Talk:Thermal lance

Use in Sci-Fi

 * Is it appropriate to say something a term is misused in science fiction? Cannot fiction writers appropriate or make up any term they want? 15:48, 6 February 2007, User:150.216.55.131
 * I tend to agree, I mean a science fiction writer would not be misusing the term "Thermal Lance" in a story if he made it into a Ray-Gun type weapon. In Sci-Fi it doesn't matter if there is already a real world object with that name, it still makes sense in the fictional universe created, you can call it whatever you want. --Hibernian 19:59, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * But it confuses real-world people reading science fiction, growing up thinking that a thermic lance is a sort of raygun. Anthony Appleyard 20:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * But who has EVER done that? I can't begin to imagine who would pick a name for his fictional projectile weapon that didn't remotely sound like a projectile. Maybe he'd have his characters wielding them as close-range weapons... can we get some examples? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.70.113 (talk) 18:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Btw, a thermite lance appears in William Gibson's novel Mona Lisa Overdrive, see ch.35, The Factory War. The device is attached to an Investigator, a mobile remote-controlled construction built by Slick Henry, one of the novel's main characters.98.30.29.58 (talk) 18:54, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Thermic Lances in the Steel Industry
In the steel industry, we often use simple 6 to 8 foot long iron pipes (attached to an oxygen valve) as thermic lances. But we also tend to use aluminum shot mixed into the material we are cutting in order to increase cutting ability of the lance. 15:48 6 February 2007, User:150.216.55.131
 * Wouldn't this mixture constitute thermite, contrary to what this article explicity says? —Ben FrantzDale 18:42, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
 * No. Thermite is aluminum powder and iron oxide. It is self-sustaining once ignited.--agr 04:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Advantages over Oxyacetylene

 * What are the advantages of using this over a plain acetylene torch? Speed?  Ability to bore using this tool?   Increased cutting depth over acetylene torches?  These questions seem logical to me since the thermal lance requires an acetylene torch for warmup and lightoff.  Why bother? --72.73.107.103 03:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Having gotten to see them in action (see photo), it's roughly the difference between a jig saw and a chain saw. --agr 04:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It's just produces more energy in the form of heat than a oxyacetylene torch. 15:48, 6 February 2007, User:150.216.55.131
 * Oxyacetylene is a boilermaker/welder's tool. It is used for cutting and shaping steel. It is a precise tool. It does not cut concrete. The molten concrete blows back and ruins the tips every time you try to cut off steel close to concrete.  A burning bar is a demolition and heavy industry tool. It is fast, crude and expensive to use, but it cuts concrete and any steel inside it like butter. I have used it for burning through up to 1M wide concrete beams. We made the lances out of 25mm dia. x 3M long electrical steel conduit packed tight with mild steel gas welding rods.  We lit it with the oxy and were through say a 600 concrete beam in about 30 or 40 secs using one lance and probably a full size bottle of oxy. We had about 6 oxy bottles on a manifold and used them very quickly.  billbeee 11:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Safe-Cracking
In Burn Notice, the lance was used to cut the hinges and dead bolt of a steel door, not a safe. Also if the lance does indeed burn at 8K then there would be little risk if the lance damaged the chemical weapon as the it would have incinerated the chemicals on contact rendering the weapon relatively harmless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.24.95.124 (talk) 00:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Although the article says it's a "popular misconception", there's a book by Wayne B. Yeager, "Techniques of Safecracking", ISBN 978-1559500524, which describes in detail how thermal lances are used in safecracking. In particular, the author says it is common to pour water inside the safe once a hole is made to prevent the contents from burning. 77.122.58.179 23:54, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

In "Mythbusters" season 4 episode 59, a thermal lance was used to cut a hole in the top of a large safe and an explosive was used to burst it open: "Drilling into a safe using thermal rods takes far longer than the myth states. Also, the heat from the thermal rods completely destroyed the items inside. Secondly, the safe was not watertight and had to be sealed from the inside in order to completely fill it with water."

The video evidence provided in the TV show "Mythbusters", while potentially edited, was quite compelling. Of course, Mr. Yeager's 88-page paperback from 1990 is still available at Amazon.com.

In the Netherlands a well known dutch safecracker named Aage Meinesz used a thermal lance to open several safes using a thermal lance in the early seventies. His biggest heist of 600.000 guilders while robbing a bank was widely publicized in the dutch media. His autobiography was actually called 'My nights with a thermal lance'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.75.199.123 (talk) 05:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

it should also be pointed out that the thermal lance(s) used by the mythbusters was tiny compared to those normally employed for cutting in some breaker yards, the largest thermal lance that i know of is just barely able to be carried by a human, and, in my opinion, could probably have cut that safe in half with only one lance...but there would be very little trace even left of the safe's contents —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.67.41 (talk) 23:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Deleting section Appearances in fiction

 * About deleting the section Thermal lance, see Talk:Raygun/Archive 1. Anthony Appleyard 06:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Some people want to know about fictional uses of real items, and about risks of confusion caused by misuses of their names to mean other items real or fictional. Often, "one man's cruft or trivia is another man's important relevant matter". E.g. I have no interest in football, but I do not go about deleting football pages. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:10, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that logic isn't very convincing. Everything needs to be verifiable and if this cannot be done in a reasonable timescale I will be removing it again.--John (talk) 10:40, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It contains an external link to a source. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:47, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Would you call that a reliable source for the information? --John (talk) 07:19, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The thing to be proved is: that a weapon called a "Thermic Lance" occurs in the videogame Fallout: New Vegas. Enquiry with one of the many people who play this game would prove it. It is also described in the Fallout (series)-related wiki page http://fallout.wikia.com/index.php?title=Thermic_lance ; see http://fallout.wikia.com/index.php?title=Thermic_lance&action=history for its edit history. This Google search will find plenty of references to it. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:35, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I play FNV, and yes it is a weapon in the game. It uses some type of heat and electricity but only when it comes in contact in something to generate the damage through the tip 108.88.69.52 (talk) 04:38, 25 July 2011 (UTC))))))
 * A user-generated site is not a reliable source. A Google search is not a reliable source. The opinion of an anonymous editor who plays a computer game is not a reliable source. Are there any reliable sources for this? I haven't seen any so far. --John (talk) 21:13, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The above refs seem to be adequate proof that a weapon called a "Thermic Lance" occurs in that videogame. Whether such a weapon would work in the real world, is not relevant here. What proof do you want? And, people getting confused by fiction is not trivial: e.g. I have a falconry magazine issue where a supposedly factual article said that a rural premises where hawks were kept was defended by lasers set on stun :: that bit of Star Trek technology got past the magazine's editor into published print, but if he had known anything about lasers, he would have seen thereby that the article was all or partly fiction. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:24, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Celsius
This is an international project. Please don't forget to add °C. °F is kind of a minority's measurement unit.^^ 91.39.112.174 (talk) 22:20, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Materials that can be cut
This article does not list materials that are suitable to be cut with a thermic lance and those that are not.

Eg could a thermic lance be used to cut hard stone to make a tunnel? Could it be used to cut a tunnel in clay? Or marl? FreeFlow99 (talk) 16:36, 30 May 2021 (UTC)