High Frequency Blades

[Uso]

Initially I thought this probably wasn't a thing, at least not without the blade being serrated so I finally decided to look into this and see if there were any real-life vibro-blades.

Turns out, they actually are a thing:

Since the Daqin have a Vibro-jian showing up, I figured I'd put what I find out about super-swords here.

 

[Uso]

Here is some star-wars-vibroblade-build.

It doesn't work very well but I think I can see why. The blade is oscillating forward and backward along the cut rather than side to side. I imagine his would work well if the blade was serrated like this:



But the mando-blade is smooth and not serrated at all so it just kinda rubs against the fruit he is trying to cut rather than gliding through it. The other main difference is that this blade has a lot of movement in each stroke and has far fewer strokes per minute. It also looks like when he increases the speed of the knife later in the video it starts cutting a lot better which seems to support faster = better.

 

[Uso]

How do you cut through metal anyways?

6 Things to Know Before Cutting Metal

Cutting metal may seem straightforward to the experienced DIYer, but make sure you keep these six things in mind before beginning your next project.

www.bobvila.com

Looks like diamond is preferred. How would you go about making a pure diamond blade? Would you even do that? Would it be better to use some kind of composite material?

 

[Uso]

'Why pure diamond blades aren't a good idea'

Could a knife blade & shaft be made of 100% diamond?

I am reading a novel set in the future. A planet has been found where there are extensive deposits of diamond. Presumably diamond is mined much like marble is here on earth (there is not a lot of d...

engineering.stackexchange.com

You could work pure diamond into something shaped like a knife, but it wouldn't make a very good knife. Diamonds are hard, but they're brittle. The blade would break long before its edge went dull, but this is arguably worse: you can resharpen a dull blade, but a broken blade (especially one not made of a material that can be melted and reforged) becomes essentially useless.

If this is for a story, then one possible subject for research might be the macahuitl: a swordlike weapon used by the Aztecs. The main body of this weapon was a simple shaft of wood with grooves running along its edge, but small blades of sharpened obsidian would be fitted into the grooves. A blade could chip or break, but the weapon itself would remain intact through most blows, while the scalpel-sharp obsidian could cut even better than metal (seriously: obsidian is dangerous stuff). Modern "diamond knives" work according to a similar principle: only the edge is made of diamond, while the main body is made of metal, or something else that's not so prone to breakage.

For the purposes of a story, I could imagine the diamond-knife concept being scaled up into a sort of "neo-macahuitl" that used diamond blades. The main body of the weapon could be made of metal, hard rubber, or any other material of sufficient strength, and then small diamond blades (all diamond, or diamond-edged metal) could be fitted into it. It might even be possible to make the blades replaceable.

I feel like I've heard this before. It also looks like diamond-tipped blades are a thing because they are better than pure diamond blades and not just cheaper due to the price of diamonds.

For cutting purposes all we care about is the diamond being hard. Maybe there is some kinda 'harder than diamond' super material out there?

For the structural purposes of the blade we could use anything. Maybe something crazy like electrically suspended plasma or some kind of active support system? We're already going to need power for the vibro-bits anyways.

 

[Uso]

Ok, hardness is determined by Gpa (incompressibility) and diamond is ~115

Superhard material - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Synthetic diamond is 200Gpa:

Have scientists really found something harder than diamond?

A new “world’s hardest material” is proclaimed every few years – but taking the top spot from diamond isn’t easy.

theconversation.com

And there is Q-carbon which is supposed to be harder than Diamond and also GLOWS.

More recently, researchers at North Carolina State University created what they described as a new form of carbon, distinct from other allotropes, and reported to be harder than diamond. This new form was made by heating non-crystalline carbon with a high-powered fast laser pulse to 3,700 °C then quickly cooling or “quenching” it – hence the name “Q-carbon” – to form micron-sized diamonds.

The scientists found Q-carbon to be 60% harder than diamond-like carbon (a type of amorphous carbon with similar properties to diamond). This has led them to expect Q-carbon to be harder than diamond itself, although this still remains to be proven experimentally. Q-carbon also has the unusual properties of being magnetic and glowing when exposed to light. But so far its main use has been as an intermediate step in producing tiny synthetic diamond particles at room temperature and pressure. These nanodiamonds are too small for jewellery but ideal as a cheap coating material for cutting and polishing tools.

But it seems like super-materials beyond synthetic diamond are all highly speculative.

 

[Uso]

More Vibroblade (ultrasonic cutter) stuff:

Ultrasonic Cutter Principle｜Ultrasonic cutter and ultrasonic polisher columns｜SONOTEC

www.sonotec.com

The vibroblade replica from The Mando shown above had ~330 cuts per second while an ultrasonic cutter 40,000 times per second.

It also looks like ultrasonic cutters do move forward and backward rather than side to side.

 

[Uso]

Practical, Real life,Vibroblade with timestamp for the dude trying to use the thing.

I don't think this changes any of my earlier thoughts about how practical vibro-blades would be. I don't think the Vibroing would be helpful in the situation where "You're some dood with a sword trying to chop or poke some other dood" but it could be useful as a luxury thing. Vibro-blades don't seem to get stuck/wedged in stuff very easily so it wouldn't get stuck like a regular sword. It would also be better at cutting things if you needed more precise cuts in a non-combat setting. A serrated blade also seems to work like a miniature chain-saw in that it makes a slower cut but just tears out material in the cutting path.

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But two other take aways:

Visually, I think the angle-grinder-knife design is interesting. Instead of mounting the blade in the center of the hilt, the blade is mounted on the side of the hilt. This might even be common among budget-vibroblades on the market that are designed to be cheap to manufacture



Operationally, these things take a lot of power. If they aren't connected to a power pack like a protosaber then I imagine they are going to need some very high density internal batteries. Perhaps even the entire core of the sword is layered capacitors (Structurally dubious, but it would maximize how much energy you have). I think you would also want your Vibroblade computer-controlled rather than switch-operated. The blade could be monitoring how much resistance it is feeling. When it detects that you've cut into someone and your blade is starting to get slowed down by all that material grabbing it the vibro-part could turn on so that your cut is always buttery smooth. This way you don't waste any power vibrating nothing.

Come to think of it, some mega high end vibrosword might be incredibly quiet, since noise is really just inefficiency as the energy you need to power your blade is lost as sound.

 

[Uso]

So I initially assumed that the vibrations from an ultrasonic blade would clean it.

While this is true, it is also only a small part of the picture. Turns out if you stick it in water you get a super-cavitation effect that will just obliterate particulate stuck to the blade.

This won't help you cut through metal, but it will make your blade SUPER CLEAN