White's Main Detecting Forum

I became aware of the cryogenic treatment of gun barrels about 15 years ago. By treating a barrel of a gun with supercold tempering at -300 plus degrees, the molecular structure of metal is realigned and destressed. I am greatly simplifying the process, but in essence, that is what occurs. The molecules line up end to end. It is a permanent treatment and is now used for many different metals.

How does this relate to metal detecting? Ever since I became aware of it, I have wondered if the treatment of the coil windings would benefit from such a treatment. To my non-scientific, but gut fueled thinking.....realigned molecules within the wiring itself would assist in the flow of electrons from the machine, and perhaps increase the size of the field developed by the coil. I am going to post this to several forums here for input.

I went to the website here: http://www.300below.com/ , and asked them that question. I thought it would be a subject perhaps for consideration here as well. I know there are some engineers on here, and this might be a short lived topic, but on the other hand, in my now 38 years detecting, I have never seen the subject raised. So, ok, tell me why or why not realigning the molecular structure of the wiring would or wouldn't enhance the size of the magnetic field, of speed of the signal.

IF I am totally off my rocker, just tell me, and we can move on.

HH

Dennis, with a BRRRRRRRRRight idea!

I think the concept is fascinating and theoretically sound. Perhaps you may wish to post it at Tom Dankowski's site as he is a engineer and did work for the old Los Banos Fisher metal detectors.

Hmmm, well (just to throw a little cold water on the topic) electron flow on copper (or any metal) at kilocycle frequencies only involves the electrons directly upon the surface of the metal.. This is called skin effect... The atoms below the surface are not involved, which is very different from direct current or 60 cycles...
The tensile strength of metal involves the binding between the inclusions Carbon (and Ni, Si, Co, and others) and Ferrous molecules that make up the metal - think of metal as a bar of very fine gravel kind of stuck together - and relaxing strain between the molecules will affect tensile strength... Molecules are millions of times larger than atoms...
I am not disparaging the OP for thinking outside of the box, but I would not expect a cryo treatment to have any effect on the conductivity of the surface of copper so as to be measurable...

Cryogenic treatment of gun barrels.
This process doesn't "align" the molecules if it did the barrel would become magnetized, or polarized.
The idea in a gun barrel is when the steel is made the molecules are not evenly displaced, that means that they're is area's of the steel that have a denser population of molecules then other places.
When this happens and the gun is fired as the bullet travels down the barrel heat is generated, as this happens the metal in the barrel doesn't respond evenly to the heat because of the unevenness of the molecules and thus the barrel pulls off at the muzzle in one direction or the other, this changes the flight path of the bullets, or makes the firearm less accurate.

The sells pitch to "Cryogenic Stress Release" is to shrink the metal down in a way that the molecules are so crowed that in the dense area's they are forced to move (pushed) to the less dense areas. Then they step the process back up to normal temperature and when they do that the moved molecules stay in the new location. This leaves the molecular structure of the barrel more "Even", now as the bullet travels down the barrel the barrel doesn't pull off as much because of the more even density of the entire barrel.

But, most gun barrels are made of Chrome Molly which is a pretty dense metal, but wire if copper or a coil loop if copper is very soft and in a metal like that the molecules are pretty free to move on their own so "Cryogenic Stress Release" process isn't going to help the flow of RF or electric in a search coil, perhaps a much more expensive metal altogether might.

Mark

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?34,137278,137278#msg-137278

---

"Everyone has an opinion, but mine is free"
"You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment..."