Features

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...

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...

New on the Market: August 2018

DC Current Transducers NK Technologies, San Jose, CA, introduced DT-FD Series DC current transducers that provide a large sensing window and the ability to safely monitor circuits with voltages up to 1500 VDC,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

System Tests Dream Chaser's Atmospheric Flight Control System

SAKOR TechnologiesOwosso, MIwww.sakor.com SAKOR Technologies supplied a test system to Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI) to be used to test the atmospheric flight control system...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

Selecting a Force Measurement Solution to Minimize Variables and Protect Tensile Testing Data

Computers and software play a major role in force measurement and quality control. Whether in the engineering lab, quality control inspection area,...

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...

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...

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...

Taking It to the Streets: Designing Streetlamp Optical Components

The task of creating a streetlamp optical system has changed over the last 20 years and due to this change, so has optical design software. Let’s compare the task of designing...

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...

Bringing Multispectral Imaging to Industrial Applications

A mere 20 years ago, machine vision system designers did all they could to avoid color imaging applications due to higher costs and greater system and software complexity. But as...

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Established in 1943, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico was site Y of the Manhattan Project for a single purpose: to design and build an atomic bomb, which took just 27 months. The Los Alamos of...

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.

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...