Miniaturized Electrospray System

The technology was developed as an alternative to existing options for in-space aeroponic food production applications.

Painting 3D-Printed Objects

Engineers have created a highly effective way to paint complex 3D-printed objects, such as lightweight frames for aircraft and biomedical stents, that could save manufacturers time and money and provide new...

Method Sprays Extremely Thin Wires on 3D Objects

Engineers have invented a way to spray extremely thin wires made of a plant-based material that could be used in N95 mask filters, devices that harvest energy for electricity, and potentially...

New Spraying Method for Producing Ceramic Coatings

High-quality coated components can be integrated into complex systems in a sustainable way.

Designing Sensors for Hazardous Environments

Some of the most common applications for hazardous duty sensors are in the oil and gas industry.

Comparison Between Wave Soldering and Reflow Soldering

As contemporary electronics embrace light weight, increasing efficiency, and high speed, each link of the manufacturing process also conforms to this philosophy, including printed...

3D Printing: A New Mindset in Product Design

What is 3D Printing?

The terms “3D printing” and “additive manufacturing” refer to processes that automatically build objects layer-by-layer from computer data. The technology is already...

Fanuc Painting Robot Boosts Production for Metal Finisher

Classic Metal Finishing, based in Jackson, Mich., supplies components for the aerospace, motorcycle, racing, and medical industries. The plant was purchased in February, 2008 by...

Direct Spray Liquid Cooling Systems

For decades military platforms have included electronics for avionics, vehicle controls, radios, radar, sonar and fire control. From a computational standpoint most of these systems could be accomplished...

Increasing Durability of Flame-Sprayed Strain Gauges

Thermally sprayed dielectric ceramic coatings are the primary means of attaching strain and temperature gauges to hot-section rotating parts of turbine engines. As hot-section temperatures...

Water-Based Pressure-Sensitive Paints

Water-based pressure-sensitive paints (PSPs) have been invented as alternatives conventional organic- solvent-based pressure-sensitive paints, which are used primarily for indicating distributions of air...

Precision Stages Enable Analytical Measurement of Jet-Able Fluids

Precision X-Y stages were developed for integration into a new analytical measurement tool for use in the development of digital inks or other fluids to be jetted from ink jet...

Variable Frequency Drives For More Efficient Manufacturing Operations

Energy savings is one of the key ingredients in reducing costs for any manufacturing operation. A simple, but very effective, way to save energy is by making fans run more...

Paint-Overspray Catcher

An apparatus to catch paint overspray has been proposed. Overspray is an unavoidable parasitic component of spray that occurs because the flow of air or other gas in the spray must turn at the sprayed surface. Very...

Polyorganosiloxanes for Coating Porous Ceramic Insulation

Liquid and paste polyorganosiloxane formulations (which become high-temperature- and oxidation-resistant organosilicone-based ceramics upon curing) have been invented for use in (1)...

Plasma-Sprayed Selective Emitters for Thermophotovoltaics

Plasma spraying has been shown to be an effective means of depositing thin films of various oxides for use as wavelength-selective emitters for thermophotovoltaic devices (see Figure...

Improved Alloy for Fabrication of Combustion Chambers by VPS

An alloy of 88Cu/8Cr/4Nb (numbers indicate atomic percentages) has been proposed for use in fabricating rocket-engine combustion chambers by vacuum plasma spraying (VPS). Relative...

Improved Bond-Coat Layers for Thermal-Barrier Coatings

Current production thermal-barrier coatings (TBCs) have been shown to be capable of reducing the average temperatures of metallic components by 50 to 80 °C and hot-spot temperature by...

In-Process Monitoring and Analysis of Thermal-Spray Processes Using Machine Vision

The LaserStrobe Optical Probe is an advanced laser-augmented video-imaging system that observes and measures particle behavior in the harsh environment of a...

Self-Lubricating Composite Coating for High-Temperature Use

PS300 is a self-lubricating solid coating material for use in sliding contacts at temperatures up to 800°C. PS300 is a composite of metal-bonded chromium oxide with barium...