Magnesium Alloy Laptops?

[MacRumors]

Digitimes claims that the notebook industry is increasingly adopting Magnesium alloy chassis. In 2003, orders are expected to double.

They mention Apple as one of the companies increasing their orders for Magnesium alloy. Apple currently uses a Magnesium frame in their iBook laptop.

Of interest, the original NeXT cube was built out of cast magnesium... which the editor of NeXTWorld magazine finally got a chance to set ablaze in 1991.

[arn]

since all the powerbooks are made about of aluminum or titanium allows...

don't know if I'd put too much stock into this.

[edit: I was corrected below]

arn

[Kyle?]

I believe the ibook has a magnesium substructure. Can't remember where I heard this (Apple website discussing strength and durability of ibook? or at xlr8yourmac when I was reading up on how to replace my hd?), but I'm pretty sure that this is what they're referring to. It's probably also used in the pb's and the titanium and alu. are for the shells only.

Edit:
Heh. From the Apple website in the sidebar for the iBook.

Space-age materials
The iBook was designed with durability in mind. That’s why it’s made of ultratough polycarbonate plastic — the same material used in bulletproof glass — and has an internal magnesium frame for added strength.

[Chaszmyr]

The iBook indeed does have a Magnesium structure


Edit: i guess he editted his post which was posted before mine lol

[arn]

ah - cool. thanks for the info.

arn

[Steamboatwillie]

I'm probably wrong but if I recall my chemistry classes in high school I believe that Magnesium is highly combustible...

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Mr. Anderson]

Magnesium in its pure form is combustible, but not the alloys. The unique attribute that this has is that it can be die cast just like plastic, but doesn't have the recycling issues and greater strength while still being lightweight.

There has been a greater push in using Mg Alloys in almost every industry - cars, cameras, electronics, etc.

But a quick search on the web failed to find out what the alloy is composed of aside from magnesium. Any chemists out there know?

D

[Nemesis]

Magnesium, alluminium, titanium .. they're all ok, but I think that the future is in Duretanium.
It's extremely lightweight, stiff, firm, even laser beam hardly can scratch it, and it is used in construction of Star Trek's spaceships too :-)
The only thing we're missing in such a laptop is good power supply, hopefuly made by matter and antimatter fusion, controlled by crystals of dillithium (which is a good inhibitor of nuclear reactions). Such a Powerbook could run for years without recharging (which means, adding new antimatter containers).

[Mr. Anderson]

Ok, I found out more about the Magnesium alloys - looks like there could be 100s or scores of 100s of ASTM certified alloys.

http://www.key-to-metals.com/Article78.htm

There seem to be a few elements that can be used in the alloys - aluminum, rare earth, thorium, zirconium, manganese, silver, silicon, tin and zinc. And I'd wager the combinations along with percentages are almost infinite.

Cool stuff!

D

[coumerelli]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Magnesium in its pure form is combustible, but not the alloys. The unique attribute that this has is that it can be die cast just like plastic, but doesn't have the recycling issues and greater strength while still being lightweight.

There has been a greater push in using Mg Alloys in almost every industry - cars, cameras, electronics, etc.

But a quick search on the web failed to find out what the alloy is composed of aside from magnesium. Any chemists out there know?

D

Well, I'm not a chemist, and ...no, I don't know.

But, I'll keep my eye out on this thread, 'cuz these are the things I like to know...little tidbits of useless knowledge.

[bousozoku]

Some of you may remember from the early days of the IBM PC that there was a magnesium alloy encased laptop computer--the Grid PC. If I remember correctly, it also had a lightweight plasma display.

Another use for magnesium used to be car wheels. The magnesium was used in pure form to create mag wheels. After some terrible accidents, they added a couple of other metals to keep them safe from combustion and they became alloys. It seems to me that sodium and alumi were used to stabilise things.

[wizard]

Magnesium is burnable when in a form that easly oxidies. For example: at one time you could buy survival fire starting gear that consisted of a bar of manesium and a scraper. You would scrap off some thin shavings to start a fire with. The material is far less flammable in its final manufacture form. The really bad thing is that magnesium fires can not be put out with water - water actually supports a magnesium fire.

Magnesium is a great material in its final form, you would probally not want to work in a factory where it is used in the production process though. Anything that Apple ac do to increase the strength and robustness of its PCs is a good thin in my view, so I'm really hoping that this is a positive sign.

thanks
dave

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Magnesium in its pure form is combustible, but not the alloys. The unique attribute that this has is that it can be die cast just like plastic, but doesn't have the recycling issues and greater strength while still being lightweight.

There has been a greater push in using Mg Alloys in almost every industry - cars, cameras, electronics, etc.

But a quick search on the web failed to find out what the alloy is composed of aside from magnesium. Any chemists out there know?

D

[ewinemiller]

I use to have a Lawnboy lawn mower from the early 70s with a magnesium alloy deck. The thing was great, very light, even the wife could pick it up and toss it into the truck of the car.

[patrick0brien]

-All

Let's not get incredibly excited about this. "Aircraft Grade" Aluminum is actually an alloy with Magnesium. Otherwise the metal wouldn't be too useful as it would be very malleable.

Remember, Magnesium is very brittle. So combiling the malleability of Aluminum with the Brittlness and light weight of Magnesium, you get a very strong and light, formable metal.

I'm no metallurgist, but I think the ratio is 95% Aluminum, 5% Magnesium.

[marcsiry]

Originally posted by Steamboatwillie
I'm probably wrong but if I recall my chemistry classes in high school I believe that Magnesium is highly combustible...

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Read the linked article for an insight into Mag's combustibility in processed form. The author had to bring the case to a facility specially constructed for burning things... and they were still barely able to get it going (they needed to use another case for "kindling").

[legion]

All metal...

First off, magnesium is not expensive as the post from the "NeXT burner" states. Second, it has to be an alloy because magnesium is very malleable (making it a poor choice for any structure in its pure form-- this is much like titanium which is very brittle in its pure form.) The only reason magnesium or titanium can be expensive is the alloying and casting process can be expensive (but for instance, Ti is one of the most abundant materials on earth and easy enough to mine from its core.) And finally, IBM has been using magnesium as its framing structure for laptops and was oddly amiss from the Digitimes listing.

(the use of magnesium, aluminium, and titanium was a major topic of discussion growing up with my father being the metallurgist who developed the technique to strengthen Al for use as a framing structure that he developed in part for the defense dept and then later migrated the tech to ALCOA for use in space-frames (the Audi A8 was one of the first to use this in consumer apps))

[Bruja]

Originally posted by Nemesis
Magnesium, alluminium, titanium .. they're all ok, but I think that the future is in Duretanium.
It's extremely lightweight, stiff, firm, even laser beam hardly can scratch it, and it is used in construction of Star Trek's spaceships too :-)
The only thing we're missing in such a laptop is good power supply, hopefuly made by matter and antimatter fusion, controlled by crystals of dillithium (which is a good inhibitor of nuclear reactions). Such a Powerbook could run for years without recharging (which means, adding new antimatter containers).

Does this mean that the sceen would be made out of Transparent Aluminum??

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by patrick0brien


I'm no metallurgist, but I think the ratio is 95% Aluminum, 5% Magnesium.

From what I found, it looks like the ratios are reversed. One of the more popular alloys being with aluminum and zinc at 9% and 1% respectively.

D

[daRAT]

From what I remember in my Navy training, magnesium, when burning explodes when water is put on it.

Sand, or another dry agent needs to be used when putting out a mag fire ;]

Just thought I'd toss that out, incase your iBook burst into flames :]

heh heh

[smadness]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Magnesium in its pure form is combustible, but not the alloys. The unique attribute that this has is that it can be die cast just like plastic, but doesn't have the recycling issues and greater strength while still being lightweight.

As the NeXT burner found out, alloys can be combustible under the right circumstances (i.e. constant flame). Remember the Wallstreet(?) incident where a number of people reported a large jet of flame burning a hole in the bottom of their laptop? What would happen if the same thing occurred, and the flame hit the right spot, igniting some of the magnesium?

[iPC]

One note about casting Magnesium; it has a tendency to be brittle (due to it's porosity). This was a big problem in the after-market for car and motorcycle rims. Hit a curb too hard, and instead of bending the rim, it would break. Many racing organisations still ban Magnesium wheels to this day because of it. From the sound of it, I would guess that if they are using sheets; if so, that would most likely be a stamping process (cheaper and faster to do).

General info regarding magnesium sheet casting can be found here: http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=2074 Includes some nifty info regarding EMI shielding and other unique properties.

[Steamboatwillie]

Originally posted by Bruja
Does this mean that the sceen would be made out of Transparent Aluminum??

Ok, to take this joke one step further...

"Unobtainium" This rolled off the top of my head many years ago when I raced motorcycles. I was in the pit area with the Suzuki engineers (all brainy Japenese folks in white lab coats) to go over my practice laps and the changes I wanted to the bike before my race. There were spectators walking around with pit passes looking at the bikes. One young lad was making comments about my bike to his buddy "Hey, that's the new GSX-R. The frame is machined from some special aluminum" I quickly looked to him and said "Actually it's a prototype machined from ultra rare billet unobtainium" he replied in amazment "Whoa, I've heard of that stuff, it's really expensive"

The white lab coat engineers, who never crack a smile, busted out laughing. They may still be talking about it! Thought I'd share that with you all.

[settledown]

What would a G4 Cube look like if it burned?

Or the blue iMac I'm using right now?

[smadness]

Originally posted by settledown
What would a G4 Cube look like if it burned?

Or the blue iMac I'm using right now?

the blue iMac would probably just melt, since most of it is plastic anyway. The G4 cube would probably just smell like burnt toast. *snicker*

[Powerbook G5]

Don't ever talk about burning a G4 Cube! That's just...wrong.