The Leading Source for Design Engineering News & Insight
NASA's Curiosity Rover Drills Again
May 21, 2013 9:08 am | by The Associated Press | News | CommentsThe space agency said Monday that Curiosity has bored a hole in a second rock and will transfer a pinch of powder to its onboard laboratories later this week for analysis. Sunday's drill was the first major activity by Curiosity since it emerged from a monthlong hiatus.
NASA Builds Unusual Testbed for Analyzing X-ray Navigation Technologies
May 21, 2013 9:06 am | by Lori Keesey, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center | News | CommentsPulsars have a number of unusual qualities. Like zombies, they shine even though they’re technically dead, and they rotate rapidly, emitting powerful and regular beams of radiation that are seen as flashes of light, blinking on and off at intervals from seconds to milliseconds.
Non-Wetting Fabric Drains Sweat
May 21, 2013 9:00 am | by University of California, Davis | News | CommentsWaterproof fabrics that whisk away sweat could be the latest application of microfluidic technology developed by bioengineers at the University of California, Davis. The new fabric works like human skin, forming excess sweat into droplets that drain away by themselves, said inventor Tingrui Pan, professor of biomedical engineering.
Iron-Platinum Alloys Could be New-Generation Hard Drives
May 21, 2013 8:55 am | by University of California - Davis | News | CommentsMeeting the demand for more data storage in smaller volumes means using materials made up of ever-smaller magnets, or nanomagnets. One promising material for a potential new generation of recording media is an alloy of iron and platinum with an ordered crystal structure.
Case Study: Reliability in Portable Sound Equipment
May 21, 2013 8:48 am | by NKK Switches | Nkk Switches, Inc. | Articles | CommentsProfessional Sound Corporation (PSC) has designed and manufactured highly portable, rugged audio equipment for the television and motion picture industries since 1986. The rigorous demands placed on PSC’s equipment present unique switching challenges that NKK’s switches have helped to overcome.
Judge Tosses Ex-BP Executive's Obstruction Charge
May 20, 2013 6:01 pm | by Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press | News | CommentsA federal judge on Monday dismissed one of the two counts in the indictment of a former BP executive who was charged with concealing information from Congress about the amount of oil that was leaking from the company's blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
CI Tools Aren’t Just for CI Events; They’re for Everyday
May 20, 2013 5:40 pm | by Alan Nicol, Executive Member, AlanNicolSolutions | Blogs | CommentsI write a great deal about the difference between Lean and Six Sigma and Kaizen on the production floor and in the office. We learn a great many continuous improvement tools in training, then we forget them because we aren’t CI experts. Don’t! Use them anytime.
Clutch Brake Delivers 78,000 Lb. In. of Torque
May 20, 2013 5:25 pm | by PD&D Staff | Force Control Industries, Inc. | Product Releases | CommentsForce Control Industries (Fairfield, OH) has introduced the new Size 30 Posidyne Clutch Brake with “Oil Shear Technology” that can be operated as a clutch only for applications such as pumps or fans or as a clutch brake for cycling or indexing applications.
Low Ripple DC Tachometers
May 20, 2013 5:13 pm | by PD&D Staff | Servo2Go.com Ltd. | Product Releases | CommentsServo-Tek (Greenville, DE) Tach Generators provide a convenient means of converting rotational speed into an isolated analog voltage signal suitable for remote indication and control applications. Combining high accuracy with low driving torque, Servo-Tek tach generators are ideal for use in servo systems.
Panel: Apple Uses Firms Outside U.S. to Avoid Taxes
May 20, 2013 5:00 pm | by The Associated Press | News | CommentsApple Inc. employs a group of affiliate companies located outside the United States to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes, a Senate investigation has found. The world's most valuable company is holding overseas some $102 billion of its $145 billion in cash, and an Irish...
Flexible I/O for High Data Processing
May 20, 2013 4:48 pm | by PD&D Staff | Men Micro Inc. | Product Releases | CommentsMEN Micro Inc. (Ambler, PA) has announced a low power, rugged SBC that incorporates flexible I/O for demanding graphics environments. Using an Intel Atom processor running at 1.6 GHz, the new SC27 is compact, powerful and able to withstand harsh environments.
GM Giving Paid Internships to 110 HS Students
May 20, 2013 3:26 pm | by The Associated Press | News | CommentsGeneral Motors is kicking the tires on a unique new internship program for Detroit-area high school students. GM has hired 110 students for paid summer internships, the automaker said Monday in announcing the formation of the GM Student Corps, a program that combines service, education and mentoring.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Faster, Stronger, Lighter
May 20, 2013 1:43 pm | by Jennifer Chu, MIT | News | CommentsThese days, aerospace engineering is all about the light stuff: building airplanes with lighter wings, fuselage and landing gear in an effort to reduce fuel costs.Advanced carbon-fiber composites have been used in recent years to lighten planes’ loads.
Kinks and Curves at the Nanoscale
May 20, 2013 1:38 pm | by Joshua Brown, University of Vermont | News | CommentsOne of the basic principles of nanotechnology is that when you make things extremely small—one nanometer is about five atoms wide, 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair—they are going to become more perfect.
Robots Learn to Take a Proper Handoff
May 20, 2013 1:35 pm | by Jennifer Liu, Disney Research | News | CommentsA humanoid robot can receive an object handed to it by a person with something approaching natural, human-like motion thanks to a new method developed by scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh in a project partially funded by the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies (interACT) at Carnegie Mellon University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
