Manufacturing & Prototyping

Six Considerations When Choosing Machine Vision in Collaborative Applications

Machine vision dates back to the beginning of the modern industrial robot age in the 1980s. Augmenting cobots with vision allows them to perform with higher precision, flexibility, and intelligence. However, integration is not a one-size-fits-all process.

Videos of the Month

See the videos of the month, including one on the VersaBlade wire-to-wire connectors from Molex, one on 3D-printed food technology, and more.

A Gripper That Grasps by Reflex

Looking to give robots a more nimble, human-like touch, MIT engineers have now developed a gripper that grasps by reflex. Rather than start from scratch after a failed attempt, the robot adapts in the moment.

Improved Grasping with an Energy-Efficient Robotic Hand

Grasping objects is a problem that is easy for a human, but challenging for a robot. Researchers designed a soft, 3D-printed robotic hand that cannot independently move its fingers but can still carry out a range of complex movements.

North Sea Rig Operators Discover a Solution for Frequently Tangled Service Loops

A company from Denmark found a problem with its oil rig, where wind caused service loops to swing, become entangled and snag, resulting in downtime. The company solved the problem with a 33.5-meter e-loop from igus, the Germany-based manufacturer of high-performance plastics.

How Much Do You Know About PLCs for Industrial Control?

Industrial PLCs were first used in 1969 and are still in wide use today. Test your PLC knowledge with this quiz.

How Much Do You Know About Additive Manufacturing?

How much do you know about additive manufacturing? Test yourself with this quiz.

3D-Printed Mars Habitat Simulated on Earth

CHAPEA is a series of analog missions that will simulate year-long stays on the surface of Mars. Insights from these missions will help NASA make informed decisions to design and plan for a successful human mission to Mars.

Smart Material Challenges Newton’s Laws of Motion

The team has developed a prototype metamaterial that uses electrical signals to control both the direction and intensity of energy waves passing through a solid material.

Megawatt Electrical Motor Could Help Electrify Aviation

Aerospace engineers designed a 1-megawatt electrical motor that is a stepping stone toward electrifying the largest aircraft.

3D-Printed Talking Robot Heads Could Improve Audio Tech

The Augmented Listening Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is using 3D-printed, humanoid robots for research to improve acoustics.

Engineers “Grow” Atomically Thin Transistors on Top of Computer Chips

Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips. But semiconductor chips are traditionally...

The World’s First Wood Transistor

Transistors are considered by some to be an invention just as important to humanity as the telephone, the light bulb, or the bicycle. Today, they are a crucial component in modern electronic devices, and...

Sensors that Operate at High Temperatures and in Extreme Environments

Extreme environments in several critical industries — aerospace, energy, transportation, and defense — require sensors to measure and monitor numerous factors under...

Product of the Month

See the product of the month: A highly intuitive human-machine interface (HMI). The PACSystems RXi HMI has projective capacitive touchscreen technology that allows users to interact with the visual display with 10-point multitouch capabilities.

New on the Market

See the new products on the market, including a ruggedized portable HMI mount, a high-efficiency power amplifier, embedded antenna models, and much more.

Making High-Performance Parts Inexpensive and Durable

Idaho National Laboratory has developed world-class capabilities to help industry design efficient SPS manufacturing processes. The lab’s newest addition makes it possible to manufacture new materials at industrially relevant scales.

Using 3D Printing to Strengthen Jet Engines

Skoltech engineers have used a 3D printer to fabricate — and investigate the mechanical characteristics of — samples of bronze-steel alloys previously unknown to materials science.

Multi-Material Digital Light Processing 3D Printing

Researchers from Japan and Singapore have developed a new 3D-printing process for the fabrication of 3D metal–plastic composite structures with complex shapes.

Flow-Through Transducer for Wind Tunnel Analysis

To enable key aerospace R&D applications, NASA’s Langley Research Center has developed a single-piece flow-through transducer design capable of measuring all six components adding in the Axial force measurement.

Designing Shock-Mitigating Seats for Boat Operators

Products for nautical applications face an unusual set of design challenges. The corrosiveness of salt water can cause premature degradation, and the impact of fast-moving vessels bouncing up against forceful ocean waves can also damage equipment.

Key Design Considerations for Automated Production of EV Batteries

Examining an EV battery degassing automated cell that is widely installed across the industry exemplifies many design features.

Enabling Ambitious Battery Production at Scale

The battery industry is forecasted to grow tenfold by the end of the decade. This growth is driven by increasing demand for Li-ion cell batteries, predominantly for electrified transportation and energy storage.

Trial, Error, Repeat

When you're working to develop something new, something really innovative, you're going to fail — over and over. The difference between finally succeeding, or not, is whether you keep on going anyway, so you can learn something new from each failure.

Self-Folding Origami Machines Powered by Chemical Reaction

A Cornell-led collaboration harnessed chemical reactions to make microscale origami machines self-fold — freeing them from the liquids in which they usually function, so they can...