Tis the season...for wedding engagements. More than a third of engagements take place between Thanksgiving and New Year's, according to WeddingWire -- so many, in fact, that it's come to be known as "engagement season."

Which means that wedding planning kicks off in earnest in the new year -- followed closely by sticker shock at the price of gold and platinum wedding bands. As the cost of precious metals continues to rise, it comes as no surprise that more and more grooms are forgoing those traditional choices and opting for more adventuresome -- and less costly -- materials, such as tungsten carbide and palladium.

Grooms spent an average of $491 for their wedding bands in 2011, almost a 23 percent drop from the $637 average in 2009, according to wedding-planning website The Knot. That's in part because fewer are buying gold: 39 percent of grooms purchased white gold bands in 2009, versus 34 percent in 2011.

Ruth Batson, CEO of the American Gem Society, chalks up the popularity of alternative materials to style as well as economics. "Alternative materials like titanium, ceramic, tungsten are top trends right now, because of the hardness factor and also for ease of care. While cost may be a factor for some, overall design and how the ring looks and holds up tend to be a priority."

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Sometimes you have to watch between the lines to understand how much authority governmental agencies really have. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is a case in point. The issue is what ammunition the ATF considers to be "armor piercing ammunition" and not ammunition used for "sporting purposes."

In early December meetings, the ATF met with gun control activist groups, the NRA, firearms industry groups and others. The ATF expressed opinions that "warrant particular scrutiny," NRA representatives, who attended those meetings, noted on the group's website.

Under a law adopted in 1986, the definition of "armor piercing ammunition" is "a projectile or projectile core which may be used in a handgun and which is constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, beryllium copper or depleted uranium."

The intent of the law, which is good, is to protect law enforcement officers from ammunition that could penetrate soft body armor.

The challenge is that there are handguns designed to fire certain rifle calibers and that rifle ammunition wasn't designed for anything other than sporting purposes. That means you could have a rifle caliber ammunition type outlawed on the basis that it can be fired in a handgun and pierce armor. That covers a wide range of rifle ammunition that could be outlawed under a stricter interpretation of this law.

According to the NRA representatives who attended the meetings, the ATF "suggested that it believes that the armor piercing ammunition law was intended to affect all ammunition capable of penetrating soft body armor worn by law enforcement officers."

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Introduction
Super alloys or high performance alloys include iron-based, cobalt-based and nickel-based alloys. These alloys have good oxidation and creep resistance and are available in different shapes.

Super alloys can be strengthened by precipitation hardening, solid-solution hardening and work hardening methods. These alloys can function under high mechanical stress and high temperatures and also in places that require high surface stability.

Udimet 520™ is a nickel-chromium-cobalt alloy. Addition of tungsten and molybdenum result in age-hardening and strengthening of this alloy.

The following datasheet provides an overview of Udimet 520™.

Chemical Composition
The chemical composition of Udimet 520™ is outlined in the following table.
Element                   Content (%)
Nickel, Ni                 52.18-59.976
Chromium, Cr          18.0-20.0
Cobalt, Co               11.0-14.0
Molybdenum, Mo     5.50-7.00
Titanium, Ti             2.90-3.25
Aluminum, Al          1.80-2.30
Tungsten, W          0.800-1.20
Carbon, C             0.0200-0.0600
Boron, B               0.00400-0.0100

Physical Properties
The following table shows the physical properties of Udimet 520™.
Properties                       Metric            Imperial
Density                          8.21 g/cm³      0.297 lb/in³
Melting point                  1371°C            2500°F
Mechanical Properties

The mechanical properties of Udimet 520™ are displayed in the following table.
Properties                                             Metric                 Imperial
Tensile strength (@950°C/1740°F)        350 MPa               50800 psi
Yield strength (@strain 0.200%, temperature 850°C/strain 0.200%, temperature 1560°F)                                                          500 MPa               72500 psi
Elongation at break (@50°C/122°F)      100%                    100%

Fabrication and Heat Treatment

Annealing
Udimet 520™ is annealed at 1107°C (2025°F) and then cooled in air rapidly.

Cold Working
Standard cooling methods are used for cold forming Udimet 520™. Minimization of galling is possible with the usage of heavy duty lubricants and soft die materials though the die life is limited. Tooling is recommended in the cold working process to allow liberal radii and clearances.

Welding
Welding processes recommended for Udimet 520™ include gas-tungsten arc welding, gas metal-arc welding and shielded metal-arc welding. This alloy can be welded by the commonly used welding procedures, and the welding surfaces should be free from paint, crayon markings or oil.

Forging
Udimet 520™ is capable of being forged as it is ductile.

Forming
Conventional methods can be used to form Udimet 520™ with ease as it has good ductility. To obtain good forming results, a powerful equipment is used along with heavy- prevent embrittlement of this alloy at high temperatures.

Machinability
Udimet 520™ can be machined by conventional machining methods. and tThis alloy contains higher strength, gumminess and work-hardening qualities. Usage of water-based coolants is preferred for milling, turning or grinding. Usage of heavy lubricants is preferred for boring, drilling, broaching or tapping operations. Work-hardening of the alloy before the cutting process and chatter can be minimized by tooling and a heavy duty machining equipment.

Aging
Udimet 520™ is treated at three different temperatures to be air-hardened.

    Heat for 4 h at 1107°C (2025°F) and cool in air.
    Heat for 24 h at 843°C (1550°F) and cool in air.
    Heat for 16 h at 760°C (1400°F) and cool in air.

Heat Treatment
Udimet 520™ can be hardened when heat treated.

Applications
Udimet 520™ is used in gas turbine hot section components and industrial applications that need hot high heat strength with good quality.

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Dwarven treasure map – Have you ever wanted to reclaim your homeland and the treasures that are your birthright? Well now you can with a prop replica of Thorin Oakenshield’s map to The Lonely Mountain from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, complete with hidden Moon Rune text that can only be seen in the moonlight (well, any light will work, but won’t be as much fun.) If the $200 price tag is a little too much, with all your gold currently being horded by an ill-tempered dragon and all, you can always opt for the $30 parchment version of the map.

The Lord Of The Rings: The One Ring – This ring may not give you the power of invisibility, but that’s okay, because you’ll want your friends to be able to see your good taste as you sport this gold plated tungsten carbide One Ring replica that is stylishly decorated with Elvish runes reading, “One Ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” This is guaranteed to be the most precious gift of all!

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With a sparkle in his eye, a spring in his step and a throat lozenge in his mouth, Phil Taylor on Tuesday night won the PDC World Darts Championship for the 16th time.

The greatest player ever to hurl a dart, the Power picked up the Sid Waddell trophy after beating the young Dutchman Michael van Gerwen by seven sets to four. And, as the great commentator after which the huge bauble is named would have put it, in winning Taylor proved he has tips of tungsten.

One thing is for sure, across his previous 15 titles, Taylor can have faced few challenges as intense as the one presented here by the young Dutchman. At one point he was 4-2 down, with Van Gerwen, the chucker who appears not to aim, hitting a speedy succession of magnificent trebles. As the 23 year-old from Boxtel in the south of the Netherlands moved apparently inexorably towards becoming the youngest man ever to win the crown, Taylor was sucking on his flights, shifting uncomfortably in his over-sized shirt and mouthing “what can you do?” to the boisterous Alexandra Palace crowd.

It was a fair question. Van Gerwen, whose square-mouthed yells of celebration really ought to carry an 18 certificate to prevent vulnerable youngsters suffering nightmares at the sight of it, looked unassailable. He was out-Tayloring Taylor. As he threw nine 180s, everyone in the arena was asking: what exactly could anyone do against such a force of darts? Not even the Power had an answer to this.

Well, what Taylor could do was to dig deep and produce some of the finest throwing ever seen, even in his imperious reign on the Ally Pally’s giant red stage. At 52, three years after he appeared to have relinquished his grip on the world title, Taylor showed absolutely no intention of falling to the exigencies of time.

Age does not appear to wither the man from the Potteries. Demonstrating precisely what it is that has made him the most decorated player in darts history, he clawed his way back, averaging over 103 for every three darts he threw, chucking in five 180s, finishing with a double 16 and throughout the final providing a masterclass in nerveless application.

And he needed to. Make no mistake, Taylor was up against it here. The Matt Lucas lookalike Van Gerwen is already a superb competitor, a player of flair and flamboyance, whose storm to the final had encompassed darts of a kind rarely before delivered in this competition, even by Taylor. His near double nine-dart finish in the semi-final had seasoned observers fearing for old guard’s prospects here.

“He’s phenomenal that kid, I just couldn’t seem to crack him,” said Taylor afterwards, his voice threatening to crumble with emotion. “He’s one of the best players I’ve ever seen in my career. I am absolutely over the moon, I’m so proud tonight.” As Taylor swung the competition his way, slowly, relentlessly reeling in his opponent, the hugely boisterous, fancy-dressed crowd filling the Alexandra Palace chanted his name to the echo. They were all, they insisted, walking in a Taylor Wonderland. And this after many had booed him to the oche at the start, keen to express their displeasure at his graceless reaction to his semi-final win over Raymond van Barneveld. But then the darts Taylor produced here had that effect on people: there was no other response than to stand and loudly acknowledge his brilliance.

What an evening they were having in the crowd, toasting their good fortune at being present at the self-styled “hottest ticket in sport”. Indeed, it was clear that Alcohol Concern’s Dry January campaign had singularly failed to establish a foothold in Alexandra Palace on Tuesday night. Drink was everywhere in evidence; the place was awash in beer.

But then, this has always been a thirsty competition. A few years back at the final, I was queuing up at the bar behind a fan who, when his turn came, ordered 20 pints of lager. The barman, evidently not amused at the scale of the order, rolled his eyes and sighed ostentatiously.

“Sorry about that,” came back the fan, by way of excuse for his demand. “But there are four of us.”

As it turned out, however, there was little need for any outside assistance to achieve a gleeful dose of seasonal good cheer. Taylor’s exhibition was elevated enough to lift any mood. Never mind that his vocation requires nothing more physical than an occasional walk of a couple of yards to retrieve his arrows from the board, Taylor demonstrated here the kind of mental resolve that is rare in any kind of athletic pursuit. He simply refuses to countenance defeat. And as he does so, you can almost feel the waves of certainty undermining his opponent.

As he began to claw his way back into the match, first equalising the sets, then opening up a lead, Van Gerwen seemed to shrink before him. The Dutchman missed doubles, missed chances, missed doing what earlier in the evening had appeared to be second nature to him. And the more he missed, the more the wry smile played on the old champion’s lips. He knew he had him. He knew he was about to remind us all who really is the boss around here.

Afterwards, as he basked in triumph, a winner’s cheque for £200,000 in his pocket, Taylor made no mention of the threat to retire he had issued ahead of this final.

“They got me through this,” he said of the crowd.

And as he spoke, thrilled by the response to his victory, he did not look like a man keen to depart the scene at any time soon.

For which those of us lucky enough to witness his performance can be profoundly grateful. Quite simply, this was an act of true sporting genius.

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In the past, 3D printing for manufacturing, or "additive manufacturing," had been primarily used as a rapid prototyping tool for plastic parts. However, the sphere of applications is expanding as use of printable metal alloys, such as tungsten and titanium, gains traction. Creating prototypes is still the dominant application; however, the technology has matured to the point where manufacturers can use it to complement or replace traditional production processes.

Leading manufacturers are now looking at potential 3D printing applications in multiple areas to determine where it could save time or costs. For production processes, it appears that 3D printing can provide the most benefit for manufacturers seeking to move toward smaller production quantities.

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If you live in Scandanavia, you probably take great pride in showing visitors from warmer climes your tungsten-studded winter tyres. Yet keep strangely silent on the amount of swearing you do twice a year when you have to change them. When we’ve got a set of auto-adjusting all-weather tyres we might come and visit you again. Less tyre chat next time, please.

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A bit more on economics: an Edison bulb (and all other pre-20th century light sources) is essentially a heat source that produces a little bit of light. A “65 Watt” Edison bulb produces about 700 lumens (a lumen, “lm”, is a unit of visible light power). If you had perfect conversion of electricity into light, you would need only 1.0 Watt (“W”) of electrical power to produce 700 lm. So, an Edison bulb is 1.6% efficient. For such a widely deployed technology, this is amazingly bad. But Edison bulbs are much better than the kerosene lamps they replaced …

A comparable LED bulb* consumes 13 W and produces 730 lm, which is 5.2x better efficiency than an Edison bulb, but still only 8%. The theoretical efficiency of an LED is about 30%, but commercially available LED materials are ~16%, and making a light bulb involves a power supply, phosphors, a protective container, etc., all of which dissipate energy.

Why are LEDs better? Edison bulbs function by making a Tungsten filament very hot, and a hot object glows: radiating energy on a broad spectrum of wavelengths, only a small part of which is visible to the eye. The rest of the radiated energy is mostly heat.

LEDs function by driving electrons across a junction between two semiconductor materials in which electrons move at different energy levels. When the electrons cross the junction, they drop from the higher energy level to the lower one, and the energy each electron loses when it drops takes the form of light to a large extent. The color of the light is mathematically determined by the energy level difference. So all of the light produced by an LED is the same color, and LEDs can be designed to produce light in the visible range. This precise conversion to one color is why LEDs are referred to as “digital light”. There is some waste heat caused by inefficiencies within the LED, however, the net result is a big gain in the percentage of electricity converted to visible light.

This digital precision creates a problem, too. Our eyes prefer full-spectrum analog light: what you get from a light bulb, a fireplace, or the sun. LED bulbs use a mix of phosphors (materials that absorb light and re-emit it at different colors) to convert the single color from the LED into multiple colors that mimic the spectrum, imperfectly. I find today’s LED bulb light pleasing, but my wife thinks the same light looks too orange.

LEDs are also long lived because they do not operate at the high temperatures that degrade the filaments of Edison bulbs. The LED itself has an expected life of about 50,000 hours (six years) of continuous use. Its power supply is less robust, so LED bulbs are usually rated for 25,000 hours. How long they last in practice is TBD, however: I have not used any for 25,000 hours. Edison bulbs are good for about 2,000 hours.

Here is how the dollars work out today. This example is for flood lights of the type used in down lights (“cans”), which is most of what we have in our house (pictured above). If you use a 65 W Edison bulb heavily (6 hours per day, 2,200 hours per year), it consumes $21.50/year of electricity (@ $0.15/kWh). The LED bulb uses 80% less electricity and lasts 11 years, so the electricity savings is $17.20 per year, plus a replacement Edison bulb @ $2, resulting in $19.50 of savings. The LED bulb costs $27 at Home Depot. So you get payback in 1.5 years and expect to keep saving for quite a few years beyond that. If the bulb is less used the payback is longer but the ROI is still good.

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IT’S New Year and that can only mean one thing – darts is back!

The world famous Lakeside stage is set to celebrate the 40th anniversary year of the British Darts Organisation with the 2013 Lakeside World Darts Championships, starting on Saturday.

Players from over 30 countries around the globe have competed to qualify in the final field of 32 men and eight women over eight days of top tungsten action.

In addition to extensive coverage on BBC Sport for the 36th consecutive year, the tournament will also be seen on satellite channel ESPN as well as Eurosport and Eurosport Asia, combining to produce the biggest TV audiences for darts in the world.

The bookies favourite this year is England’s Stephen Bunting, who more than justifies his No.1 seeding having won his first major title, the Winmau World Masters, in October, and the Zuiderduin Masters in Holland last month.

Bunting takes on Lakeside debutant Jamie Wilson on Sunday in the opening match at 1pm.

At 56, three-times champion Martin Adams is the oldest player in the tournament, and the No.2 seed begins his 20th consecutive Lakeside campaign against the youngest, Dutch star Jimmy Hendricks, just 18. That match is also on Sunday with a 3pm start.

Dutch star Christian Kist won here as a qualifier ranked No.74 in the world 12 months ago, epitomising the magic of Lakeside by arriving largely unknown and leaving with the famous trophy and a cheque for a life-changing £100,000.

Also defending their Lakeside title is Women’s world champion Anastasia Dobromyslova, who added to her 2008 crown with victory over Trina Gulliver in last year’s final.

The Russian returns at 7.30pm on Sunday when she plays Lorraine Farlam.

It’s a complete sell-out at Lakeside, play gets underway on Saturday at 1pm.

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Phil Taylor's Ladbrokes PDC World Championship final victory over Michael van Gerwen was beamed live to South Africa for the first time.

Coverage from Alexandra Palace has also broken new ground this year in Eastern Europe and the USA.

PDC chairman Hearn says the top players stand to cash in on the new wave of interest, with prize money already set to be increased for the 2014 tournament.

Next year’s winner stands to collect £250,000 — a whopping 25 per cent hike on this year.

Hearn said: “The world seems to be opening up because 2012 has been a massive year for us.

“Apart from the fact that NBC are showing regular darts on their sports channel in America, we have had live coverage for the first time in Eastern Europe, through Hungary and Romania.

“These are entirely new areas for us, the Asian coverage is growing and it is becoming a really global sport.

“If you are new to the sport, you can follow the game quite quickly and the atmosphere the fans give, that comes through on the television coverage.

“I am finding that people are incredulous about the atmosphere — even more so than the darts.

“They cannot believe that there are thousands and thousands of people going crazy watching an indoor game that has always been associated with pubs, that has suddenly become working man’s golf. Darts has become that.

“We have been stuck in the traditional sports for years — football, cricket, rugby. But all of a sudden, darts has come up on the blindside and is creating atmospheres and TV ratings that surpass any other sport apart from Premier League football.

“We are hearing record audiences in Germany, Holland, the UK. This morning I had a phone call that we want to go live with the final in South Africa — we have never done anything in South Africa.

“People have looked down their nose for too long at traditional, working-class pastimes that suddenly become major sports.

“People don’t see Premier League footballers walking down the street because they are too busy driving their Ferraris. The appeal of this sport is that ordinary people are achieving their dreams and people can associate with that.

“It is cheap to play, there is no barrier for entry — you don’t have to be a member of a golf club or have an expensive set of clubs.

“All you need is ability and dedication — but we have the characters who are transgressing the normal barriers of sport because everyone can associate with it.”

‘The Power’ Taylor, 16 times the world champ, has gone from the dole to being a multi-millionaire thanks to his talent with the tungsten tips.

Hearn said: “I don’t think the bubble will burst. I’ve always felt we were a work in motion, a jigsaw being put together and over this tournament a few more pieces of the jigsaw have gone into place.”

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