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Space grey vs silver - 6 months
- Thread starter max9
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1. Space gray is definitely not a coating, nor it is part of anodization. My iPhone 5S was eaten away pretty deep on those sharp corners with my hands acid and salts over the years, and you still see bare space gray metal, so it is definitely something added into the metal mix, something possibly like carbon, or whatever else. Anodization on top is just to harden it.
2. The biggest question is whether the space gray mix is stronger or weaker than just clean classic silver, and this cannot be known unless we know exactly what they added, or some YouTuber performs a test. To do such test they would have to test the anodization strength, then they would have to cut out a square of the aluminum and test it how strong it is, conducts a bending test, a twisting test, tearing test.
Some metal mixes can make stronger metals, others will weaken them, Zeniya Aluminum Engineering is the aluminum provider, but they do not have any public catalogs on their website, and the only thing we know is that Apple uses space-grade aluminum only on iPhones, so we can assume MacBooks having thicker chassis, could still be using the cheaper aluminum grade, and knowing how much tim cook loves saving money, I am almost certain that they use the cheaper grade aluminum for Macbooks.
That said, the already weaker aluminum would probably not be stronger with a random graying if it was then they would make all their cheaper aluminum harder and sell it for more and grade it as a higher grade.
Let's assume they use space-grade aka Series 7000, there are multiple grades under 7000 series, its possible one of the grades is space gray colored, but someone would have to check that, IF NONE of the grades have space gray shade, that means that the additive will most likely only have deleterious effects to the aluminum quality, otherwise it would have been gray in the first place, but its not, its silver.
So the conclusion is, we dont know yet, once someone conducts a test, at least with an x-ray gun, we wont know.
2. The biggest question is whether the space gray mix is stronger or weaker than just clean classic silver, and this cannot be known unless we know exactly what they added, or some YouTuber performs a test. To do such test they would have to test the anodization strength, then they would have to cut out a square of the aluminum and test it how strong it is, conducts a bending test, a twisting test, tearing test.
Some metal mixes can make stronger metals, others will weaken them, Zeniya Aluminum Engineering is the aluminum provider, but they do not have any public catalogs on their website, and the only thing we know is that Apple uses space-grade aluminum only on iPhones, so we can assume MacBooks having thicker chassis, could still be using the cheaper aluminum grade, and knowing how much tim cook loves saving money, I am almost certain that they use the cheaper grade aluminum for Macbooks.
That said, the already weaker aluminum would probably not be stronger with a random graying if it was then they would make all their cheaper aluminum harder and sell it for more and grade it as a higher grade.
Let's assume they use space-grade aka Series 7000, there are multiple grades under 7000 series, its possible one of the grades is space gray colored, but someone would have to check that, IF NONE of the grades have space gray shade, that means that the additive will most likely only have deleterious effects to the aluminum quality, otherwise it would have been gray in the first place, but its not, its silver.
So the conclusion is, we dont know yet, once someone conducts a test, at least with an x-ray gun, we wont know.
