Features

Air Force Research Laboratory

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, was formed in October 1997 through the consolidation of four former Air Force laboratories and the Air Force...

Product of the Month

Pepperl+Fuchs, Twinsburg, OH, introduced the R200 and R201 photoelectric sensors in a design that is suitable for specific mounting situations. Standardized IO-Link connection via smart sensor profiles enables integration...

Conical, Floating-Piston Isolation Valve

A new valve concept consists of a solid piston floating in a medium to control a flowstream. Although the conical shape of the seat is a prominent feature of the valve, especially when the concept was...

High-Speed Reluctance Machine Design

Silphenix GmbH is an engineering and consulting firm in Switzerland specializing in high-speed electrical machines, magnetic bearings, and electromagnetic field analysis. One project focus is compact...

Drive Technology: The Recipe for Precise Actuator Control

Worldwide, there are only a handful of manufacturers of electrical actuators for the process industry, and the Vienna, Austria-based company Schiebel Antriebstechnik GmbH is the smallest...

Machine Vision Can Do More Than You Think

The ability to automatically extract information from digital images opens many doors for manufacturers striving to cut costs, improve quality, and streamline their processes overall. The primary uses...

IMTS2018 Preview

Presented by the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT), the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) has been the premier manufacturing technology show in the Northern Hemisphere. IMTS is held every even...

New Products

Servo Controller IC TRINAMIC Motion Control (Hamburg, Germany) announced the TMC-4671 fully integrated servo controller IC that provides field-oriented control for BLDC/PMSM and 2-phase stepper motors, as well as DC motors and...

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.

5 Ws of the PHADE Addressing System

Who PHADE could be used by government agencies to enhance public safety; for example, the government can deploy cameras in high-crime or high-accident areas, and warn specific users about potential threats....

Optimized Imager Tracks Cancer and Stem Cells in Medical Research

After earning his doctorate, Debashish Roy set about creating a business from the biological imaging device he'd helped invent as a graduate student. The system held promise for...

Key Technologies Needed to Advance Mission-Critical IoT

By 2028, virtually all major sensing and feedback systems benefiting from continuous monitoring will connect to devices currently known as the Internet of Things (IoT). As that...

IMTS Product Preview 2018

Cable Carrier igus, East Providence, RI, offers the E4.1L general-purpose energy chain (e-chain) cable carrier with high dynamics that includes a honeycomb strain relief block. It also includes separators for quick...

Plant Food for Space Grows Crops on Earth

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

Q&A: Carnegie Mellon's Dr. Sara Abdollahi Optimizes Soft-Material 3D Printing

Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering have developed a novel approach to optimizing soft-material 3D printing. The Expert-Guided...

Auxiliary Power Solutions for 1500 VDC Photovoltaic Systems

Photovoltaic systems are continually evolving to improve their efficiency and financial viability. One trend is to move to larger strings of cells giving higher dc voltages to be...

Reducing Weight and Design Time for Dream Chaser Spacecraft

Collier Research CorporationNewport News, VAwww.hypersizer.com With the go-ahead from NASA for a first mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the Sierra Nevada Corporation's...

Q&A: MIT's Dr. Yanfei Xu Transforms Heat Insulators into Heat Conductors

Plastics are excellent thermal insulators — a quality that can be an advantage in some applications. But this property is less desirable in products such as plastic...

Design Issues with Wearables From the Perspective of Electromechanical Components

Life Alert's “I've fallen and I can't get up®!” became one of the most famous infomercial catchphrases in the late 1980s. The company's device, targeted at...

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.

5 Ws of the Injectable Alcohol Monitoring Sensor

Who Patients in substance abuse treatment programs.

New on the Market: July 2018

Coupled Inductors Coilcraft, Cary, IL, offers LPD8035V Series miniature, high-voltage, 1:1 coupled inductors that provide 1500 Vrms and one-minute isolation (hipot) between windings. The inductors are available in...

Remote Sensing for Smarter Forest Fire Fighting

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

Autonomous Vehicles and the Burden of Testing

AB DynamicsWiltshire, Englandwww.abdynamics.com Autonomous vehicles cannot be tested for every eventuality that might transpire in their operating environment. As the technology becomes more...

New Products

Trilinear Line Scan Cameras Teledyne e2v (Milpitas, CA) has announced its next generation of line scan cameras — the high-resolution ELiiXA+ trilinear color range. These new 8k pixel cameras are suited for industrial applications...

Eyes in the Sky: Using Optical Filters to Observe and Measure Earth From a Different Perspective

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it....

Principles of Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopes

Today’s high-resolution laser scanning confocal microscopes (LSCM), also referred to simply as laser scanning microscopes, are powerful high-magnification surface metrology instruments with a...

Military Optics Technology

The demand for innovative solutions to enhance the safety of military personnel is continually on the rise. This includes the need to improve the performance of military vehicles and aircraft, in terms of both safety...

Rethinking FPGAs for Smart Cameras

The term “smart camera” has been used for decades, but there has been little agreement on the actual definition. This article will use the term “smart” as the Merriam Webster dictionary defines it: the...