set of brakes for each side, the other is a set of direction levers for
neutral steer, etc). The Universal Carrier has a steering wheel that moves a
rod that moves road wheels or the front idler (can't recall) and at the
extreme end of is travel (thus warping the trcak in a certain direction)
actually stops a side from turning.

A "T" bar.  Like steering a bicycle.  On the M-1 the throttle is on the
T-bar

Michael Brown

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> --- Michael Brown <mwbrown@sonic.net> wrote:

I can vouch for that on the M-48/-60 series stuff.
T-bar controls how much power goes to each track.
Gearshift on the floor to the driver's right, plus emergency brake and lever
to engage the PTO shaft (not found on stock tanks without big massive hyd
fluid tanks to operate tongue).

> At 7:23 AM -0700 6/28/02, Michael Brown wrote:

There's more than one way to skin a cat and more than one way to steer a tank.