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Just saw a video of a prince rupert's drop breaking a hydraulic press and wondered the same.

I was under the impression that the plates on those presses were usually hardened, hardened steel would never deform like that it would fracture so they might have made some choices there for show that wouldn’t have normally happened.

As I understand it, those are used so that the press itself doesn't get worn out, and come in various types.

Do you have a link to the video?

https://youtu.be/vZh_XSQ5WVU

Really fascinating. I knew you could smack them with a hammer, not that it would deform a steel press.

After adding titanium plates, it finally broke at 10 tons. Super impressive.

Those press tools appear to have been made from some something other than steel. (Maybe aluminum or zinc, given the cheese-like results with only ~10 tons.)

Here's the OG HPC crushing a Prince Rupert drop with a hydraulic press and steel tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCJwHrvutGk

At 3:20, the deformation of the tools is shown after they have put 29 tons onto a Prince Rupert drop: There's a good dent, but not like they were made from Mozzarella.

(Later in the video are more demonstrations, peaking at around 68 tons, that also do not turn the press tools into cheese.)

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