8–11% nickel, not antibacterial, and five times weaker than this CuLiTa alloy in the annealed state. Thin out the middle and leave thick edges to avoid pain. None of this is an option with this new alloy unless someone finds a cheaper way to make it and probably some kind of beryllium-copper-like precipitation hardening process so you can form it.
Nickel-free (e.g. 18/0) flatware is just fine from an engineering perspective, and it’s cheap, and it sticks to magnets, which is fun. It’s even available as fairly nice, decorative name-brand products.
And I found some studies suggesting that 304 and 316 stainless steel leach very little nickel when in contact with food. It’s the cheaper nickel-containing stainless steel that’s a problem.
> Thin out the middle and leave thick edges to avoid pain.
Ok but if you do that then what is the point of the exercise? I thought fancy flatware was thin because of the appearance. If the edges are thick doesn't that defeat the purpose?
The equivalent thickness being something like 5x stronger is of course the benefit here.
I don't think price is an issue for high end home use items. Rich people buy far weirder and more expensive things.
I was thinking the edge could have a radius of about 350μm (like 21-gauge wire) while the main body might be 200μm thick.
Price is always an issue. Maybe you're willing to pay €100 a spoon, or €1000, or even €10000, but nobody is going to pay €1000000000 per spoon. If there's a good chance the price will drop by a factor of 10 in the next year, many rich people might be unwilling to pay even €100.
The process described sounds like it would currently be able to produce a spoon for a cost on the order of €100k: four PhDs working for a month is maybe €50k, but they're also tying up a lot of rather expensive lab space, and I think they're using analytical-grade fine chemicals rather than metallurgical-grade copper and tantalum. And in this study they made roughly enough for half a spoon. The second spoon would probably cost closer to €1000.
I'm just not clear what the aesthetic advantage of making the body thinner than the edge is. At least not once you're already down under a millimeter.
In an adjacent exchange it seemed we both expected the price to be far lower. 10x or even 50x the material cost of a piece of stainless steel flatware seems well within budget for a rich customer.
Sure, silver silverware already costs that much (and is antibacterial, and requires scrubbing tarnish off, though only for aesthetic reasons). It'll be interesting to see what shakes out.
