Turns out you can reinvent the wheel

Sometime around 3,500 BC, man invented the wheel. It wasn’t very advanced and wasn’t used for transportation, either, but as a potter’s wheel. A few centuries later the ancient Greeks, who were likely sick of walking everywhere, put the wheel to use on chariots and the transportation industry was invented.

These early wheels were simple, curved pieces of solid wood. Later a metal hoop would be added around the edge of the wheel and the first wheel/tire combination was formed.

Fast-forward a few millennia and wheels are no longer made of wood, but of steel, alloys, and aluminum. The metal banding evolved too when in 1839 Charles Goodyear discovered the vulcanization process and heated the rubber with sulfur, which makes it pliable yet firm – a perfect material for tires.

While this setup is perfect for asphalt, gravel, and dirt, it’s not so good for wheeling around on places like the moon or Mars.

NASA can’t afford to blow out a tire on a multibillion-dollar extraplanetary rover, so its engineers came up with something new.

These new wheels use a metal spring tire made from a “shape memory” nickel-titanium alloy. This shape memory technology occurs at the atomic level and ensures that as the tire is stressed and deforms, it can still snap back to its original shape. It also can cycle through the deformation/reformation process essentially forever, without concern for a failure.

If only I could get them for my Jeep.

I would be remiss in this space if I didn’t take the time to talk about the recent death of longtime Canadian Metalworking team member Steve Devonport. Anyone who has heard the name of this magazine over the last 25 years knows, and likely has a fond memory or two of, Steve.

Steve recently lost his battle with cancer, but the relationships he forged while interacting with members of the metalworking community will be long remembered.

Steve understood what many of us have forgotten: It’s the relationships you build along the way that matter. We can no longer build giant tributes to ourselves like Roman emperor Constantine I did when he built a triumphal arch celebrating his victory over Maxentius at the battle of Milvian Bridge in Rome.

For us plebs, we leave our marks on the lives we’ve touched by the memories we leave behind. Steve left us many memories.