Materials & Manufacturing

Manufacturing & Prototyping

Explore innovations supporting advances in manufacturing and rapid prototyping. Access the developments and solutions that have an impact on applications in 3D printing and automation.

Stories

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Eye on Innovation: Software
Product simplification is the discipline of merging the greatest performance functionality into the fewest number of parts using the most suitable and cost-effective materials and...
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Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Universal Proprietary Water Purifying/ Conditioning Multimedia Jim Jablonsky J&M Associates Hatfield, PAThis inexpensive and easily operated filter system removes heavy metals, arsenic, mercury, bad...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A development effort was directed toward formulating epoxy resins that are useful both as structural materials and as shielding against heavy-ion radiation. Hydrogen is recognized as the best element for...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
The art of experimental modal vibration analysis (MVA) has been extended to apply to large castings. This extension was made to enable the use of experimental MVA as a relatively inexpensive, simple...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
An investigational method of improving the performance of a fuel cell that contains a polymer-electrolyte membrane (PEM) is based on the concept of roughening the surface of the PEM, prior...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Diamond Machining of an Off-Axis Biconic Aspherical Mirror
Two diamond-machining methods have been developed as part of an effort to design and fabricate an off-axis, biconic ellipsoidal, concave aluminum mirror for an infrared spectrometer at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Beyond this initial application, the methods can be expected to enable...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
An alternative scheme has been conceived for packaging of silicon- based back-illuminated, back- side-thinned complementary metal oxide/semiconductor (CMOS) and charge-coupled-device...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
An improved photoresist-coating technique has been developed for use in the fabrication of carbon-nanotube- (CNT)- based field emitters of the type described in “Fabrication of...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Composite Layer Manufacturing With Fewer Interruptions
An improved version of composite layer manufacturing (CLM) has been invented. CLM is a type of solid freeform fabrication (SFF) — an automated process in which a three-dimensional object is built up, point-by-point, through extrusion of a matrix/fiber composite-material precursor. The...
Articles: Photonics/Optics
Laser micromachining involves using light to remove material. Lasers can also be used in many other applications such as welding, marking, additive manufacturing and surface alteration, but these fall outside the...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Wick structures fabricated by machining of titanium porous material are essential components of lightweight titanium/ water heat pipes of a type now being developed for operation at temperatures up to...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Systems requirements for complex spacecraft drive design requirements that lead to structures, components, and/or enclosures of a multi-material and multifunctional design. The...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
System for Removing Pollutants From Incinerator Exhaust
A system for removing pollutants — primarily sulfur dioxide and mixed oxides of nitrogen (NOx) — from incinerator exhaust has been demonstrated. The system is also designed secondarily to remove particles, hydrocarbons, and CO. The system is intended for use in an enclosed environment, for...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A method of (1) sealing a sample of material acquired in a possibly biologically contaminated (“dirty”) environment into a hermetic container, (2) sterilizing the outer surface of the...
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Briefs: Software
The crew activity analyzer (CAA) is a system of electronic hardware and software for automatically identifying patterns of group activity among crew members working together in an office, cockpit, workshop, laboratory, or...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Templates for fabricating sharply pointed microscopic peaks arranged in nearly regular planar arrays can be fabricated by a relatively inexpensive technique that has recently been...
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Application Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Prisms are used in countless optical systems — from the pair of binoculars in your closet to cutting edge targeting systems to retroreflectors on the Moon. In modern, high-end optical systems,...
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Eye on Innovation: Manufacturing & Prototyping
By Fielder Hiss Director of Product Management Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. Concord, MA Global competition is an oft-cited reason for any...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A method has been devised for high-volume, high-velocity surface deposition of protective metallic coatings on otherwise vulnerable surfaces. Thermal spraying is used...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A technique for making superconducting joints between wires made of dissimilar superconducting metals has been devised. The technique is especially suitable for fabrication of...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Displaying CFD Solution Parameters on Arbitrary Cut Planes
USMC6 is a Fortran 90 computer program for post-processing in support of visualization of flows simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The name "USMC6" is partly an abbreviation of "TetrUSS — USM3D Solution Cutter," reflecting its origin as a post-processor for use with USM3D...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Thermal Spray Formation of Polymer Coatings
This innovation forms a sprayable polymer film using powdered precursor materials and an in-process heating method. This device directly applies a powdered polymer onto a substrate to form an adherent, mechanically-sound, and thickness-regulated film. The process can be used to lay down both fully dense...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
An improved packaging approach has been devised for filling a hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber (HC-PCF) with a gas, sealing the HC-PCF to retain the gas, and providing for optical connections and,...
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Briefs: Materials
Carpetlike random arrays of metal-coated silicon nanotips have been shown to be effective as antireflection surfaces. Now undergoing development for incorporation into Sun sensors that would provide...
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Briefs: Nanotechnology
An experiment has shown that when single- walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are grown by chemical vapor deposition in the presence of an electric field of suitable strength, the nanotubes become...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Solar Power Industries' (SPI) current annual production capacity for processing polycrystalline silicon feedstock into completed solar cells has grown to 40 megawatts, with...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
This innovation consists of a set of methodologies for preparing large area (>1 cm2) domains of single-atomic-layer graphite, also called graphene, in single (two-dimensional)...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A nominally stationary tubular probe denoted a telescopic probe has been developed as an improved alternative to a prior movable probe used to evaluate the local degree of compaction of mold...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
An improved method of filling a molding flask with sand and compacting the sand around a refractory- coated foam mold pattern has been developed for incorporation into the lost-foam...
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