I’m probably just getting old, but I always swallow hard when I see discussion of plastics in the popular media. The current issue of Time, for example, has a one page article titled “Freshen Up Your Drink” under the heading of “health”. The article tackles the subject of whether it’s OK to re-use water bottles, and looks at the case for single-use PET, polycarbonate, HDPE and stainless steel. A table with the article states that HDPE is “made from petroleum”. Are people supposed to believe that PET and polycarbonate are not derived from petroleum? Possibly they are made from some magical substance that is totally benign from an environmental and health viewpoint. The article states that “PET degrades with use”, but that there are “no known problems” with HDPE. My goodness, HDPE, which is a lower quality material than PET, does not degrade with use? And wait a minute, weren’t we just told five minutes ago by the green lobby that we want this stuff to degrade?
The article tells Time readers to dispose of PET containers after a single use (or re-use them as flower pots!), re-use HDPE containers because they are safe, and re-use stainless containers because they are as safe as glass. Time indicates that scientists have concerns with BPA leaching from PC even at room temperature. The article cautions readers not to fill stainless containers with hot water, but makes no such admonition for HDPE! The melting point for stainless is around 2600F; HDPE, 430F!
I remember 30 or so years ago how much I hated all of the broken glass litter left from people who smashed beer bottles. Today, I do see some trash of cans or plastic bottles, but at least they aren’t a safety hazard. And now we’re worrying about whether it’s safe to re-use plastic containers? OK, but let’s at least make sure we make some sense from a technical perspective.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
The 100-percent solar-powered Solar Impulse plane flies on a piloted, cross-country flight this summer over the US as a prelude to the longer, round-the-world flight by its successor aircraft planned for 2015.
GE Aviation expects to chop off about 25 percent of the total 3D printing time of metallic production components for its LEAP Turbofan engine, using in-process inspection. That's pretty amazing, considering how slow additive manufacturing (AM) build times usually are.
A $1,500, hand-operated, bench-model, plastic injection machine crowdsource-funded via Kickstarter can be used to mold small, quality, plastic parts inexpensively, on demand.
The federal government is launching competitions to kickstart three more manufacturing innovation institutes, including one focused on Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation.
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.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
3 
