As the holidays fade and the New Year unfolds, it’s back to business for most of us. For NASA Tech Briefs, that includes a bunch of trade shows and conferences our editors will attend over the next few months.

One show I plan to attend is the Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show, taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif., from February 9 through 11. The show will feature the latest design and manufacturing solutions from hundreds of companies. The diverse array of products and services include adhesives, CAD/CAM/CAE software and services, electrical and electronic components, fluid handling media and controls, instruments and controls, materials, mechanical components, motors and motion controls, testing and inspection products and services, and valves, switches, and controls.

No less than seven other shows are co-located with the Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show. Three of the more significant shows are the Medical Design & Manufacturing Show West, Electronics West, and Green Manufacturing Expo. The Medical Design & Manufacturing Show West and Green Manufacturing Expo represent the burgeoning fields of medical technology and “green” technology – sectors that held their own during the economic downturn and are increasingly important to design engineers.

In coming weeks, I hope to get more details on some of the products and technologies being shown. If your company plans to exhibit, drop me a line and let me know what you’ll be showing. Hopefully, we can meet during the show to discuss what’s new and exciting.

Given increased time-to-market pressures, design engineers are caught in a never-ending quest to streamline design and production processes. The challenges are formidable: proprietary or incompatible software, poor design tools, incomplete parts documentation, equipment issues – all can slow down prototyping and production. Although the government and industry associations have undertaken efforts to standardize tools and processes, such efforts take time and often only succeed when major companies decide to follow.

Printed circuit board solutions provider Sunstone Circuits is taking a grassroots approach to knock down the roadblocks in the design-to-production process for printed circuit boards. Called the Sunstone ECOsystem®, the process would encompass the entire design and supply chain of IP, vendors, tools, and libraries needed to take boards from concept into production. It intends to find and make use of low- or no-cost design tools and produce quality working prototypes in fewer turns at a lower cost.

Sunstone is known for its ability to provide quickturn printed circuit board prototypes and short-run electronic assembly services. It is partnering with several industry heavyweights to help achieve this goal: Digi-Key, National Instruments, NXP Semiconductors, and Screaming Circuits. Digi-Key is a global distributor of electronic components for more than 400 manufacturers. National Instruments supplies graphical programming software to automate pc board design. NXP is the semiconductor giant founded by Philips, while Screaming Circuits also provides pc board prototyping and assembly services.

When the group gathered with journalists at a recent roundtable meeting in Boston, it became clear that the companies’ efforts have gone well beyond the initial discussion stage into concrete action. There is already an online link between National Instruments and Sunstone Circuits, and a link between Sunstone and Screaming Circuits to facilitate quoting and ordering will be announced in early October. The group showed a ECOsystem® step-by-step roadmap to create a seamless pc board design and production process over the next 18 months.

One participant cited an industry association’s statistics stating that 75% of the total cost of a printed circuit board was in design and 30% of an engineer’s time was spent resolving parts issues. In a market where any loss of time and cost can adversely impact a company’s bottom line, the Sunstone ECOsystem® effort appears to a step in the right direction.

University of Illinois scientists have fabricated the world’s smallest
chain-mail fabric that consists of a network of small rings about 500
University of Illinois scientists have fabricated the world’s smallest chain-mail fabric that consists of a network of small rings about 500 microns in diameter and even smaller links about 400 microns long. The rings and links are built upon a planar substrate and then released to create a flexible sheet that can bend along two axes and drape over curved surfaces.

Because the rings and links can slide and rotate against each other, the fabric possesses unique mechanical and electrical properties. These properties could prove useful for the development of smart fabric and wearable electronic devices for pervasive computing.

For more information, click here.

Two new 3D navigation devices, SpaceNavigator and SpaceExplorer, from 3Dconnexion(R), a Logitech company, San Jose, CA, have been named NASA Tech Briefs’ Product of the Month for January. SpaceNavigator is an entry-level device that lets users move naturally and fluidly in 3D environments without making repetitive mouse movements or having to type multiple keyboard commands. It features six optical sensors that communicate multiple threads of navigation data to 3D applications. The SpaceExplorer is a mid-range device that features a key console and 15 pre-configured function keys within comfortable reach of the controller cap. It comes with 3DxSoftware, which offers support for Autodesk Design Reviewer and DWF Viewer, and Google Earth
and SketchUp.

For more information, see page 8 of the January issue of NTB, or click here.

Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) researchers have combined organic and inorganic materials to produce prototype transparent, high-performance transistors that can be assembled inexpensively on both glass and plastics. To create the thin-film transistors, the Northwestern group combined films of the inorganic semiconductor indium oxide with a multilayer of self-assembling organic molecules that provides insulation. The indium oxide films can be fabricated at room temperature, allowing the transistors to be produced at low cost. In addition to being transparent, the transistors outperform silicon transistors currently used in liquid crystal display (LCD) screens and perform nearly as well as high-end polysilicon transistors.

High-performance, transparent transistors could be combined with existing kinds of light display technologies, such as organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs), LCDs, and electroluminescent displays, which are already used in televisions, desktop and laptop computers, and cell phones. Prototype displays using these transistors could be available in 12 to 18 months.

For more information, visit, click here.