How else will they keep their swag up? Well, no. Rather, covering ploughshares with diamond-hard carbon would actually do a number of cool things for farmers. It’s even better on the environment.
Researchers at the German Fraunhofer Institute have been looking into how to reduce fuel costs for german ploughshares, and the solution seems to lie in DLC, or the diamond-like carbon used in high tech drills. By applying DLC to plough blades, 50 per cent of the energy spent on breaking into the soil is saved. By saving energy, you save fuel. And by saving fuel, you don’t harm the environment as much as you would doing a day’s labour. Meanwhile, the tools farmers use would be both easier to use and last longer. Which is even more money saved.
And then all that extra money could go into spinning rims for tractors. Or is that not tacky? [Fast Company]