Battery power in home tools is critical. Remember those first power drills screwdrivers. They could barely turn themselves much less a screw. There's nothing worse than being in the middle of a home project and have your cordless drill crap out. The worst offender for premature wimping out are cordless vacs, namely the Black & Decker DustBuster. I have two 7.2 volt DustBusters and they a both don't suck, BUT THEY"RE SUPPOSED TO!!! I get two minutes max of sufficient power to make using them worthwhile. In other words, I get about a third of my car done of my car before the &^%#%@) unit dies. The earlier 4.8 volt DustBuster was useless junk and the 7.2 volt units didn't improve on it much. Somehow the 7.2 volt unit earned three and half stars in Amazon reviews…maybe I got two lemons. Black & Decker has a huge line of corded and cordless portable vacs. In cordless, they come in many voltages now: 9.6, 14.4, 15.6 and 18 volts. The 18 volt PHV1800 gets four and a half stars on Amazon's user reviews, but costs $55 while less energized units are consider less.
Almost every automaker has had to 'pick a side' when it comes to alternative fuel options and ways to divest from a reliance on gasoline. Fiat is looking to back compressed natural gas or liquid propane as an interim solution.
Plastic may not be the most beloved of materials to the more environmentally minded, but Plasti 2012 aimed to mold a different opinion of the material in people's minds.
The rare earth element market has become steadily more rational, and new sources coming online will continue to reduce costs. Still, it is unlikely that prices will drop to their former lows.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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