Paper in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt6666
(p.s., I sure hate milling 304 parts)
The reviewers of Science were not and unless proven otherwise Science is a serious publication.
> I hate to say this, but I personally believe that "Chinese metallurgy" is an oxymoron. The word "Chinesium" didn't come out of nowhere.
That's plain racism.
So this article still gives me both hope that it is real, and sadness that it probably isn't.
Are you also an expert on 3D nano-scale material science? It sounds like you only know a couple terms about stainless steel on a macro scale.
Serious publication or not (which, BTW, is an instance of the Argument from Authority fallacy), they aren't immune to the problem of junk science.[1]
> That's plain racism.
Not the OP, but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese" in this context is "product of the present Chinese social and economic system" and has nothing to do withe race or ethnicity (e.g. it wouldn't apply to Taiwan). The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science.[2]
[1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6
"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity."
If you wanted a bike that didn't necessarily need painting, you can order a bike like that in titanium tubing instead.
I'm not sure anyone was saying they're immune to it, but their reputation does lend them credibility when compared to a random HN commenter that says stuff like "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron"
Also demonstrably wrong if you look at something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
It sounds kind of like the ripstop lines sown into X-Pac materials - when a rip or flaw occurs, its (ideally) bounded by the structures sown into the material.
One of the things I've become more aware of lately is the fact that hardened steel eats through cutting tools like candy, so the solution is to anneal the steel, do most of the shaping, harden it again (temper it for as much as 24 hours in a very smart oven that slowly slowly drops the temps), and then finish the piece with sanding and grinding tools instead of cutting tools.
I wonder if this treatment survives annealing and hardening cycles or if that just destroys the structure.
High hardness simple carbon steels do have their place in knives, but what you're saying is factually incorrect.
304 can't be optimized to a point it'll compete with the vast range of other stainless steels that already exist. Something else will always be more corrosion resistant, or stronger, or tougher. 304 exists on price. It's quick, common, and cheap. This process makes 304 expensive, uncommon, and slower to produce. The proven concept is what's carrying value here.
LOL; that second sentence mainly just explains that four orders of magnitude means 10,000.
Interesting. Not a metallurgist but this takes advantage of stainless steels natural tendency to work harden. e.g. if you have ever broken a paperclip or other piece of steel by bending it back and forth until it fatigues, fractures, and beaks off. That happens in soft standard steels like A36 (edit forgot to finish this...) However, in stainless steel instead of a fracture forming at the bends crease, it hardens. As you try to bend it again, it bends in a new place as the original crease has hardened.
> Such improvements, the team claims, could allow products made using the metal to be up to 10,000 times more resistant to fatigue.
Very bold claim that if true is a game changer. My concern is how does this process scale to large complex structural pieces? Assuming since this internal structure will be ruined by annealing it must be performed after final shaping of the material. Welding should not be effected, especially low heat effect zone processes like laser and electron beam as you account for material alteration from welding during design.
I'll guarantee my UHC 1080 cleaver will slam a good distance through your stainless steel knife edge-on. Your chosen steel has toughness but it lacks in actual strength.
-- Snowclone after Samuel JohnsonWhat matters is the compromise between hardness (good for edge retention) and toughness (required to avoid chipping).
Many alloyed steels (especially with chromium and vanadium) allow a better compromise than simple carbon steels, i.e. either a higher toughness at equal hardness or a higher hardness at equal toughness.
When you do not specify simultaneously hardness and toughness, simple carbon steels may seem good enough, because they can be made to be either very hard or very tough.
If you cut only very soft things, like fish meat without bones, a very hard carbon steel blade (like a traditional Japanese yanagiba) will not have any disadvantage versus an alloyed steel blade. When you want a more versatile knife, an alloyed steel blade will be superior.
https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/2025/creating-an-anti-crash....
