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Polycarbonate
Have any of you guys looked at Polycarbonate? What I know to use it for is armor reinforcement, because it's a sturdy and generally lightweight knife-proof material that can be shaped in an oven. So my first thought was maybe you could use it as subdermal armor or something... but more practically it's just a durable material that (might be) non-toxic. If dried hot glue is safe, the odds seem pretty good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate
So have a nice day and all that. I'll try not to let my enthusiasm run away with me too much, but it's reall awesome to discover you guys.
Comments
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Hmm. This shouldn't be in "haptics." Sorry.
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@E0N: Welcome to Biohack.me! Yeah...haptics is kind of the default category. You can change it on the main discussions list. I've been thinking about the feasibility of subdermal armor for a while too. I can see where someone could get away with having plates of it under the skin (like in your pectoral muscles). I'm wondering how you could shield your kidneys? Scale mail style?
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@E0N i would recommend some of those neat ceramic fabrics (dunno if you ever made contact with them in the military, it is rather high-tech) coated in medical grade silicone. they are more flexible and can ditch even smaller bullets. i dont have a source for bullet proof ceramic fabric tho.other alternatives would be dyneema. they offer bioproof material right away. very strong and flexible material.
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Transparent ceramic armor Spinel just came out this year that stopped two 50 cal rounds, but thin as it is it's still too thick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcrqzlVKVUQ A guy holds it up at 2:24 in this video.
Seems like you could somehow make thinner ceramic plates, but I've never seen any.
The only other thing I can think of ATM (for subdermal armor) is compressed stacks of Bucky Paper, sheets woven from carbon nano-tube fibers -- but that's way outside of all of our price ranges, I'd guess.
Dyneema, had to look that up -- Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene... thanks. I only knew it as Spectra and had sort of forgotten about it. For the whole system thing we're trying to do it's a bit expensive. We do have some ceramic plates, though.
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Oh... fabrics... :P
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@DirectorX I don't know anything about this subject, but I think that the subdermal armor would likely need to be somewhere with a large cushion of muscle beneath it - and the plating itself would probably need to be relatively large - for it to be useful. I see multiple problems with this.
- Keeping a large piece of anything from rejecting would be very, very difficult. It would also likely limit range of motion substantially - tissues would probably be either pinched or restricted by any movement around the armor, particularly since there would be large edges around it. Which brings me to number 2.
- The best it could manage would be to limit the ability of something to pierce the armor itself. If it were, say, bullet-proof, a bullet probably wouldn't pass through it - but all of that force is going to go into the whole of the armor. This would probably cause severe bruising/hemorrhaging at the edges from blunt trauma (at best; cutting surrounding tissues is another possible result). This would almost certainly lead to another attempt at rejection by your body, possibly leading to infections due to the new open wound at the surface of the skin, requiring prompt removal of the armor.
It could possibly increase the chance of survival from some types of injury, but I don't give it very good odds of that. Coupled with fairly major surgery to get it in and the risk of having to perform that surgery multiple times due to rejection, it seems to be a mostly useless technology - at least in the form of large plates.Perhaps an array of smaller pieces (perhaps spherical to reduce risk of internal cutting and for a more even distribution of force when impacted) would be useful, come to think of it. A flexible material would definitely make it easier, too.Not to, you know, derail the topic or anything.Anyone know how to find out if polycarbonate is toxic when implanted? The Wikipedia article doesn't cite any source on its claim that there might be issues with biocompatibility.EDIT:D'oh. Looks like there's been a bit of discussion while I was typing all of that and looking some stuff up. This is probably mostly irrelevant now. -
Externally worn armor, if it was designed for bullets, should include a trauma plate underneathe it (padding). Usually for knives there's hard plates or chain mail and blunt trauma armor is basically just padding. Most of it's either toxic or too big, I think.
I don't believe subdermal armor is practical today beyond the most basic type of things, like maybe you could implant knuckle protection or something... there's probably a risk it'd slide out of place.
I was mostly suggesting that since polycarb is strong, cheap, and shapeable, that it might be useful for something... protecting a sensitive component -- something like that.
To find out if it's toxic I guess you'd have to implant a small test piece of it. It's only a somewhat fringe community that makes custom armor with the stuff. Most folks are either making costume armor (using stuff like ABS plastic) or else they have enough resources (like the army) to buy higher grade materials.
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@E0N: Using polycarbonate to armour implants? You could be onto something.
