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The Boring Company starts trials with 'revolutionary' Tunnel Boring Machine 'Prufrock'
The Boring Company finally releases information about Prufrock. It is just a tweet with a photo of people in front of a TBM and a very short text 'Prufrock is alive'. Nevertheless, it is the first picture of the Prufrock.
Prufrock is supposed to be the first completely designed TBM of The Boring Company and supposed to revolutionize the TBM tunnelling by boring 10 to 15 times faster than the conventional TBMs.
With company's founder Elon Musk words:
“Godot, which is the name of the first machine, is a conventional tunnel boring machine… So going from Godot to Line-Storm, Line-Storm is a highly modified boring machine, but it’s essentially a hybrid between a conventional boring machine and Prufrock, which is the fully Boring Company-designed machine. So Prufrock, that will be quite a radical change. Prufrock will be about ten times, aspirationally 15 times faster than current boring machines. I think very likely ten times.”
The development of Prufrock has been done in pure secrecy and this is the first time something comes out since The Boring Company information session in May 2018 with Elon Musk and company director Steve Davis.
According to what was let out;
- Prufrock would be boring the ground and laying the walls of the tunnel to be fast (but how is this different from conventional double shield tunnel boring machines? OK maybe they will not use segments as walling and something they call `Boring Bricks`, but still? )
- Prufrock would be all-electric powered
- Prufrock would be battery powered (and use Tesla batteries).
- Prufrock would be 10 to 15 times faster than the conventional TBM
We don't know how much of this has been achieved in real development. Anyway, after 2 years, all we have is a picture of a TBM shield and the words 'Prufrock is alive'.
Finally some hope for some radical technological progress in mechanized tunneling.
If this guy succeeds in what he says he intends to do, it will be the most radical development in TBM tunneling since maybe 1970s (I am not saying 'since the 1950s' thanks to the Japanese engineers' contributions to tunnel boring machine technology)
Elon Musk may be just about to shake the way we make the Tunnel Boring Machines and TBM tunneling and I am telling you, those non-innovators that are now just happy with their fat profits, will all fall down from that shaken tree.
' thanks to the Japanese engineers' contributions to tunnel boring machine technology'?
Are you serious?
The last time I checked it was the USA a.k.a Robbins, who invented TBM and took it further than anyone else.
Indeed Robbins invented the TBM. And then stopped right there. What innovation worth mentioning did Robbins achieve since 60s last century? The sad fact is, I cannot think of any. And for the Japanese, they made tremendous innovations in slurry technology field and also in big diameter TBM technologies.
What I dont understand: As soon as an article or whatever has the phrase "Elon Musk" in it, people react with "well, I thought it is impossible, but now I will just believe" ... I mean, come on, switch your heads on! This is marketing-speech of silicon valley companies, which standard mode of communication is superlative ...
It is not that I would not want to see a "radical change", but from my understanding people just look at this machine and hope that they did the same as to space rockets: they made a machine better.
I am not a mechanical engineer, so I will not say what is possible or not, or where the common machine design still offers potential for improvement, but I dare to question the target "10 times as fast" anyway.
By experience of the industry, a TBM (how fast ever it is able to perform) never utilizes an advance rate of more than ... 30%? 40% would be great! All the downtimes come from the machine, maintenance, shift off, supply chain and everything else in this rather complex elongated supply chain, where every item has to fit like gearwheels. It is not the (potential) speed of the machine or its overall availability rate which hinders quicker progress in tunnel construction, but everything around this driving tunnel factory!
So not to say, that the machine is in no need of improvement whatsoever, but I'd argue that it is not the vital part ... a machine "10 times as quick" in an overall jobsite environment as of today will just run into standstill time 10 times quicker, where it has to wait ... for water, oil, segments, personnel, whatever ... there is PhD-Thesis' being written on TBM jobsite performance, so it seems to be rather complex an organisation task, and not something which is mainly a task of mechanical engineers to fix.
This prufrock thing pure vaporware. Elon Musk has no experience in mechanical engineering yet alone in tunnel boring machines. You may hire some experienced people and get them tweak this and that on a Lovat TBM. But inventing a tunnel boring machine 10 times faster than standard TBM? It is a different level.
Also because this whole thing seems off ... it is based on the idea of tunnel construction for individual mass transport (cars) and not public transport - this article puts it very good: https://blog.worldsensing.com/trend-radar/theboringcompany/ .
But regardless what exactly they use the technology for, again, the idea of only improving one wheel in the system and then expecting bigger overall output is not logical.
Yes, placing cars on small skates or wagons whatever you call them is undeniably odd and definitely no public transport. I can't see how there will not be a long queue of cars waiting for the boarding, unless they have some boarding mechanism equal to or faster than an average speed of a car in a city ride - 25 mph?
Nice article.
Yes it is true that whenever an article has "Elon Musk" in it, the guy gets the benefit of the doubt even for radical things like 10 times faster boring tunnel boring machine.
Then again, people line Elon Musk do not get that line of credit for nothing. They earn it. Elon Musk has definitely earned that credit. He might use or waste that credit with in future, nobody knows. Until know, he showed that he is a disrupter and that he delivers. If he did not come up with innovations in rocket technology, such as reusable rockets, Boeing and others would have no incentive to innovate, akin to TBM industry anno 2020. If now everybody is talking about the hyperloop technology, we owe it to Elon Musk. I am not sure if he invented the idea, but anyway he popularized it.
A 15 fold or even 10 fold speed increase is just insane. I also find that it is very unlikely. It would be incredible if anyone achieved just a 100% increase. But then again, it is just impossible to write this guy off.
With a 10 times faster TBM, projects would finish much faster, though not 10 times faster. I do not think construction companies would have any problem with extra profits.
Despite keeping an open mind, yet the more I think about it, the more Elon Musk's outings sound absurd.
I know the guy is a savvy entrepreneur and a sharp PR person. I know he innovated rockets, cars, payment systems...
Still, all he has done is incrementally innovating existing things. Don't take me wrong. There is nothing wrong with incremental innovation. Incremental innovation is the normal innovation which furthered the human beings.
I am saying; an improvement of 10-to-15 fold improvement over a real world TBM of Herrenknecht, Robbins, CREG is NOT incremental innovation. It is an EXPONENTIAL innovation.
Can you name me one innovation which was revolutionary? (No, religious miracles do not count!)
I'll tell you. None. N-o-n-e.
cover tunnel photo by: Matt Brown from London, England / CC BY
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It sounds too good to be true. A bit like science fiction. But then, Elon Musk is not someone to be taken lightly. He is a doer. I am very curious where this Prufrock project will lead to.
One of the common mistakes is expecting people to succeed again and again and in every single case. Everyone stumbles once in a while.