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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Modesto, California, United States – Titanium-Jewelry.com, a leading online retailer of men’s wedding bands, tungsten rings, titanium rings and unique contemporary jewelry designs for men and women, has now announced the addition of new rings, camouflage wedding bands. The rings are made of either titanium or tungsten as the base material.  The surface of the each ring has an artistically unique camouflage design, then an industrial epoxy coating is applied creating a hardened acrylic enamel.
 
Scott Mackey, COO of Titanium-Jewelry, says “Camo Rings are becoming very popular with younger men who tend to be outdoorsy, hunter types.  Each ring has a unique pattern and they are priced in everyone’s budget.”
 
An outdoorsman with an adventurous spirit and an appreciation for nature would be the ideal candidate to wear one of the camo rings from this line. The classic look of titanium wedding bands joined with the manly look of camouflage is a winning combination.
 
In business for more than 20 years, Titanium-Jewelry.com has a reputation for carrying beautiful, award winning wedding bands and jewelry that is perfect for men and women looking for both contemporary and classic design. Titanium-Jewelry.com specializes in men’s titanium rings, tungsten rings and cobalt rings combined with the precious metals and diamonds.

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Photonic crystals of tungsten emit visible light but without the same wasteful emission of infrared, say researchers aiming to reinvent the light bulb.
 
Photonic crystals are nanoscopic structures designed to channel light of specific wavelengths while blocking other wavelengths.
 
This ability to control and filter light with great efficiency makes them hugely useful for applications such as increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic cells by absorbing light at certain optimal wavelengths.
 
Today, Sergei Belousov and buddies at the Kintech Lab in Moscow and a number of friends at the GE Global Research Center in New York state,  say they have another application for photonics crystals. They’ve worked out how photonic crystals can dramatically improve the light emitting efficiency of tungsten in the hope of reinventing the light bulb.
 
Tungsten bulbs have had a bad press, to say the least. Tungsten has a high melting point (3695 K) and so can be heated until it glows without melting. The problem is that only 5 per cent of the light it emits is visible, the rest being infrared, which simply goes to waste.   With an efficiency of only 5 per cent, tungsten bulbs have rapidly fallen out of favour.
 
The question Belousov and co set out to answer is whether they can engineer the nanostructure of tungsten to create a photonic crystal that emits visible light while suppressing the emission of infrared light.

They theoretically studied the properties of several structures, such as nanoscopic tungsten log piles and spheres embedded in another medium. While tungsten log piles make little difference, tungsten spheres just a fraction of a micrometre in radius do just the job, emitting light mainly in the visible region of the spectrum.

Belousov and co then tested their idea by making a tungsten photonic crystal of the required design and measuring the amount of light it emits at different frequencies. They say the new structure emits far less infrared light and has an efficiency of 15 per cent, significantly higher than the bulk material.
 
That’s a significant improvement and improvements on this will surely be possible. But whether it will be enough to trigger a tungsten revolution in light bulbs is open to question. The current generation of compact fluorescent bulbs can match the light output of a 100 Watt tungsten bulb using less than 30 Watts and LED lights can do it using less than 20 Watts.
 
If Belousov and co want to put tungsten back into light bulbs, they’ll have to beat some stiff opposition first.

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Extensive training for onsite facility personnel is one of the key strategies for limiting ignition sources at oil and gas sites. A Houston-based company is trying to build on this approach by making the tools site personnel use safer.

"These tools could have prevented most events where a grinder or torch was the source of ignition for an explosion," said Hector Maggi, vice president of marketing and sales with TFT-Pneumatic, LLC, which sells "sparkless" power tools to customers in the oil and gas and other industries.

Maggi said the tools use grinding disks, cutting disks and rotating files made from a proprietary alloy containing 95 percent tungsten carbide. Although  tungsten carbide typically produces sparks when it grinds, cuts or files another metal, TFT-Pneumatic maintains that its blend of tungsten carbide and other components does not.

"This alloy is as unique as can be and holds one of the biggest secrets of our technology," Maggi said. "As of today, no other company in the world has been able to come up with something similar."

Maggi is keeping the non- tungsten carbide composition of the alloy a secret, but he did divulge that his company's products differ from more traditional tools in terms of speed and shape. On the first count, he explained that TFT's grinders and cutting tools rotate at speeds of 800 to 3,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) rather than the more conventional 7,000 to 30,000 rpm.

"The principle is very simple," Maggi said. "Our tools simulate the work of a milling machine rather than a grinder."

In addition to rotating more slowly, the Houston-based company's tools apply cutting disks, grinding disks and rotating files that are shaped in a manner to generate less heat metal-on-metal.

"By minimizing friction we are able to minimize heat and thus sparks, therefore eliminating completely the risk of explosion," said Maggi. He noted that sparkless tools are well-suited for applications throughout the oil and gas value chain, particularly in areas classified as Hazardous/Explosive (Class 1 Divisions 1 and 2).

"The applications are so vast that a very large percentage of grinding and/or cutting can be achieved by our tools," Maggi said.

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Introduction
Super alloys are metallic alloys that function at high temperature environment where high surface stability and deformation resistance are mainly required. Three major classifications of super alloys include iron-base, nickel-base and cobalt-base alloys. Based on its application and composition, nickel-base and cobalt-base super alloys may be cast or wrought. The iron-base super alloys are generally wrought alloys having stainless steel technology. Super alloys are commonly forged, rolled to sheet or produced in various shapes. However, highly alloyed compositions are produced as castings. These alloys contain different elements in various combinations in order to achieve the desired result.
 
The following section provides detailed description of super alloy IN-102™, which is a nickel super alloy with high strength and ductility.
 
Chemical Composition
The following table shows the chemical composition of super alloy IN-102™.
Element                Content (%)
Chromium, Cr           15
Iron, Fe                     7
Molybdenum, Mo       3
Niobium, Nb              3
Tungsten, W             3
Titanium, Ti             0.5
Aluminum, Al          0.5
Carbon, C               0.06
Nickel, Ni             Balance
 
Physical Properties
 
The physical properties of super alloy IN-102™ are given in the following table.
Properties          Metric           Imperial
Density             8.5 g/cm³       0.309 lb/in³
Melting point     1371°C           2500°F

Fabrication and Heat Treatment
 
Machinability
Super alloy IN-102™ can be machined using conventional techniques employed for iron based alloys. High speed operations like milling, grinding or turning can be performed using water-base coolants. Heavy lubricants are recommended for operations such as boring, broaching, tapping or drilling.
 
Forming
Super alloy IN-102™ can be formed by conventional means. For cold forming this alloy, heavy-duty lubricants can be used.
 
Welding
Welding of super alloy IN-102™ is performed through commonly used welding techniques such as gas tungsten arc welding, shielded metal-arc welding, metal-arc welding and submerged-arc welding. However, an alloy filler metal that suits this alloy need to be used.
 
Cold Working
Super alloy IN-102™ can be cold worked using standard tooling methods. As plain carbon steels has an ability to produce galling, they are not preferred for forming this alloy. Galling can be minimized with the help of soft die materials.
 
Annealing
Super alloy IN-102™ can be annealed at 982°C (1800°F) followed by rapid cooling of air.
 
Hardening
Super alloy IN-102™ can be hardened by cold working.
 
Applications
The following are the major applications of super alloy IN-102™:
 
    Industrial furnaces
    Gas turbine hot section components

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