Features

Selecting Electric Traction Solutions for AGVs and Mobile Robots

Smarter, better, faster, less expensive — those words are the mantra of today’s global economy. As organizations seek to streamline operations and do more with less, they...

Failsafe Linear Magnetic Brakes

Linear permanent magnet brakes, also known as eddy current brakes, are a failsafe, power-free deceleration system that is used in conjunction with a metal reaction plate. Ceramic or rare earth magnets are bonded...

Understanding the Basics of Gas Spring Application

When choosing a gas spring for a particular application, it’s imperative to have a basic understanding of the workings and terminology used when specifying gas springs. This article offers...

Keck Telescopes Get a Motion Control Upgrade

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii Island is surrounded by thousands of miles of thermally stable seas. The 13,796-foot Maunakea mountain summit has no nearby ranges to roil the upper...

New Products

Bearing Sensor ABB (Zurich, Switzerland) introduced the ABB Ability™ smart sensor that enables health checks for bearings. The smart sensor technology provides an early indicator of potential problems by assessing the condition...

Q&A: Texas A&M's Jaime Grunlan Creates a Non-Toxic Flame-Retardant Coating

Texas A&M professor Jaime Grunlan and his team are developing a new flame-retardant coating using renewable, nontoxic materials readily found in nature that could...

Laser Measurement Sensors Solve High-Speed Package Profiling

Banner EngineeringPlymouth, MNwww.bannerengineering.com Sorting parcels and packages prior to delivery is an essential step in shipping and handling. Order fulfillment applications...

Electric Vehicle Fast Chargers Present Some Overlooked Circuit Protection Challenges

The first mass-produced electric vehicles (EVs) hit the road late in 2010 with the introduction of the Nissan Leaf, which remains the world’s top-selling,...

Metal 3D Printing for Complex Heat Exchangers

RenishawWest Dundee, ILwww.renishaw.com HiETA develops metal additive manufacturing (AM) methods for the production of complex, lightweight structures for heat management applications. Parts...

Facility Focus: Battelle Memorial Institute

Battelle Memorial Institute was founded in the early part of the 20th century as a charitable trust focused on research in metallurgy and allied industries. Founder Gordon Battelle studied metallurgy...

5 Ws of the Heart Energy Harvester

Who Millions of people who rely on pacemakers, defibrillators, and other livesaving implantable devices powered by batteries that need to be replaced every five to 10 years.

Products of Tomorrow

This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.

Lockheed Martin Explores a Different Kind of Space for NASA

ProtolabsMaple Plain, MNwww.protolabs.com Mankind first set foot on the Moon in 1969; nearly five decades have now passed. Today, NASA is developing the Orion spacecraft that will...

Organic Compound Turns Toxic Waste into Harmless Byproducts

Spinoff is NASA’s annual publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology. This commercialization has contributed to the development of products and services in the...

New on the Market: April 2019

Wave Springs Smalley, Lake Zurich, IL, announced a Nested Spirawave Wave Springs series. The multiple-turn, flat wire wave springs are coiled in parallel to produce two to three times as much force as traditional...

Product of the Month

nanotron, Munich, Germany, introduced 360° Edge Analytics tools and location-aware wireless sensors for manufacturing and healthcare. The products automatically extract event information in real time. Position data is...

New Product: TRACO POWER’s TIB 80-EX Power Supplies

The power supplies are designed for harsh environments and hazardous locations.

Building Blocks for a Practical Wireless Sensor System

We recently interviewed Justin Bessette, Manager, Wireless Systems and Software Engineering at LORD Corporation, Micro-Strain® Sensing Systems, about the nuts and bolts of a wireless...

Understanding Bluetooth Mesh Networking

Bluetooth technology is focused on short-range wireless connectivity. Most of us know the Bluetooth standard as the way we connect a phone to our car or a headset for hands-free operation. But Bluetooth...

Make Your Construction Jobsite Safer and Faster with Smart Sensors

Concrete is the material most widely used by humans — after water. As its ingredients are readily available almost anywhere in the world, it is the main component used by...

Driverless Forklifts

Although driverless forklifts have been around for about 30 years, it's only in the last 10 or so that they've been free to maneuver anywhere around their environment. In the early days, the machines followed a current in a...

New Products

Torque Measurement System To address the demand for a more accurate, reliable, customizable, and easy-to-use force measurement device, Interface Force Measurement Systems (Scottsdale, AZ) has introduced the AxialTQ torque...

New Products

Machine Vision Cameras Vision Research (Wayne, NJ) has introduced the Phantom® S210 and S200, 2Gpx/sec (16 Gbps) machine vision cameras. The S210 reaches 1,730 frames per second (fps) at full 1.3Mpx resolution, while the S200...

Additive Manufacturing Using Infrared and X-Ray Imaging

Additive manufacturing is poised to liven the pace and scale of manufacturing. Deploying a range of techniques that use 3-D models to print objects layer by layer, it can generate a...

Deep Learning in Machine Vision

FLIR Systems has introduced their Firefly machine vision camera with open platform deep learning inference onboard. Deep learning makes it possible to easily develop high performance solutions for difficult...

A New Route to High Sensitivity Pressure Sensors

Since their development in the 1950s, optical fibers have been used for power transmission, communication, imaging, and sensing. They are often used in situations where other sensing techniques...

The Role Deep Learning Plays in Imaging Software

Deep learning technology is inspired by the way the human brain works, using trained artificial neural networks to perform recognition and decision-making tasks. A convolutional neural network...

Measuring Aging, Fat and Water Content in Meat Products Using Hyperspectral Imaging

The consumable component of muscle tissue in meat is approximately 75% water, 20% protein, 5% fat, carbohydrate, and minerals. The proportions vary depending...

Lightweighting in Aerospace Component and System Design

Lightweighting design is an extensively explored and utilized concept in many industries, especially in aerospace applications, and is associated with the green aviation concept. The...