Using EMP To Punch Holes In Steel 165
angrytuna writes "The Economist is running a story about a group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantages over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (0.2 vs. 1.4 seconds), and by metal presses, which can leave burrs that must be removed by hand."
an alternate past (Score:5, Funny)
The article focuses on how this is a more "peaceful use" for the EMP. I disagree: when the robot apocalypse finally arrives, and a rogue T800 drives after you in into a steel mill, it will be damn useful to have an EMP device used for shaping steel rings handy to stop the cybernetic killing machine. As an added benefit, an EMP would destroy the cpu, meaning no Cyberdyne Systems, and I get my 5 hours back wasted on T3 and Terminator Salvation!
The mechanical press was, like, so 1984.
Re:stop the cybernetic killing machine (Score:5, Funny)
He is our governor now, you insensitive clod!
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Longevity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Longevity? (Score:5, Informative)
The capacitors can probably take several million discharges before there's any "wear" on them however the coils must withstand some degree of stress repeatedly which is a concern over the long term due to metal fatigue.
Hard to see it being practical (Score:3, Insightful)
I won't say never, because people who say "That'll never be practical!" are inevitably made to look like idiots at some point. That said, it's hard to imagine this working well for punching applications.
This process seems to have some inherent disadvantages for punching holes. Compared to an ordinary turret punch, the tooling will be very expensive and will take a tremendous amount more power to operate. It is also not clear if EMP tools will be able to punch arbitrary shapes, or how the press would operate in an industrial setting without damaging its own working area or doing Something Unfortunate with the waste metal, or if it can operate at anything like the speed of a flywheel-driven punch. The may of course be certain applications where it will become valuable or even indispensable, but for general-purpose punching, I don't see it.
For forming applications it's a very interesting idea, though.
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They don't mention how this compares to high pressure water jets, which I would assume is both faster and cheaper than laser, and doesn't leave any burrs. I'm not an expert in sheet metal forming, so someone feel free to correct me, but while I'm sure EMP will have very specific uses in the future, hydro-cutting will remain a better option in 99% of situations for the forseeable future.
Metal presses (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Metal presses (Score:5, Funny)
I once had a girlfriend like that - and you guess correctly.
Article Has No Meat. (Score:5, Informative)
Hi. I'm a metalworking professional, with a heavy background in tool and die work.
>metal presses, which can leave burrs which must be removed
The burr side, if you've got sharp tooling, doesn't have much of a burr. Also, when you assemble the product, the burr side goes away from the user. Speaker grille material, for example, is always mounted on the finished speaker burr side in. If you've got a large burr punching holes in steel, then you have dull tooling and/or wrong punch-to-die clearance.
>.2 seconds per hole
Too slow. Much, much too slow. Call me when it can equal 600 strokes a minute on a conventional press.
>by hand
Someone's never heard of tumbling, flame deburring, electrochemical mass finishing, etc.
>This article is written as if there's no tooling involved and there's no die or stripper plate to back up the steel as it's distorted by the EMP. It goes on to say that it can do away with molds. LOL QUE?
Total misunderstanding by the journalist.
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BMO
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To follow up, a conversion error by the journalist:
Pressure of 3500 atmospheres.
That's not 3 small cars. That's 17.5 Volkswagen Golfs (2010).
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According to my source [caranddriver.com] a typical Volkswagen Golf 2010 Rabbit weighs 3100–3250 pounds or 1410-1480 kg (rounded) and since 1 atmosphere is very nearly 10N/cm^2 and a 1 kg mass exerts ~10N force we can conclude that 3500 atmospheres is like balancing ~2 and 1/2 Volkswagen Golf 2010 rabbits on a 1cm^2 area. So the journalist wasn't that far off from the truth this time.
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Yeah, you're right, I did a weird conversion with english measurements.
In a square inch it's 17.5 VW's
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BMO
Re:Article Has No Meat. (Score:5, Funny)
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>by hand
Someone's never heard of tumbling, flame deburring, electrochemical mass finishing, etc.
That's great if your part doesn't have a very high tolerance. If you're machining pieces for the aerospace industry, those methods will totally ruin the part.
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If you are doing parts for the aerospace industry, I'm betting you won't be doing 600 strokes/minute with dull tools, either.
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>implying there's no such thing as precision deburring.
http://www.burlyticsystems.com/ [burlyticsystems.com]
>implying that finishing ruins parts
Get out.
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BMO
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600 a minute is .1 seconds per hole, not so far from .2. Did you misread it as 2? Presumably a process without physical moving parts can be speeded up more easily as well.
Water jet? (Score:3, Interesting)
So how come no comparison in TFA with water jet? EMP doesn't sound like it can do intricate shapes, and they're only going through very thin steel. Why replace a proven inexpensive technology with a new inferior one?
Re:Water jet? (Score:4, Informative)
I run a water-jet at a university, but I prefer a laser cutter or plasma cutter for CNC work. The water-jet is a pain to keep running. High pressure air and water, tubes, orifices to replace, mixing tubes that wear out, water filters, etc. Maintenance nightmare. I prefer to just have to clean the optics once in a while on a laser cutter and I can tell you that the laser cutter we have cuts much sharper than our water-jet.
The advantage of the water-jet? Will cut 4" of ANYTHING for one thing, and it will cut the brittles like glass and ceramics and stone that the others will not. Also rubber - I cut a lot of rubber with it.
Cheers.
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Also rubber - I cut a lot of rubber with it.
I feel like there's a great joke in here that I can't quite put my finger on.
Possible propulsion? (Score:2)
Someone help me out here as I'm not a physicist, but if this machine produces enough physical force to punch a hole through steel, does it offer any possibility of being used as a propulsive force?
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What you are thinking of is called a railgun which works along the same principle only this time the metal projectile isn't tethered to anything.
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Not necessarily a rail gun, but specifically the fact that this can produce enough physical force to actually punch through the metal. what happens if you unhinged this 'punch' so that it wasn't anchored and ramped up the force at a slower pace?
I realize this specific implementation would need metal to interact with, but I have to wonder if they can and will eventually learn to interact with gravitational fields from objects like the earth itself.
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The field strength falls off considerably as you move away from the metal target which means that the force applied on the metal also dropps off rapidly. As for interacting with gravitational fields (I assume you mean manipulating them) with our current physics knowledge, manipulation of gravitational fields isn't possible to ny degree that is really useful. You can however, if you create a strong enough magnetic field, repel agaisnt the Earth's magnetic field (100+ teslas) however this is a very strong f
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its called a monorail
And there's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail!
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the comparison to a railgun is probably more correct then first thought of.
when i think about it, this EM-punch is basically just a railgun without the ammo. Or rather, the ammo is outside the "gun".
basically, one is building up a EM pulse so fast and so focused that one push parts of the metal out of the way faster then the surrounding metal can adapt, and it tears.
if the setup is designed correctly, the same system can potentially bend and punch just by adjusting focus and strength. A quick brainstorm sug
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Now, if you had the large power source, the supercapacitors, the massive coils, and the supply of steel out in space, th
And only requires one small fusion reactor! (Score:2)
Is the laser comparison fair? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to ask the question, if, the EMP can punch so much faster than the laser, couldn't the guy that makes the laser just make one that is more powerful, and therefor, cuts faster? It seems to me that this comparison in the article is more of a selling pitch than a legitimate comparison of EMP vs the laser for metal working.
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No. The problem with laser cutting is that when the laser vaporizes material off of the target, the vaporized material obstructs the beam to a degree which fundamentally limits the rate at which the laser can cut. Another concern is that lasers aren't the most efficient things at converting power into the coherent laser light necessary to cut through metal. It may be more efficnet from an energy standpoint to use the EMP punch rather than the laser.
Magnetic forming (Score:3, Informative)
This, as the article points out, is basically a beefed up version of magnetic forming. Magnetic forming has been around for decades. It's useful mostly for compressing cylindrical objects, so it's used on couplings, tube joints, and similar round objects I've seen it used in making hydraulic spool valves. It's a way to apply a completely symmetric radial squeezing force, which is hard to do at high precision with stamping dies or presses. Here are some examples of parts formed by magnetic forming. [magneform.com]
But for punching holes, there's no obvious advantage to magnetic forming.
Bye bye ID cards and RFID passports (Score:2)
"Your passport doesn't work, sir"
"Oh sorry, I work in a metal factory. I guess the passport ought to have had shielding"
Oh yes - probably deniability..
No video in the article (Score:2)
Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory? (Score:4, Informative)
Luckily for us, humans aren't terribly good conductors and thus would be essentially unharmed by an EMP.
Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nonsense. The human body has an average resistance of 300-1000 ohms. Not great, but far weaker than modern electrical insulation.
Evidence has been shown that some frequencies in the EM spectrum indeed do cause damage to DNA and in some cases that damage is propagated to future divisions of that cell, meaning the damage is permanent.
From an industrial point of view, this is very interesting. Laser cutter machines are expensive to purchase, but upkeep isn't high and they are very versatile. A machine like this doesn't seem to have the versatility of a laser and might even consume more power. Punches are very fast but manual deburring is expensive.
I noticed in the article they said this works based on magnetic repulsion, and also that it works on stainless steels. I'm curious if this works on the largely non-magnetic 300 series SS.
Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory? (Score:5, Informative)
The magnitude of the induced current depends largely on the inverse of the resistance for which steel is magnitudes lower than human flesh. That means that the field would need to be truly colossal to do the same thing to a human being that this punch is doing to the steel.
ionizing EM radiation certainly. Terahertz can also create bubbles in the DNA helix which can impair proper cell division but there is *zero* evidence that the fields involved in the EMP press do any of this.
The punch works because it induces a current in the metal which creates a magnetic field to oppose the one that induced the current in the first place. It does not depend on the magnetic properties of the metal. This means that roughly anything that is highly conductive like Aluminum, 303 stainless, copper etc. could be punched with the device. Largely non-conductive materials like humans can not be punched with the EMP punch.
Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory? (Score:5, Funny)
humans can not be punched with the EMP punch at present energy levels.
There, weaponized that for you.
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It's easier just to build a rail gun and be done with it. Why build a device that is capable of several thousand tesla field strength just to weaponize the EMP punch when a rail gun could punch through a tank with similar specs?
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I never claimed it would be efficient, or even tactically advantageous. Just that a human could be hurt by EMP, provided enough energy. Humans are a not perfect resistors.
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Why build such a device? .. maybe because punching holes in humans is a lot more awesome than any railgun. Unless it's a planet-shooting railgun. Hmm.
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humans can not be punched with the EMP punch at present energy levels.
There, weaponized that for you.
Speaking of weapons, the tool sounds like it should appear in the beam-weapons list for a MechWarrior 4/Mercs add-on pack under "lostech weapons". Maybe another hardpoint "can-opener" weapon choice to compliment the short-ranged-but-powerful "Assault Laser" (IIRC).
An EMP device that would cut through metals would not do much to a human. It's mainly a matter of energy absorption. For a human-killer, it loses
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Who's worried about holes in humans? (Score:2)
I don't think holes being punched in human flesh are the concern.
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While I agree with your general view,
but there is *zero* evidence that the fields involved in the EMP press do any of this.
You know that this is a logic fallacy do you? :) It only puts you in the same bag of crazy people. Whether you’re crazy one way or the other really doesn’t matter. ;)
Zero evidence does not equal zero effect. It can. It can not. You just don’t know. That is what “zero evidence means”. It is no argument for either side.
So please don’t employ the techniques of the very loonies you want to counter with your comment.
Another good example is
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Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory? (Score:4, Funny)
You're the sort of wet blanket who during the space battle scenes of Star Wars leans over and whispers, "There's no sound in space," aren't you?
Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Contrary to the thoughts of George Lucas, no sound in space is much more dramatic.
Stanley Kubrick understood this with 2001.
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BMO
Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Contrary to the thoughts of Stanley Kubrick, no plot in space is much more boring.
George Lucas understood this in the 70's but then forgot it in the 90's.
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In the book, the action takes place near saturn, and the moon Japetus. The film stops at the Jovian system and Europa.
Reading the book after seeing the film is just as confusing as without reading the book..
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That really depends on what the director wants to achieve. Silence in space can be more dramatic if you're looking for suspense, sure.
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Especially if you can stick them all in the airlock at once and then toss them out.
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Contrary to the thoughts of George Lucas, no sound in space is much more dramatic.
Watch the trench run in A New Hope muted.
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Right, just turning sound off in space doesn't automatically make it more dramatic. We agree.
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When I was a small boy, I had a friend who lived on a farm. This lad tried it and relayed to me that it's just as bad as it sounds. (Also, in my observation, urine streams do not tend to break apart, and urine also is VERY salty.)
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(...and urine also is VERY salty.)
uhh, thanks for sharing.
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Hey, this is supposed to be a haven for geeks. How can you claim to be a geek or scientist if you've never tasted urine? It is mostly sterile, after all...
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Doctors tasted urine for ages until modern labs were invented.
http://www.diabetesinsipidus.org/4di_di_vs_dm.htm [diabetesinsipidus.org]
"Diabetes mellitus means, literally, honey-sweet urine (back when doctors would sometimes actually taste people's urine to make a diagnosis). Diabetes insipidus means bland or insipid urine."
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Re:What if EMP leaks out of the factory? (Score:4, Interesting)
"urine streams do not tend to break apart"
Interestingly enough, I have done the appropriate experiment to really determine whether that is true. I was in a bathroom where a strobe light was running (at a science-themed party, no less), and by tuning its frequency, I could get a good view of the nature of my urine stream. Initially it is continuous, but it breaks up into small droplets fairly quickly--perhaps after a foot or so. With the strobe set correctly, the droplets appear almost stationary.
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About the not breaking apart: Try that on the south pole! ^^
*pling* *plingpling* *pling*
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In 99.9% of the cases. However there are exceptions to everything Mythbusters do. There are statistical exceptions to a few of their experiments. Trust me.
When dealing with an electric fence it's best to go and grab it with both hands than tip toe up to it and try and touch it lightly. However I sort of like the feeling of the pulse traveling across my body.
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uhhh....
You can get electrocuted by peeing on an electrified fence: confirmed
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Except if you read through the link you provided, it says it does work for an electric fence, but not for the third rail of a subway:
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Third rails are about 750V with lots of amps but animal fences are like 10KV with almost no current. The third rail is a lot more dangerous but the urine path is high resistance.
As someone said, its volts that jolts but mills (as in mA) that kills!
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Uhm, to us, all of biology is odd. (Score:2)
So, no, the female human sex organ is no more of a biological oddity than the male human sex organ. Very much the usual thing in the biological universe.
It's only our ideals that have issues with the supposed oddities of the biological world.
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Wear a tinfoil hat of course. It's not like this EMP can punch holes through metal or anything.
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And how to protect the workers' health from the bombardments of the EMPs?
I'd worry less about the worker's exposition to EMPs than about their loss of hearing from the noise of the holes being punched by this gizmo when the mostly silent lasers are replaced by those things that are likely to be pretty noisy.
How to protect the workers? (Score:2)
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I would be more concerned about the steel support structure of the building.
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No. Human flesh is not terribly conductive and thus would not experience anywhere near the induced field that a conductor like steel would. The only exceptions would be if you had metal in you like a pacemaker.
Re:Weapon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans, being gooey sacks of largely salt-water, are slightly conductive and they do do some electrical signalling internally; so a very strong magnetic field could well have an effect(TMS [wikipedia.org] exploits this fact to noninvasively alter the function of brain tissue). A very strong magnetic pulse to the brain could have odd effects, a very strong pulse to the heart might be an issue, and a really strong pulse just about anywhere might be enough to cause electrical flailing or burns.
That said, though, the weapon potential would be absurdly poor. Magnetic field strength falls off quite quickly with distance, so you would need some truly heroic equipment to have any effect on somebody more than a few centimetres away. You'd be much better off simply discharging the capacitor bank through the victim rather than the coil. Or just hitting them with a wrench.
All the alternatives to good old-fashioned chemical propellants and sharp objects face serious challenges on the road to practicality; but strong magnetic fields aren't even in the same league.
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The upper limit on a .45ACP is 21,000psi or 1,400ATM.
The "EMP press" generates 3,500ATM.
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BMO
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(TFA gives no real sense of how much power is involved in their setup, so it is hard to say how much accelerating it could be made to do; but magnetic accelerators in general are capable of impressive velocities. Though, much to the dismay of science-fiction fans everywhere, they require vast amounts of electricity, so handheld versions of any practical use are awaiting the invention of some treknobabble power source.)
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Funnily enough someone came out with this little toy [hackedgadgets.com]. Not exactly a killing machine but not bad. There are several [hacknmod.com] others [coilgun.ru] too.
Portable Railguns are more difficult due to the need for sustained power, but it is fairly trivial to make a charging circuit and use capacitors to provide the field. So, why doesn't someone take this and up its power with a backpack or something into a real killing machines - well something that currently a small explosive charge to accelerate a projectile can do much better.
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You've already been advised not to kiss one, so you should be safe from whatever it does to your metal dental fillings.
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How about disabling their vehicle, or punching a hole in their tank to facilitate an ambush or use of other weapons?
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I think the land mine, man-portable anti-armor weapons, and IEDs in all their forms will probably fill that gap more economically for the foreseeable future.
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Re:Weapon? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Weapon? (Score:4, Informative)
The device works because it induces a current in the conductor (steel in this case) which creates a magnetic field which opposes the field that caused the induction in the first place. This is why you could also punch through non-ferrous metals like Aluminum with the EMP "press." The reason it wouldn't punch a hole through a human is entirely due to the fact that we are poor conductors of electricity which means that it is essentially impossible to induce an electric field strong enough to allow the device to punch a hole.
Re:Weapon? (Score:4, Funny)
Humans are not usually very magnetic.
Are you sure? There are some humans that I have found to be highly repulsive...
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Go back to gmail DOT com.
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If the magnetic fields in MRIs were rapidly pulsed or rotated your brain would share the probably unplesant experience of what induction coils suffer daily. That is, abnormal currents would be generated along the nerve fibers(which just happens to be conductors).
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A rail-gun is named such because it utilizes two rails to send current through the projectile its self which induces a current that creates a magnetic field that opposes (repels) the one that created it and thus accelerates the conductive projectile along the conductive rails. The design requires that the rails be conductive.
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A coil gun, by contrast, does not. The term rail/coil is often exchanged, even though they are completely different ways to do the same thing - electrically accelerate a projectile.
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You might hurt the metal wall, but if the target is itself not metal, it will be quite unharmed.
If you can manage to get a chunk of that metal wall to hit a target on the other side, they may not be quite so unharmed. Many antitank weapons, for example, are designed to cause the interior surface of the tank's armor to spall, such that the resulting flying pieces of the tank's own armor shred the equipment and people inside the tank. It's even necessary to fully penetrate the armor in order to induce spalling (i.e., with HESH ammunition [wikipedia.org]).
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