It's interesting to hear that old-is-better-than-new is an ongoing theme in Made by Monkeys, Rob. The auto industry has managed to boost its quality and reliability enormously over the past 35 years, so I can only wonder why so many home appliances and handhelds are getting worse.
That's a pretty good story about the Shop Vac, Jon. I think the key to the sucess of your Shop Vac and the Genie (the vacuum he went back to) that Dave discusses in the Monkey story is the age of the vacuums that worked well. Not surprisingly, the older ones work better than the new ones. This is quite a theme in Made by Monkeys.
Sad to hear about the poorly designed shop vacuum. I have a Shop Vac that continues to run well after 35 years. Wouldn't trade it for any other type.
Some time ago my son decided to get two goats as pets. He bought large alfalfa pellets but figured they might cause the goats to choke. So, how do you grind up large quantities of pellets to make a finer feed? Use a Dispose-All to grind them and collect the bits in my Shop Vac connected to the Dispose-All outlet. Worked like a charm. You never know when a shop vacuum will come in handy.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
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 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.
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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