Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

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False Prophet
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Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

Last night, I was waching some old Gundam footages when this question pop up in my mind: Did the Dom’s Saber, work that well against GM and such? There were footages of Doms slashing and stabbing open GM with their heat sabers. In my mind, it was kind of a strech, and down bellow is my line of thought.

(Please note that I only have rudimentary reading on arms and armours, mostly concerning medieval warfare.)

Now, as we all know, the shape and size of weapons is directly connected to the type of armour that is prevalent of that era. History from Antiquity to the Renaissance era tells us that much. With Earth Federation MS in OYW, they build an inner frame first and then cover it with Titanium Alloy plates. So how strong is this material. I do know that it is not penetrated at the first shot by 120mm and 90mm round (the Zaku's machinegun). That is an impressive strength in any case. A knight in full-body plate armour wouldn’t be a bad equivalent to a GM with ….

Now, with that said, there would be three methods of taking down an enemy covering him from head-to-toe with armour: Concussion (club, morning star, etc. We won’t be talking about this), penetration, either through the armour or under (rapier and basket-hilted sword were made with this in mind), or by simply crushing the armour with enough force.

From what we have seen in the show, Dom’s Heat Saber seem to work by the third principle, that is, crushing the armor. And that is where the viewers begin to see the implausible:

You see, heat weapon heats the metal to the point it is soft enough to cut through the metal. But in the animation series, manga or novel, what we have seen is that these weapons can make contact with the enemy’s armour for a very short period of time (less than two seconds) before they melt down the metal and cut through. Can that little time allow enough heat to transfer from the weapon to the armour?

Secondly, until now we do not really know what these weapons are made off, but I will tell you with confidence that heat can really wreak havoc to a weapon. The molecular structure of the metal is rearranged, and thus its properties changed. That is why we have the tempering process. Now, we know that these weapons are heated to a very high temperature – they glow – and one must think of the wearing, and ultimately deforming of the weapon when it is heated very hot and then bashed against other hard things repeatedly.

And thirdly, the shape. As in the show, it is depicted as a hack-and-stab weapon, which its shape is very much badly designed for this role. The handle is too short and out-of-propotion with the rest of the sword; the blade is too slender, too long, too straight, and without a visible cutting edge or sharp tip. And the worst thing is the blade seems to has not the enough weight. Please remember that this is not beam saber – with heat saber and traditional bladed weapons, the weight of the weapon is critical when it comes to cutting on metal.

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This is not to say heat weapon are inheritancly bad against MS. I can think of the Elfreet’s machete doing quite good, and so does the Zaku’s axe (although with that long edge and slim profile it is actually more similar to historical throwing axe than a main weapon). It is just that the Dom’s heat saber is badly designed.

So, what do you think?
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MythSearcher
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Re: Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

Some retcon in later settings(i.e. Gundam Officials) said that those heat weapons heat up to tens of thousands of degrees and plasmarize the surrounding air(which in turn is also the explanation of it being able to block an incoming beam sabre's with the EM Field generated.
It also went into detail about the Heat sabre, with its narrow design, has less number of usage and wears down faster.
I don't recall the exact numbers, but even the heat hawks only have a single digit of usage times and the heat sabre is about half of it.

My take is that the animators probably didn't have in mind whether the weapon is beam or not, with the Star Wars lightsaber being so prominent in those days, animators seemed to just assume all of those are beam weapons(including the MS-07B Gouf's Heat sword) and thus the anime gave a strange depiction. Since the settings made clear that RX-78 Gundam the first MS with beam weapons, thus all the other reindeers cannot have beam weapons before it, and thus somehow seemed strange in the anime.(especially the heat sword of Gouf)
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Re: Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

One notable scene to consider as well is late in episode 1 of 0083 when a Dom Tropen uses its heat saber to cut through the midsection of a captured Zaku II F2 with relative ease. The weapon bends as it cuts through the Zaku, then straightens back out after cutting through.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

I need to check some sources for a more detailed answer, but off the top of my head there are some circumstances to be considered:

-The Dom was designed and first deployed before Zeon became aware of the EF's MS.

-While the Gouf was designed as a melee oriented for anti-MS (for use against hypothetical EF MS), the Dom seems to have been designed for overcoming the Zaku's shortcomings against non-MS opponents, specially warships, the later which is best observed in the Dom's heavier armor and standard issue 360mm Giant bazooka.

-I think I read somewhere that the Dom's weapon relies on greater heating capabilities than other heat weapons, which is why it doesn't need an edge. The fact that it is often displayed as yellow while turned off and blue while turned on doesn't make me think that such depiction do was meant to show a different degree of its heating capabilities when compared to other similar weapons.

-Don't recall if the same or a different source claimed that the heat saber excels at puncture/piercing attacks rather than slashing.

As a side note, Mythsearcher pointed out on another thread that there do is a somewhat cannon explanation for Ramba Ral's "beam saber": it's actually an experimental heat saber that uses memory metal. However it supposedly has fewer uses than a standard beam saber.

Anyway, IIRC there's also the catch that beam sabers (at least early OYW models) supposedly have really short operational times, so they do end up being more or less even with heat weapons which have a limited number of uses.

Finally, recent years we have seen some Dom type units equipped with other more unique melee weapons, ranging from the YMS-09J with a heat halberd, Dozle's MS-09R with a custom giant heat axe and even a a MS-09R2 equipped with a giant anti-ship sword (Missing Link). And of course we have also seen some Dom types borrowing the weapons from Zaku's, as in the recent case of Gundam Thunderbolt, or even older instances such as the MS-09G & MS-09H using a MS-06D's heat tomahawk.
False Prophet
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Re: Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

MythSearcher wrote:Some retcon in later settings(i.e. Gundam Officials) said that those heat weapons heat up to tens of thousands of degrees and plasmarize the surrounding air(which in turn is also the explanation of it being able to block an incoming beam sabre's with the EM Field generated.
It also went into detail about the Heat sabre, with its narrow design, has less number of usage and wears down faster.
I don't recall the exact numbers, but even the heat hawks only have a single digit of usage times and the heat sabre is about half of it.

My take is that the animators probably didn't have in mind whether the weapon is beam or not, with the Star Wars lightsaber being so prominent in those days, animators seemed to just assume all of those are beam weapons(including the MS-07B Gouf's Heat sword) and thus the anime gave a strange depiction. Since the settings made clear that RX-78 Gundam the first MS with beam weapons, thus all the other reindeers cannot have beam weapons before it, and thus somehow seemed strange in the anime.(especially the heat sword of Gouf)
Thank you! That does clear something for me.

And while we are at it, if the Heat Saber is hot enough to plasmarize the surrounding air, it gives me another reason to concern. You see, if you are a shooter who is used to mounting an optic/telescope on you gun, firing a gun to the point it is extremely hot will surely disrupt your optic/telescope, even if the smoke is not present. It is because of the heated air has many of its light conducting properties changed. The same thing happen if you look through a pair of glasses on a plasma cutter.

Now, for something that is several time hotter than the melting point of common metal, I sure that it will make the optical instrument on the Dom work less well, if not damaged.
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Re: Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

Heat weapons are the sort that are usually referred to as vibroblades in other SF settings. It's an old idea, with Harry Harrison equipping space infantry with them in his story "No War, or Battle's Sound" some years before Gundam. The vibrations sent through the blade produce a superior cutting edge. Sure there is a limited cutting time, but maybe only one cut is needed, right? ;) The cutting effect isn't really changed, in terms of the basic physics. The tech has just given the heat weapon a real chance to swiftly hew through thick and/or hardened materials. A heat weapon may also partially obviate the need for solid footing to deliver a cut with authority. The Zakus swung their heat hawks in space battles before using them on Earth. The Dom and Rick Dom followed along the same design track with their long heat sabers.

Wingnut: The slicing through of the EFF Zaku II by the Remnant's Dom Tropen in 0083 #1 was an excellent depiction of the forces at work on the saber as it completed that magnificent cut. IN one swift sequence we see the heat edge catch and bite, get pulled through by the Dom pilot's skilled cut, with the acceleration lending its own power to expand the length and penetration of the blow and make it fatal innstead of disabling.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

Zeonista wrote:Heat weapons are the sort that are usually referred to as vibroblades in other SF settings. It's an old idea, with Harry Harrison equipping space infantry with them in his story "No War, or Battle's Sound" some years before Gundam. The vibrations sent through the blade produce a superior cutting edge. Sure there is a limited cutting time, but maybe only one cut is needed, right? ;) The cutting effect isn't really changed, in terms of the basic physics. The tech has just given the heat weapon a real chance to swiftly hew through thick and/or hardened materials. A heat weapon may also partially obviate the need for solid footing to deliver a cut with authority. The Zakus swung their heat hawks in space battles before using them on Earth. The Dom and Rick Dom followed along the same design track with their long heat sabers.

Wingnut: The slicing through of the EFF Zaku II by the Remnant's Dom Tropen in 0083 #1 was an excellent depiction of the forces at work on the saber as it completed that magnificent cut. IN one swift sequence we see the heat edge catch and bite, get pulled through by the Dom pilot's skilled cut, with the acceleration lending its own power to expand the length and penetration of the blow and make it fatal innstead of disabling.
Sorry, I don't see them in common.

Heat weapons and Vibro weapons are two different things.

Heat weapons idea comes from heating up and melting the target.
Just like heating up your butter knife before cutting a frozen cube of butter.

Virbo weapons on the other hand, works like a Harmonic scalpel.
It works with high frequency vibration.
Basically you can view it as a mini chainsaw.
You don't need to do the slicing action yourself, it moves and do it for you, in a really tiny but quick action.

Heat weapons in concept cannot really help much in cutting speed. In fact, just like beam blades, you need to contact for a while for the heat energy to transfer. Yes, it helps to melt through the target so it becomes easier to cut and you don't need to apply as much force, but slicing through really quick can have much less effect than holding against the target. If you slice quick enough, it might not even be that much different from a non-heated weapon.

Vibroweapons on the other hand, helps your slicing speed. It also helps if you hold it against the target, since that will be like slicing a lot of times.

Heat weapons and beam weapons shouldn't be used in really quick actions, accelerating usually don't help your cut but the opposite, you don't get enough contact time and less energy is transferred to the target. Of course if your weapon has so much energy that it can transfer enough in that quick action, fine. But your example doesn't really work with heat weapons, since they don't work that way. The cut will just be more powerful if it is slower. The quick action is likely just to avoid parrying/dodging/counter-attack, etc.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Heat Saber: Does it work that well?

I agree with Mythsearcher on heat weapons and vibro weapons being quite different. Incidentally, heat weapons come with the added benefit of being able to block to some extent beam weapons, a feat I imagine vibro weapons would not be able to pull.

This reminded me of the unique weapons of the Efreet Nacht, which are classified as "cold weapons" and supposedly work similar in principle to the Gouf's heat rod in the regard of using electrical discharges to attack the enemy. However, my guess is that the trade back is a diminished cutting capability of these sharp weapons (namely kunais is and katanas) compared to heat weapons. Anyway, the point I'm trying to reach is that in the cutscenes from 0081 the Efreet Nacht is capable of blocking the RX-81LA's beam sabers usig its cold weapons. I imagine that perhaps the cold weapons' electrical field plays a role here to prevent the beam saber from cutting through the physical blade.
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