WBahn, what is the unmet need in superconductor contacts? Why wouldn't pure copper work there, for instance? Indeed if there is a compeling "must have" need I want to know it. Can you point me to someone/somewhere to learn more? Many thx.

When I was involved with NIST in this area (30 years ago) the ceramic (high-temperature) superconductors were very much a new technology and one of the problems was making low-ohmic contacts to the superconductor. A lot of techniques were being researched. Members of my group were getting good success sputtering gold contacts onto the body (I was involved with low-temp research, and so only had a bit to do with these projects). I don't know where the state of the art is. I would recommend contacting the Superconductor and Magnetic Measurements Group (or whoever absorbed them in any subsequent organizational shuffling) and talking to one of the researchers there. They would be in a good position to suggest areas that might be of use and probably provide good contacts of folks in both research and industry for further discussions.

 

Gopher T and WBahn, thx for your comments and your wish of good luck: heaven knows every company I have previously started has benefited from it! I went off-topic on the industry discussion. Rest assured that the industry knows what it is doing here. A tiny little start-up making, say, 50ktons/year of UCC is of little interest to big copper: they are investing to hit the 2Mt/year target (especially industrial motors, industrial cables, deep-sea umbilicals, transmission/distribution cables, utility transformers, generators - especially wind-driven). There are many markets for UCC in their eyes, though not for 5-10 years. My job as the little start-up is to bridge the gap between short-term revenues in a niche market so that the really big investment for the large markets can come about (when the manufacturing process is shaken down).

Though its fun to talk philosophy, I'd like to get back to ideas for niche, high margin applications. Aerospace encompasses military drones, with their limited range at present. A solution there is not 6-10 years from revenues. I'm after alternatives with pressing needs like that.

 

Thank you for the pointer on contacts to the superconductor contact application. I will follow that. Especially interesting for the high volume (relatively) of MRI electromagnets. Germany is also implementing long distance superconducting backbones for trans shipping electricity across the country. I'll dig around there.

 

Thank you for the pointer on contacts to the superconductor contact application. I will follow that. Especially interesting for the high volume (relatively) of MRI electromagnets. Germany is also implementing long distance superconducting backbones for trans shipping electricity across the country. I'll dig around there.

Unless things have changed considerably (which is certainly possible) MRI magnets, motors, drives, energy storage and transmission are all the purview of low-temperature conventional superconductors. I think the ability to contact to these conductors is pretty much a solved problem, but it still might be seeing what the folks at NIST have to say.

My understanding is that the present commercial applications for high-temperature superconductors is still pretty limited, but it has been and continues to make incremental gains. Whether your technology might be a game-changer in that I have no idea.

 

Gopher T and WBahn, thx for your comments and your wish of good luck: heaven knows every company I have previously started has benefited from it! I went off-topic on the industry discussion. Rest assured that the industry knows what it is doing here. A tiny little start-up making, say, 50ktons/year of UCC is of little interest to big copper: they are investing to hit the 2Mt/year target (especially industrial motors, industrial cables, deep-sea umbilicals, transmission/distribution cables, utility transformers, generators - especially wind-driven). There are many markets for UCC in their eyes, though not for 5-10 years. My job as the little start-up is to bridge the gap between short-term revenues in a niche market so that the really big investment for the large markets can come about (when the manufacturing process is shaken down).

Though its fun to talk philosophy, I'd like to get back to ideas for niche, high margin applications. Aerospace encompasses military drones, with their limited range at present. A solution there is not 6-10 years from revenues. I'm after alternatives with pressing needs like that.

Do we get a commission in any sales? Or sales leads?

What is the price premium for the product?

Is it as ductile as regular copper?

 

Thank you, WBahn, for the clarification on conventional vs. high temperature superconductors. Less exciting, but still worth me following up.

 

No sales/ideas monetary rewards, I'm afraid. Welcome to the early stages of a start-up

In the first few years of production the price will likely be 5-10 times that for pure copper. Assuming we maintain cash flow and investment, by year 8-10 when volumes are higher (an a different manufacturing approach justified), we should be at 1.2 times the price of pure copper. Ductility is the same as pure copper.

Are you thinking of a particular application that values higher conductivity and requires ductility?

 

Are you thinking of a particular application that values higher conductivity and requires ductility?

Is there another option?

 

I disagree with the whole premise. With the amount of research going on right now in graphene and material science..........your product has little advantage.......and in today's world.......needs way to much pay back time.

You could spend the next 6 years full bore at this......then over night.......a much improved and cheaper product comes along.

Way too risky. Your hoping for a demand. By the time your tech makes/meets that demand.....the demand might be gone.

A 20% increase in a solar panel is marketable.........20% in conductivity is not. Unless you can rebuild the power grid cheaply.

 

I disagree with the whole premise. With the amount of research going on right now in graphene and material science..........your product has little advantage.......and in today's world.......needs way to much pay back time.

You could spend the next 6 years full bore at this......then over night.......a much improved and cheaper product comes along.

Way too risky. Your hoping for a demand. By the time your tech makes/meets that demand.....the demand might be gone.

A 20% increase in a solar panel is marketable.........20% in conductivity is not. Unless you can rebuild the power grid cheaply.

100% agree.

 

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-nanoparticles-tattoos-circulate-body.html

 

Of course you are entitled your view of my world.

Chinese proverb: “Those that say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those doing it”

Time to finish this thread. A shame, as it was going somewhere useful.

Thanks to all for your input.

 

Of course you are entitled your view of my world.

Chinese proverb: “Those that say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those doing it”

Time to finish this thread. A shame, as it was going somewhere useful.

Thanks to all for your input.

MOD NOTE: Are you saying that you would like the thread closed?

 

MrAl, indeed one way for new products to penetrate is to have a unit cost advantage. As I say above, we will have that in the long run, but not when we start. I feel that I must bypass unit-cost-controlled applications at least in our early year. Any other ideas?

I am also curious as to whether or not the "Al" in "MrAl" is for "aluminum"? The reason that the copper industry has been working on UCC for so long is as a defense against aluminum's penetration of the wiring industry. Although the $/conductivity number was the same for copper and aluminum until the early noughties, the growth of the copper price since then means that there is lots of pressure to solve the problems of aluminum as a wire material (mainly corrosion at joints, bulkiness, low strength and a tendency to catch fire). UCC is copper's answer to fending off aluminum in the medium term. And changes in the wire material industry happen very slowly (standard, life-proving, failure mode understanding, sunk manufacturing capital investment, super-cycles in metals prices), so copper is protected for another decade at least, even without the mass production of UCC.

Hi,

MrAL stands for Mister AL where AL is a first name. I came up with that because a spanish lady i used to know used to call me either that or Sir AL and she was a really cool person to know. So i took the lesser of the two, MrAl and the last letter is a lower case "L" but sometimes gets confused with a lower case "i" so some people think it stands for artificial intelligence which i have studied to some degree.

As to your startup product, the 5 to 10 times cost ratio sounds like a very application specific product where the end goal of a project can benefit greatly from even a small advantage in size and/or weight despite a large increase in cost. Maybe talk to people like Musk for example. Aircraft industry perhaps?

BTW did you ever mention the weight ratio? That can be extremely important.

To paraphrase, "One man's new product can be another man's road to a successful project". If you believe in the product and did the market research and know the risks and still believe then by all means continue.

 

Of course you are entitled your view of my world.

Chinese proverb: “Those that say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those doing it”

Time to finish this thread. A shame, as it was going somewhere useful.

Thanks to all for your input.

Maybe it's an incentive to make your product better. There are thousands of great ideas with great monetary backing that fall flat in the market-place (like 3D TV). Ten years ago the word on the street was the 8-bit controllers were obsolete in a 32-bit world. A good engineer designs something for $2, a better one does it for $1. Make your product useful for the $1 engineer.

 

I am sure that if you manufactured mains leads that go from the wall socket to hi fi audio amplifiers, someone would write up in an audiophile magazine that they could "definitely hear a sonic difference" when compared to their already purchased low oxygen leads.
So why not try that and make loads of cash!
Joking aside, I like the ideas put forward, especially for pcb's

 

MOD NOTE: Thread closed per TS's request (via PM).