"ScottW" wrote in message
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Robert Morein wrote:
"ScottW" wrote in message
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Robert Morein wrote:
"ScottW" wrote in message
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"Robert Morein" wrote in message
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"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
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"Robert Morein" wrote in message


From
http://www.scescape.net/~woods/elements/ruthenium.html

"The metal is one of the most effective hardeners for
platinum and palladium, and is alloyed with these metals
to make electrical contacts for severe wear resistance."

The extreme hardness of these contacts means that since
perfect flatness cannot be achieved in relay contacts,
such contact is limted to a discrete number of points.

Would anyone care to guess how many points of contact can
exist between two nonflat surfaces that are not soft
enough to conform?

Irrelevant to the relay contacts used in the ABX RM2
comparator, because those contacts are not solid ruthenium.
Instead, the ruthenium is a thin plated layer desposited
over softer copper contacts.

Since the question is irrelevant, there is no logical
purpose in answering it.

Besides, its rhetorical. That would make two good reasons
not to answer it.

It is very important, because the actual surface area that is in
physical
contact is extremely small. This makes the bulk conductivity of
ruthenium
important.

Quantify the contact area and demonstrate through specs that
ruthenium contacts have significantly greater resistance than
relays
of
comparable size contacts. I look forward to you providing more
than
just
idle speculation from your extremely poorly thought out and
fundamentally
flawed theories.

ScottW

Answer the question, Scott: Two hard and nonparallel surfaces can
have a
maximum of how many contact points?

Why are you changing the question, Bob?

Anyway, it still depends on their shape.....and we're not talking
diamond hard here so your inference that there is no conformance is
just hogwash.

Sander has given the correct answer. You simply didn't have the smarts
to
figure it out.

Show us how spheres fall outside the set of shapes you specified. Show
us how spheres can have 3 points of contact.

and finally... show us why your assumption of perfect hardness is
valid.

ScottW

This has been covered in discussion with other people in these threads.