thought: steel is such a common material for tools because, primarily, of the abundance of iron; it's the most abundant metal. As such, a lot of research has gone into making tools and structures out of iron and iron-based alloys.
But what materials would tools and structures be made of if given an unlimited amount of any ores you want? (you have to smelt, alloy, and forge them yourself though) If iron didn't have the advantage of abundance, what would tools have been made of instead?
@Felthry as far as "simple" alloys, ones that I can forge myself? I'm a huge fan of brass and bronze. For most non-hardened applications, it holds up better than steel (because non-destructive-oxidation).
For high performance, the Inconel family of alloys is what I'd want. Especially once we get into sintering and ceramics applications, although it's been a while since I've reviewed the thermal expansion profiles of metals vs ceramics...
@Felthry absolutely, just that most things fall into either "can be cut with unhardened copper" or "needs diamond plated ceramic plate-press cutoff to even dent it" in the areas I'm attempting to prototype...not a lot of middle ground, sadly.
#aerospace #engineering