Chiral shape memory alloy antenna

[schulwitz]

This would be a lot more impressive if you had a cross-hatched background. The white table doesn't provide much perspective to the viewer.

[flagof]

@schulwitz

I take your point.

[kentuckyham44]

how exactly do you set the shape of the raw SMA wire?

[flagof]

The SMA ribbon is annihilated first in a furnace around 510 C in straight ligaments. Then the various unit cells (cylinders + ribs) are assembled, and the whole structure slowly compressed manually, until it reaches the full packed stage. After that, you can use an hair dryer (or another form of heating), and the structure deploys.

[flagof]

Hi. No welding, just high temperature epoxy - the cylinders are in PVC

Best

[egroegKM]

cool design! How did you join all the wires? did you weld them?

[justin900]

thats the kind of metal criss angel and the other magicians use to do their spoon bending trick :)

[wookierocker123]

that stuff looks awesome, if you had a bit sheet of memory alloy and made a dint in it, would it reform to it's original shape?

[rarathorat]

ya, but you need to have temperature change for that recovery. Suppose you have material which is in martensitic form at room temp, you dent it. As austenitic form would be at higher temperature, if you want to recover the dent you have to heat that material. The material "remembers" the shape which it had in martensitic form before denting.