I met a lot of people at last week’s Design & Manufacturing Midwest show, and I saw a lot of innovative new products. I’ve had the chance to share with you what I saw last week from the show floor, and this week as we do a final wrap-up. What about you? If you were at D&M Midwest – or any of the five co-located shows – I’d love to hear what you saw that you thought was especially innovative, and how you plan to use that technology.

Inficon introduced the T-Guard Leak Detection Sensor that works with simple chambers at atmospheric pressure, eliminating the need for high-vacuum chambers and pumps. The sensor uses Wise Technology, which has no wearing parts or ion source filaments. Intelligent internal software enables the sensor to recognize and communicate leak rate signals quickly. It’s an alternative to pressure decay and water bath leak detection.

At the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) show, The Modal Shop introduced Resonant Inspection nondestructive test systems for manufacturers or users of metal injection molded parts in the medical device industry. The NDT-RAM systems test the whole part, internally and externally, to alert of anomalies and structural flaws in components, such as subsurface cracks or microfractures. The entire process can be achieved in as little as one second per part.

Don’t forget to send me your comments on the show, and let me know what inspired you.

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.

Last week’s Design & Manufacturing Midwest event in Rosemont, IL, was a hotbed for new product introductions to the industrial, medical, automation, assembly, and design areas. Here are more new products you should know about in case you missed the show.

Optical Gaging Products introduced the Focus Lite 14” Horizontal Contour Projector that features what the company claims is a world-first for optical comparators: all-LED illumination using TruLight LED illuminators, which include a high-brightness, monochromatic, green LED profile light. The Focus Lite optics are completely telecentric, yielding inverted and reversed images that are undistorted on its angled 14” viewing screen. Magnification lenses are internally mounted with room to store others, and a magnification identification system automatically displays the magnification of the lens currently in use.

Bosch Rexroth introduced ED02 pressure regulators with compact dimensions of only 3×2.4×1.2”. They are built with two directly controlled proportional valves, and exact regulation is controlled by a microprocessor. Four pressure regulators can be linked to each other without a base plate. Compressed air supply is possible from both sides, permitting extremely flexible use in a system. The supply voltage, analog set point, and actual value are electrically connected via a central M12 plug.

Kistler Instrument Corporation introduced the Type 9129AA compact, multicomponent dynamometer for measuring machining forces. It measures the three components of the resultant force vector and the three components of the resultant moment vector. A piezoelectric sensor system measures the forces with virtually no displacement. It’s designed for use in confined spaces, and for measuring the machining forces involved in milling and grinding.

Tomorrow, we’ll feature more new products introduced at the show.

As attendees and exhibitors get back to business following last week’s Design & Manufacturing Midwest event, there are still a lot of things to talk about in my post-show blog this week.

After sifting through stacks of new product sheets and press kits, I’ve found that one week was not enough to cover all the innovative technologies I came across at the show. So, here are some more new product introductions.

eSight Energy’s eSight is an energy management software suite for targeting specific areas of energy usage to identify savings. It integrates with virtually any type of data on-site (meters, loggers, spreadsheets, etc.) and operates as a 100% Web-based solution.

The SAW-TDK1 sensor kit from SENSeOR operates wirelessly and without batteries. It includes three wireless temperature sensors, a reader unit, and visualization software. Passive and maintenance-free sensors can be mounted in harsh environments and inaccessible places. An interrogator connects to a computer or network for data visualization and storage.

Metris USA showcased the XC65D, a multi-laser scanner that captures all 3D details of features, edges, pockets, ribs, and freeform surfaces in a single scan. The Cross Scanner’s entirely digital operation boosts scanning frequency and drives intelligent laser intensity adaptation to scan any surface without user interaction.

Check back tomorrow for more new products introduced at last week’s events.

It was a busy and invigorating week at Design & Manufacturing Midwest, with new product introductions, a surprising keynote address, and presentations highlighting innovative applications.

And speaking of applications, the show featured an Innovation Briefs Theater, which showcased presentations from experts at leading OEM suppliers, right on the show floor. On Wednesday, Dr. Ronald L. Hollis, president and CEO of Quickparts, presented “The Power of Online Manufacturing.” Hollis discussed how the Internet and online technologies have transformed the manufacturing community over the past decade, making it easy for Quickparts.com customers to buy custom-designed parts.

Over the past ten years, online manufacturing has evolved into much more than simply online instant quoting. With a business model that resembles Amazon.com, Hollis explained how Quickparts has brought a retail mindset to the manufacturing world.

Yesterday, Autodesk took the Innovation Briefs stage to talk about how their 3D design software helped a company develop a digital prototype of a bone conduction hearing solution. Cochlear Bone Anchored Solutions used Autodesk Inventor software to develop the Baha solution that uses direct bone conduction to transfer sound to the cochlea. This method bypasses the outer and middle ear when transmitting sound vibrations to the inner ear. As a result, individuals with hearing loss can experience clearer sound in everyday situations like phone calls and group meetings.

To design the bone conduction implant and the external sound processor that constitute the Baha system, Cochlear needed to precisely design, engineer, and manufacture parts on the scale of one-hundred-thousandths of a millimeter. Autodesk Inventor helped achieve that precision by providing detailed 3D views of the products before anything was built.

I’ll be resting and reviewing everything I’ve seen this week, and on Monday, I’ll begin a week of post-show coverage.