walterharp
935 posts
Sep 14, 2012
6:16 PM
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should happen during embossing reading the report, and filing for tuning
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Greg Heumann
1783 posts
Sep 14, 2012
6:30 PM
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The article is specific to metal sliding over metal. That doesn't happen in a harmonica - except a chromatic's slide. It is of interest for pistons and bearings, for example.
Harmonica reeds fail due to a well understood and studied phenomenon called metal fatigue. That isn't to say advances in metallurgy might not help reduce it - but this particular research won't help.
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/Greg
Last Edited by on Sep 14, 2012 6:31 PM
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nacoran
6087 posts
Sep 14, 2012
10:13 PM
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I'd like to see what would happen with titanium reeds. There was a guy who made titanium combs, and there is a guy who makes titanium sax reeds. Titanium and steel are unique in the arena of metals. If you keep them under a certain flex level they theoretically don't worry like other metals. That level is only about 15 degrees of swing though. :(
Another neat trick with metallurgy is memory metals. Depending on the formulation they can do a few neat things. One of the cooler tricks is you can bend them all sorts of crazy ways and then put them in water and they go back to their original shape. Turboharp is doing some neat things with magnets too. Under the influence of a magnetic field steel changes rigidity, so you can tune the reed on the fly by applying a magnetic field. They've got a neat harp called the Turboslide that uses a magnetic slide on a diatonic harp to give you more bends. I'm torn whether I want to try one of them or one of Brenden Powers' 30 reed harps next.
There is also a transparent ceramic metal called Alon. It's transparent (aluminum!) It is being used in the next generation of bullet proof glass. It will stop a .50 cal round from a sniper riffle. Might not work for reeds but it would probably solve those chipped comb issues GM's have. Who knows, it might even work for covers. The only problem is that a piece the size of a harmonica comb runs about as much as a custom harp, and that's before you shape it.
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Nate
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STME58
237 posts
Sep 14, 2012
10:49 PM
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Greg,
I agree that this research is not directly applicable to the way a harmonica works, except for Walterharp’s observation about embossing, but it is a new insight into how metals behave and it could lead to advances outside of tribology.
Fatigue failure has certainly been well studied and we have some pretty good equations that predict when it will happen, but I am not sure how well the detailed mechanism of failure is understood.
One thing that caught my attention in the article was the effect of grain size on the wave like behavior. Grain size is also important to fatigue. It’s a stretch but sometimes that is how breakthroughs happen. By seeing little connections that are not obvious at first. Most research does not end up with a breakthrough, but you never know.
Last Edited by on Sep 14, 2012 10:50 PM
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