Submarine propellers made for the U.S. Navy start from a metal casting having a 20-ft diameter. From start to finish, production of one of these 55-ton propulsion units requires 12 months. One reason the process takes so much time is the machining, which removes nearly 14 tons from a single propeller casting. "Such a time-consuming process may soon be a thing of the past," says Tony Schmitz, a National Institute of Standards and Technology engineer. He points out that NIST tool-wear and surface-finishing experiments led to a better understanding of the parameters of high-speed machining. He also indicates that the discoveries enable an increase in material removal during machining by a factor of ten. Refinements in the tool's path reduce the roughnes of the milled propeller surface, eliminating much of the final hand finishing required for smoothing blade surfaces. For more information, go to www.nist.gov.
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
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.
On April 21, NASA launched a novel project, putting into orbit three satellites that employ an off-the-shelf commercial smartphone as the control system.
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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