Articles

New Standards Allow More CPU Options in Embedded Computing

Embedded system designers often find themselves trapped by CPU design choices they made years earlier, since switching costs can be astronomical. Hardware development often involves...

Reducing Machine Controller Design and Deployment

Machine design and deployment requires integration of various technologies such as controls, mechanics, vision, lasers, data acquisition, and software, to mention only a few. These mechatronic...

The Engineering of IndyCar Racing

IndyCar racing features some of the most technologically sophisticated automobiles in the world today. Weighing just 1,565 pounds and powered by single- or twin-turbocharged 2.2L V6 engines that produce...

Ensuring Safe Operation and Accurate Characterization of Laser Diodes

Laser diodes are very sensitive to electrostatic discharge (ESD), current/ voltage transients, and temperature changes, and extra care must be taken to ensure the laser diode...

Think Outside the Chip: MEMS-Based Systems Solutions

MEMS is an acronym for Microelectro mechanical Systems; however, most MEMS implementations to date have not been systems at all, but rather devices. This article reports the constituents and...

How Substrate Materials Affect LED Reliability

The solid-state lighting industry continues to develop LEDs with higher lumens per watt, in alignment with Haitz Law, which states that the cost per lumen falls by a factor of 10 every decade and...

LED Binning Using a Single Pulse Tester

LEDs are considered to be the light technology of the future due to their low energy consumption and long lifetime compared to traditional light sources. As LED luminous intensity levels increase, the...

Organic Photovoltaics - Forecasts for the Next Decade

Today there are multiple devices available for harnessing solar energy. Each device offers a different set of characteristics. Wafer-based devices consist of mono or polycrystalline and...

Influence of Position Measurement on Accuracy in 5-Axis Machining

Productivity and accuracy are important attributes in the competition for machine tools. Five-axis machining provides considerable potential for increasing productivity. In many...

Changing How We Fly Aviation Technology Today and Tomorrow

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that last year, U.S. and foreign air carriers transported an estimated 161.8 million passengers between the United States and the rest...

Camera Trends 2012: Speed, Resolution, and Software

Cameras are still an important technology feature in manufacturing and inspection applications, but they are also increasingly valuable in non-traditional sectors. As part of June’s OEM...

Bacteria Provide Cleanup of Oil Spills and Wastewater

Given the size of our planet and its wealth of resources, it is easy to forget that those resources are finite. As Earth’s human population continues to grow, the questions of how to...

Battery Options for Uninterruptible Power Supplies

The lead-acid battery was invented by the French physicist Gaston Planté in 1859, and is one of the oldest rechargeable battery technologies. For over 150 years, it has been the mainstay when...

Fiber Optic Oxygen Sensors — How Do They Work?

Fiber optic oxygen sensors use the fluorescence of a chemical complex in a sol-gel to measure the partial pressure of oxygen. The pulsed blue LED sends light, at ~475 nm, to an optical fiber....

LED Backlighting

Though often drowned out by the excitement generated by general illumination LEDs, LED backlighting technology has evolved dramatically over the past 30 years. Continued advances in design and performance have allowed each new...

Using IC Sockets in an LED Test System

For more than half a century, the semiconductor industry has been governed by a commonly known principle described as Moore’s Law. This “law” predicts that through technological advancement a...

LED Light Engine Standardization

After Nick Holonyak invented the practical visible LED in 1962, the first commercial products were limited in brightness and only to applications such as red indicator lights and seven segment displays. In the...

3D Printing Gets Real

3Dprinting grabs a lot of attention — as much for its futuristic potential as for what it can do today. Send a 3D printer to the Moon, some imagine, and print out a city. Is your coffee maker dying? Just print yourself a...

Implementing PCI Express on PC/104-Size Modules

As PC/104 celebrates its 20th anniversary as an open standard this year, it continues to grow in terms of new design-ins, applications, and integration of the latest technology. In today’s fast...

COM Express Revision 2.0: What’s new in the latest specification?

The COM Express specification was first released in 2005. Its main target was, and still is, to define the mandatory requirements of COM Express modules and carrier boards as...

Underwater Autonomous Vehicles Combine Robotics and Vision to Inspect Oil Pipelines

Among the various components of a submarine pipeline, the vertical section known as a riser is critical to managing the pipeline. This section connects the...

Automotive Engineering: The Future is Today

The Ford Focus Electric is the industry’s first car to feature 100 percent sustainable clean technologies in interior materials, including seat fabrics with Unifi’s REPREVE®-branded fiber made...

Mode-Field Diameter and “Spot Size” Measurements of Lensed and Tapered Specialty Fibers

Lensed and tapered specialty fibers are designed to optimize coupling between the fiber and various optical components such as edge-emitting laser...

Real 3D Visualization: The Promise of Virtual Holography

There are a number of drawbacks to traditional two-dimensional environments. In 2D, images appear flat and only offer one perspective. In 3D, images have depth and offer multiple...

Benchtop Imaging Devices: Making Fluorescence Microscopy More Accessible

Auto-fluorescent proteins have become an indispensible tool for cell biology research over the past decade. Originating from sea creatures such as jellyfish and sea...

LED Packaging with Silicone Encapsulants

When working together, the packager and silicone provider should take into account several details. One major consideration is the methodology used when packaging an LED, such as surface mount LED,...

Marshall Space Flight Center

The Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Huntsville, AL, became a NASA field center on July 1, 1960. Since then, Marshall has provided the agency with the mission-critical design, development, and...

Bringing the Heat

LED, semiconductor, and package designers use complex thermal analysis software to analyze their products, but the analysis is only as good as the data provided. Reliable clarification of heat data upstream and downstream is...

Solar Cell Manufacturing and Robot Automation: Right Fit, Right Robot

The United States has set 2015 as a goal to reach grid parity (that point where solar electricity is equal to grid electricity). No matter your thoughts on regulatory...