The spontaneous crafting of hook-tools from bendable material to lift a basket out of a vertical tube in corvids has widely been used as one of the prime examples of animal tool innovation. However, it was recently suggested that the animals' solution was hardly innovative but strongly influenced by predispositions from habitual tool use and nest building. We tested Goffin's cockatoo, which is ...

The hardmetal cutting tools used in machining are submitted to extreme conditions in terms of temperature and mechanical loading. A better understanding of the failure of cutting tools and capability to predict tool life are key factors in the development of new tool materials with improved mechanical behaviour. Main failure mechanisms are wear, thermal–mechanical fatigue and brittle fracture. ...

'Betty' the New Caledonian crow astonished the world when she 'spontaneously' bent straight pieces of garden wire into hooked foraging tools. Recent field experiments have revealed that tool bending is part of the species' natural behavioural repertoire, providing important context for interpreting Betty's iconic wire-bending feat. More generally, this discovery provides a compelling illustrati...

A mechanical equilibrium equation of a vesicle membrane under a generalized elastic bending energy is obtained in this paper. Moreover, the derivation of this equilibrium equation bases on some shape optimization tools. This approach is new and more concise than the tensorial tools previously used for this problem.

In the sheet metal forming industry, rapid tools, especially those made of polymeric materials, are increasingly used for small to medium volume productions, compress times and costs tooling. The present work is aimed at evaluating performance 3D printed tools V-die air bending process. Samples polycarbonate polylactide were characterized through compression tests, using different printing stra...