LIKE that unnecessary third pork pie and the seasonal 9am glass of sherry, darts has become firmly wedged into my ever-increasing list of guilty Yuletide pleasures.

Christmas is a good get-out clause for virtually any out-of-character behaviour that good sense and wise judgement otherwise prevents. Quality Street for breakfast? Well it is Christmas. Port and Irn Bru aperitif? Well it’s only once a year.

That’s why it seems the perfect time of year for a fortnight-long festival of debauchery, or the PDC World Darts Championships as it’s officially known.

The arrow chucking provides me with yet another perfect excuse to brandish the festive “get-out-of-jail” card.

The appalling walk-on music and tacky dancing girls, the wall-to-wall fancy dress and primeval chants of the boisterous, boozed-up hordes. It assaults the senses like nothing else in sport.

The Alexandra Palace may have been created as a place of grandeur where the BBC broadcast its first TV transmission. But the splendour of the Ally Pally in late December is no place for finesse or understatement; it is a shrine to the lairy.

The scene can appear quite unsettling, particularly when the punters who have paid good money to attend seem too caught up in chanting to actually watch the on-stage action.

But on New Year’s Day even the crowd, intermittently at least, paid attention. The final pitted 15-time world champion Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor against the remarkable young pretender Michael Van Gerwen.

The darts the Dutchman produced in the first six sets were extraordinary. Utterly machine-like in their repetitive, pinpoint precision.

Suddenly the sport’s greatest-ever looked frail. The only thing that could stop MVG was himself, or more precisely, his mind.

Under the weight of Van Gerwen’s constant heavy scoring, Taylor was on the ropes as he helplessly watched his rival take aim at a double for a decisive 5-2 lead.

But at that moment it happened. The Dutchman fatally allowed himself a momentary glimpse of the winning line and it finished him.

Suddenly the unerring eye grew wayward. Taylor, as great champions of all sports can, spotted his rival’s weakness and exploited it without mercy or pity.

The Power stormed to the finish, and when his tungsten arrowed unerringly into the winning double 16, I surprised myself by bellowing to acclaim a stunning 16th world title.

And then things all went a bit flat. The ultimate point of celebration had also sparked the end of the party and the start of the hangover.

Just as when the Christmas tree comes down, and the dreaded return to work and routine looms, we have to face facts. It couldn’t last for ever. Or could it?

Just six days after the punters went home and the Ally Pally was busily restored to its stately glory, the gaudy, big-shirted circus rolled up in the unlikely surroundings of Surrey for the rival BDO World Darts Championships.

My pompous side would like to think my tastes are too refined for the festive goings-on at Frimley Green and the Alexandra Palace. That I find it all a bit too garish, obvious and outdated.

This is, of course, blatantly untrue. If I was being truly honest with myself, I’d love it.

Suspend reality, sink umpteen beers and join in the queasy larks. After all, it is Christmas.

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The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act contains provisions for publicly listed companies in the US using minerals sourced from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and surrounding countries – an area familiar to our industry and long-plagued by violent conflict. A conflict that has claimed 5.5 million lives to date.

The minerals identified by law-makers as contributing to the violence are tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold. Provisions 1502-1504 of the Act require companies to exercise due diligence, identifying then declaring (publicly) whether they use raw materials implicated in perpetuating the conflict.

The mining sector in the Great Lakes Region of Africa is artisanal and hundreds of thousands depend on it for their livelihoods. The Dodd-Frank Act does not seek to discourage companies from doing business there, it simply sets a precedent that holds companies to account and encourages them to improve raw material traceability, backed up by regional initiatives like provision of labs equipped to carry out mineral “finger-printing”.

The provisions aim to cultivate an awareness in companies of where raw materials come from and give consumers the opportunity to decide whether to buy products from unregulated sources in DRC (the findings are filed and publicly available on company websites).

There are other benefits too. For the miner, an end to conflict and harassment and better prices for goods – especially if they participate in traceability schemes such as the NGO Pact to trace coltan, or the Washington-based Electronic Industry’s Citizenship Coalition’s chain of custody scheme for conflict-free smelters. It also means an end to a conflict that spills across borders traumatising millions and for for the governments involved tax revenues.

Closer to home in the EU there is activity too. The focus: resource sustainability (ensuring adequate future supply of natural resources) in a globalised world with an ascendant and acquisitive China leading the charge for natural resources globally.

Viewed through this lens these provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act are part ideology, part realpolitik: they’re about levelling the playing field to pressure all companies to consider the implications of sourcing from conflict-affected areas. And should they decide to continue doing business in such places, they get involved with the process of supporting artisanal miners and isolated communities while preventing militias from taxing resource flows. A true win-win.

Initiatives are being developed at industry level by various NGOs. In our industry, no stranger to conflict minerals, the RJC is taking the lead with companies signing up in droves.

The point here is that while it’s currently the concern of the automotive, aerospace, consumer electronics and diversified industrials, the more we do as an industry to address these issues before regulation comes the better we look, the lower the risk of controversy and the better prepared we will be to respond if eventually the jewellery industry is held up to the kind of scrutiny and regulation advanced in Dodd-Frank Articles 1502-1504. The jury may be out on how many of our customers care about such issues, but it would seem the time is rapidly approaching where we – designer, jeweller, gemmologist alike – may be forced to consider these issues in more detail.

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UK scientists have developed a cleaning technique that could solve a long-standing puzzle in the field of metrology – how to return the standard kilogram, against which all others are measured, to its original mass.

The base unit of mass, the kilogram, is defined by the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) – a cylinder of platinum and iridium that was cast in 1879 and stored in a vault in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris. Around 40 replicas were made and distributed around the world to use as a standard reference to produce weights and standardise mass. But following three periodic verifications, where copies were returned to Paris to check their mass against the original IPK, scientists discovered that their weights are drifting. 

These tiny changes – which are less than 100µg – are thought to be the result of surface chemistry increasing their mass due to atmospheric mercury contamination and the growth of a carbonaceous layer. It is also possible that nitrogen trapped when the prototypes were cast has since leached out.

However, there is another solution on the cards to solve the kilogram’s weight problem. Delegates at the 24th General Conference on Weights and Measures held in 2011 voted for a change in the definition of the kilogram. The idea is to define it in relation to the mass of a silicon atom or in terms of the Planck constant which, as far as experiments have revealed, are fixed.

The switchover is likely to happen in 2014 after more subatomic experiments. This would mean the primary standard would either be a silicon sphere or weight designed for use on a watt balance.

'In addition to platinum and gold alloys we are looking at several other materials with regards to next generation mass standards including nickel alloys, silicon, iridium, stainless steel and tungsten,' says Davidson. So even if the current IPK becomes obsolete, the new UV–ozone cleaning method could still prove useful for keeping the next generation of reference masses stable. 'The cleanliness of the standard is critical, particularly when transferring from air to vacuum where the change in the mass – mainly due to water sorption – will depend on how clean the surface is,' he adds.

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No matter what your level of culinary skill is, or where you live in the U.S., Kitchen Inspire offers the commercial-grade supplies every kitchen and catering company needs. Below are some suggestions for kitchen supply tools to stock up on, or gift to someone special, this holiday season:

Newburg 8 Quart Chafing Dish
Winco makes an eight-quart, full-sized, stainless steel chafing dish with a full food pan (2.5 inches deep), dripless water pan, dome cover and two fuel holders. This chafing dish will be of particular handiness during catering events, keeping your food hot and fresh.

Accusharp 001 Knife Sharpener
Fortune's Accusharp knife sharpener files any double-edged blade -- whether serrated or plain -- and no matter the thickness. The competitive advantage of these sharpeners are their specially formulated, precision-ground and mounted tungsten carbide blades. A sharp knife will ensure clean cuts in your food and allow you to prep your food much quicker than using one that's dull.

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As the embers of 2012 begin to fizzle out, it is always a poignant time to dust down one's preferred sound bites from the year that was.

My personal favourite is reserved for the ongoing chairman of the Premier League Sir Dave Richards, an intrepid football explorer of Scott-like proportions, who gloriously decided to promote the need for a few pints of confidence when he washed up in liquor-shy Qatar back in March.

The diminutive but oil rich host nation of the 2022 World Cup finals is a spot where alcohol, in public at least, is about as welcome as your average Chelsea fan in Leeds. Richards did not see the need for such prohibition in the small Muslim state.

"In our country and in Germany, we have a culture," said an emboldened Richards, who also unintentionally stumbled into a water fountain during his magnificently outspoken mission to the desert.

“We call it, 'We would like to go for a pint', and that pint is a pint of beer. It is our culture as much as your culture [in Qatar] is not drinking. There has to be a happy medium."

Despite his apparent penchant for a tumbler or two of Bishops Finger, Richards would perhaps give two fingers to hotspots like the Alexandra Palace in London, a venue where the happy medium seems to be breached on a nightly basis during the three-week booze-a-thon that is the PDC World Darts Championship.

This Mecca to mindless elbow bending is all endorsed by live television. There is a darker side to what is farcically described as the best Christmas Party in town. It is also a reminder of this country’s depressing booze culture.

Some will say that darts has always had a drink problem, but the players dispensed with lager, vodka and fags on stage long ago as the need to be viewed as public role models and promote healthier living became glaringly obvious.

The days of the 1970s and 1980s when pint-laden men like Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson were lost in the thick fug of cigarette smoke almost seems like an era from folklore.

The gone but not forgotten Geordie commentator Sid Waddell, whose voice is already desperately missed at this year’s tournament, once highlighted big Cliff Lazarenko’s need for a refreshment during a match.

"Cliff is off and looking for something yellow in a tall glass — and I don't mean daffodils,” said the loquacious Sid. Let us not forget that Scotland’s Jocky Wilson died a two-time world champion, but is as recalled as much for his alcoholism after checking out earlier this year.

During the World Championship semi-final in 1984, Dave Whitcombe outlasted Wilson in an epic battle, but failed to track down his opponent for the handshake after sinking the winning double. An inebriated Jocky had fallen off the stage.

Apart from the staggering Aussie Tony Fleet struggling to hold his darts during an excruciating loss to Martin Adams at the BDO version of the World Championship in 2010 when he had one over the eight beforehand, such drunken antics are now reserved for the fans.

“Stand up if you love the darts,” is a paean to the half-pissed. Without sounding prudish, there is something sad about watching some of the booze hounds who turn up to watch darts dressed in various costumes. The aim is obviously to get spotted on television stewed and dishevelled.

Some of the fans turned up in toga garb last night, almost straight out of National Lampoon’s Animal House, but Cleopatra had left the building long before Simon Whitlock was overcoming Haruki Muramatsu in the first round. Whitlock was losing finalist to Phil Taylor in 2010, but who can be bothered watching darts when you are all fuzzy.

Some of the drunkards who attend need to show a bit more respect to the tungsten tossers. A bloke sporting a beard had to be removed from the crowd at a tournament in Minehead last week when hundreds of fans began chanting Jesus at him during a Taylor match. He was deemed to be a distraction to the players.

“It was distressing. I was emotionally distraught. The crowd were bullying me and picking on me,” said the fan, who looked more like Justin Lee Collins.

There is something not right somewhere when characters can embrace such conduct when the finest player to throw a dart and winner of 15 world titles is playing.

Watching darts sober on TV enables a viewer to gain an edge of tension that is missing when lubricated. The final between between Raymond van Barneveld and Taylor in 2007 that went down to the final leg was best enjoyed with a cup of tea.

Zara Phillips stuck her snout in the darts trough a year ago, but then it is trendy for the idle rich to find out what this is all about. The difference with her is she has other interests away from the bottle and can return to her horses.

It is nonsense to suggest that all is good in darts when it is condoning a health problem of epidemic proportions. We live in moments of hardship for many, times when there is an overwhelming temptation to turn to grog because it is an easy option.

England and Wales last year averaged one million alcohol-related violent crimes and over one million alcohol-induced hospital admissions. That is without considering the long-term mental issues, liver damage and rising obesity rates among other ills that support anti-social behaviour.

Where there is a lot of drink, there is not a lot of happiness. Getting tanked up does not equate to being full of fun. Darts may be benefiting from a boom in popularity, but it is also cashing in from a parish of punters who remain more interested in doubles than double tops.

Half the crowd at the darts do not know if it is New Year or New York. While world darts continues to rage, the Ally Pally crowd has sadly become a very visible monument to the greater British booze problem.

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The Light Emitting Diode celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. It's easy to forget LEDs have been around for so long, especially as they've become ubiquitous as cheap, energy-efficient sources of light in comparatively recent times.

Take those Christmas lights, for example. LEDs have almost completely replaced the tungsten bulbs we gazed at as children, and for good reason - they're up to 90 per cent more efficient, don't get dangerously hot on our tinder-flammable Christmas trees, don't need to be troublesomely filled with inert gas, and can last for up to 100,000 hours each.

The LED has become one of the most important electronic components in modern technology. The market for general lighting by LEDs is expected to be worth $19.5bn this year and reach $31.4bn by 2017.

General lighting accounts for just 35 per cent of the total LED market, though, with mobile devices - such as smart phones and tabs - accounting for 30 per cent.

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Introduction

Tungsten has high electrical and thermal conductivity, and low vapor pressure at high temperature. It has high meting point compared to all other metallic materials. It is also considered as a good element for high vacuum technology, furnace construction, glass seals, and dimensional stability. It has an ability to absorb radioactive radiation because it has high density. The following datasheet gives an overview of tungsten.

Physical Properties

The physical properties of tungsten are displayed in the following table.
Properties                Metric                      Imperial
Density                   19.27 g/cm³              0.70 lb/in³
Melting point            3410°C                    6170°F

Mechanical Properties
The mechanical properties of tungsten are outlined in the following table.
Properties                     Metric             Imperial
Tensile strength            1725 MPa       250 ksi
Elastic modulus            400 GPa         58000 ksi
Hardness                     300                 300

Fabrication and Heat Treatment

Forming
Before forming, tungsten should be preheated at 675°C (1247°F).

Applications
Tungsten is used in different kinds of furnace and lighting applications due to its high melting temperature. The thermal expansion coefficient value of tungsten is almost same as that of silicon, thus using the tungsten in brazed mounts for silicon diode chips.

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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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