Metal clamps are eliminated because of a new spin welding process used in the pressure line of the award-winning diesel exhaust fluid system (DEF) in the 2011 Ford Superduty pickup truck. A 50 percent glass reinforced polyamide quick connector is friction welded to a polyamide line in one of the many technical innovations in the DEF system, which won the Grand Prize at the 40th Annual Automotive Innovation Awards Gala held by the Society of Plastics Engineers International in November. The all PA12 inner tube line construction is 40 percent lighter than competitive EPDM rubber lines, according to Scott Cooper, an engineer with Ford Powertrain Engineering.
Spin welding, a technical strength at Ford, is used to join spherical plastic parts. Generation of friction at the mating surface by spinning one part (upper) against a fixtured (lower) part, fastens the assembly.
UK-based Plastic Logic and French company ISORG have created what the pair tout as a first in flexible printed electronics: a large area, conformable, organic image sensor printed on plastic.
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.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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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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