Shuklaar Kyrdol
CEO of Breshig War Forge Consolidated
- Intent: To create a carbon nanotube fiber based synthetic muscle system for use in droids and personal armor systems.
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- Manufacturer: Breshig War Forge Consolidated
- Affiliation: Breshig War Forge Consolidated
- Model: 'Gar Agol' CNT Synthetic Muscle Fiber
- Modularity: Can be made into a variety of shapes and sizes for use as different 'muscle' groups.
- Production: Minor
- Material: Carbon nanotube fibres.
- None
- Strong: Artificial CNT muscle fibres can generate about 30 times the force per unit area of natural muscle.
- Resilient: The CNT fibres themselves are actually quite strong thanks to their strong bond and can take a noticeable degree of damage themselves before deteriorating.
- Rapid Expansion/Contraction: Human muscles can contract at a maximum rate of 10% per second unhindered by other any significant weight barring that of the body itself, while synthetic CNT muscle fibres can contract at a maximum rate of 40,000% per second unhindered.
- Temperature Extreme Resistance: The CNT fibres maintain their properties at temperatures ranging from 2500 C to -375 C.
- Light: The muscle fibres are extremely lightweight thanks to the low weight of the CNTs themselves.
- EMP/Ion: EMP/Ion weapons can cause the artificial muscle fibre bundles to spasm, which can cause damage to components or the wearer.
- Electricity: Strong sources of electricity would force the armor to contract rapidly, quite possibly causing damage to underlying systems or limbs/bones/organs.
- Acid: Testing has revealed that acids very quickly broke down the bonds between the carbon structures, causing them to cease to function.
- Not Quite Armor: Though fibres themselves were extremely strong, their relative lack of rigidity meant that they were unsuitable for armor.
- Controller: The muscles require a signals controller of some kind to control the amount of current passed through various fibre bundles to mimic movement or any other action.
Developed as a consequence of the research that went into the Stesr'gar project, 'Gar Algol' eventually replaced servos and hydraulic in the company's products, from droids to personal armor suits. A portion of the team working on the Stesr'gar project split off to further study the properties of the very same carbon structures that were used to make the armor lighter once it became clear that aforementioned project was in the home stretch. What the research yielded was that these same carbon structures could form strands made up of the very same carbon structures.
They ascertained that these strands were not only conductive, but contracted when subjected to electric current and expanded when the current dissipated. Convinced that something promising could come out of this, they petitioned to be able to look into it further. The matter was passed up the chain until it reached Shuklaar himself, who after sitting down with the team, reluctantly agreed to greenlight their research. The research found that these strands were in fact remarkably strong, with the only weak points being the joins between each carbon structure. The team attempted a number of measures to attempt to correct this, till one of the Verpine members of the team, ironically, suggested examining the muscles of most humanoid species to perhaps better understand how they might go about this.
Trial and error yielded a method that involved twisting the fibres together to mimic muscle fibre bundles in the muscles of many humanoid species. What they also found was that unlike human muscles which could contract at a maximum rate of 10% per second unhindered by other any significant weight barring that of the body itself, the synthetic CNT muscle fibres could contract at a maximum rate of 40,000% per second unhindered. Additionally, the artificial CNT muscle fibres can generate about 30 times the force per unit area of natural muscle. The fibres are extremely light, and require very little current to contract at the aforementioned rate. Perhaps their most impressive feature is displaying these properties at a blistering 2500 C and a positively frigid -375 C, though naturally other components are extremely unlikely to survive at those temperatures. In the case of armor integration, this is true as well, as no amount of temperature controls and insulation will protect the wearer from those temperatures.
What this did mean, however, was significantly increased reaction times, dexterity and strength for droids or for muscle suit underlays without stacking on the weight. Additionally, the fibres themselves were extremely strong, though their relative lack of rigidity meant that they were unsuitable for armor, even though their high temperature tolerance gave them a notable measure of resistance against energy weapons and even lightsabers. Testing also revealed that acids very quickly broke down the bonds between the carbon structures. Finally, the very obvious realization was that while EMP/Ion weapons could cause the muscle fibres to 'spasm', strong sources of electricity would force the armor to contract rapidly, quite possibly causing damage to underlying systems or limbs/bones/organs.
When it came to implementation of the muscle fibres into more practical projects, the team found that while with droids it was simplistic as the signals required to actuate the muscles for movement and other tasks could very easily be programmed into a droid brain as part of movement subroutines, attempting to integrate them into an undersuit for increasing natural strength, reaction times and dexterity was a considerably more complicated prospect. Seeing as the CNT muscle bundles themselves had no way to read operator movement, the team came to the conclusion that there were really only two solutions; a neural link that interpreted the movement signals through the user's nervous system or an advanced learning computer that tried to predict the user's movements.
Given the cybernetic enhancement package and several itinerant versions the company had produced for sale, their own employees as well as those of Strill Securities, the team saw the neural link as the best choice, as in this case it didn't rely on a computer that was 'reacting' to the user, and hence had less room for failure. However, given that not all of their customers would want to rely on a neural interface, the company also began work on an advanced computer controlled version.
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