Quarter Crushing
Authors: Brian, Fred, Jimbo, & Tim
Lots of people have played with quarter shrinking and can crushing recreationally. The underlying physics is usually explained in conceptual and theoretical terms, but not often in great detail. The real-world application for this technology is called “magneforming” and finds use in radial crimping most often, but occasionally as an alternative to stamping and complicated forming operations. As an example, the drift tubes in the Atlas detector at the LHC were all sealed via magneforming. The pressures achievable are quite high, and not too hard to calculate. For those interested, here is a detailed writeup, including a small discussion on optimization. Link below.