On April 17, over 18,000 visitors descended on the 2010 Live Green Expo, organized by the City of Plano. The event included over 200 exhibitors who educated the community about sustainable practices and promoted products and services to help people “Go Green”. The 2010 Expo achieved a “Zero Waste Event” milestone by planning clever waste diversion strategies in advance. 1,260 pounds of materials were recycled and 1,265 pounds of organics were collected for composting. Over 90% of the waste produced by the event was diverted, and only 300 pounds of trash were generated, proving that large public events in North Texas can occur with minimal waste accumulation.
I attended the 2010 Live Green Expo representing the University of North Texas Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering to help students in our senior class deploy their capstone design project, dubbed the Pedal Power Booth. This display included a human-powered generator built around six mountain bikes that charged a bank of batteries. Energy stored in the batteries powered a large television set and a Nintendo Wii. The display was an educational spin on human-powered exercise equipment (see my post: “Collecting Energy from a Human Powered Gym“).
However, instead of trying to promote this technology for commercialization (a quick return-on-investment analysis shows it cannot be economically viable), the display’s purpose was to allow booth visitors to “feel” the amount of physical effort required to operate common entertainment center electronics. Expo visitors who alternated between playing video games and pedaling bicycles quickly realized the exhausting amount of peddling necessary to power the technology many take for granted. This experience will remind people to turn off electronics, lights, and other energy guzzling appliances when they not in use - a slight change in behavior that nonetheless has a dramatic impact on energy conservation.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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