The Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office Advanced Manufacturing Program Office’s Part Assessment and Cost Tool officially went live on Air Force Cloud One, the first Advanced Manufacturing application to do so.
Continue reading
The new Heat-Flex 7000 thermal insulative coating system from Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine, Cleveland, Ohio, offers personnel protection, insulating capabilities and solar heat reflectivity for an array of industrial applications.
Continue reading
Onsemi, Scottsdale, Ariz., opened an application test lab in Piestany, Slovakia, focused on the advancement of system solutions for battery/plug-in hybrid/electric vehicles and energy infrastructure power conversion systems.
Continue reading
Weebit Nano Limited, Israel, a leading developer of advanced memory technologies for the global semiconductor industry, and SkyWater Technology, Bloomington, Minn., the trusted technology realization partner, announced that Weebit’s Resistive Random-Access Memory IP module has been fully qualified in SkyWater’s 130nm CMOS process at temperatures of up to 125 degrees Celsius – the temperature specified for Grade-1 automotive applications.
Continue reading
Oxford Instruments, England, has brought together the best of its analytical innovations to form the Oxford Instruments Innovation Center, a state-of-the-art facility at its High Wycombe site.
Continue reading
Scientists have tried to use additive manufacturing—better known as 3D printing—to recreate complex structures from hands to hearts. However, the technology stumbles when integrating multiple materials into one printing process. 3D printing a robotic hand, for example, requires multiple printers—one to make the skeleton, another for soft tissue materials—and the assembly of parts. These multiple steps increase manufacturing time and complexity.
Scientists have long sought to combine different materials into a single 3D printing process. A team from the soft robotics lab at ETH Zurich has found a way.
The team equipped a 3D inkjet printer—which is based on the same technology in normal office printers—with machine vision, allowing it to rapidly adapt to different materials. The approach, called vision-controlled jetting, continuously gathers information about a structure’s shape during printing to fine-tune how it prints the next layer, regardless of the type of material.
In a test, the team 3D printed a synthetic hand in one go. Complete with skeleton, ligaments, and tendons, the hand can grasp different objects when it “feels” pressure at its fingertips.
They also 3D printed a structure like a human heart, complete with chambers, one-way valves, and the ability to pump fluid at a rate roughly 40 percent of an adult human’s heart.
Recreating a structure using conventional methods is tedious and error-prone. Engineers cast a mold to form the desired shape—say, the skeleton of a hand—then combine the initial structure with other materials.
It’s a mind-numbing process requiring careful calibration. Like installing a cabinet door, any errors leave it lopsided. For something as complex as a robot hand, the results can be rather Frankenstein.
Traditional methods also make it difficult to incorporate materials with different properties, and they tend to lack the fine details required in something as complex as a synthetic hand. All these limitations kneecap what a robotic hand—and other functional structures—can do.
Then 3D inkjet printing came along. Common versions of these printers squeeze a liquid resin material through hundreds of thousands of individually controlled nozzles—like an office printer printing a photo at high resolution. Once a layer is printed, a UV light “sets” the resin, turning it from liquid to solid. Then the printer gets to work on the next layer. In this way, the printer builds a 3D object, layer by layer, at the microscopic level.
Although incredibly quick and precise, the technology has its problems. It isn’t great at binding different materials together, for instance. To 3D print a functional robot, engineers must either print parts with multiple printers and then assemble them after, or they can print an initial structure, cast around the part, and add additional types of materials with desired properties.
One main drawback is the thickness of each layer isn’t always the same. Differences in the speed of “ink,” interference between nozzles, and shrinkage during the “setting” process can all cause tiny differences. But these inconsistencies add up with more layers, resulting in malfunctioning objects and printing failure.
Engineers tackle this problem by adding a blade or roller. Like flattening newly laid concrete during roadwork, this step levels each layer before the next one starts. The solution, unfortunately, comes with other headaches. Because the rollers are only compatible with some materials—others gunk up the scraper—they limit the range of materials that can be used.
What if we don’t need this step at all?
The team’s solution is machine vision. Rather than scraping away extra material, scanning each layer as it’s printing helps the system detect and compensate for small mistakes in real-time.
The machine vision system uses four cameras and two lasers to scan the entire printing surface at microscopic resolution.
This process helps the printer self-correct, explained the team. By understanding where there’s too much or too little material, the printer can change the amount of ink deposited in the next layer, essentially filling previous “potholes.” The result is a powerful 3D printing system in which extra material doesn’t need to be scraped off.
This isn’t the first time machine vision has been used in 3D printers. But the new system can scan 660 times faster than older ones, and it can analyze the growing structure’s physical shape in less than a second, wrote Kong. This allows the 3D printer to access a much larger library of materials, including substances that support complex structures during printing but are removed later.
As a test, the team printed a synthetic hand with two types of materials: a rigid, load-bearing material to act as a skeleton and a soft bendable material to make tendons and ligaments. They printed channels throughout the hand to control its movement with air pressure and at the same time integrated a membrane to sense touch—essentially, the fingertips.
They hooked the hand to external electrical components and integrated it into a little walking robot. Thanks to its pressure-sensing fingertips, it could pick up different objects—a pen or an empty plastic water bottle.
The system also printed a human-like heart structure with multiple chambers. When pressurizing the synthetic heart, it pumped fluids like its biological counterpart.
Everything was printed in one go.
For more information: Nature
Artificial intelligence is helping engineers build solar panels out of a “miracle material”.
Scientists have long been excited about the possibility of new perovskite tandem solar cells, which could help bring the vastly improved efficiency of perovskite to mass production. They have an efficiency of more than 33 percent, dramatically higher than conventional silicon solar cells.
Those tandem solar cells come with a host of other benefits, too. They rely on inexpensive raw materials and can be made relatively easily.
Engineers have faced a problem, however, in making them cheaply and at scale. To make them efficient, manufacturers need to make a very thin, high-grade layer of perovskite.
Doing that is difficult. It relies on a complex process that varies significantly, seemingly with little explanation.
Trying to improve that process has often relied on a gradual process of trying out new possibilities through trial and error.
Now scientists have successfully built a new system that uses artificial intelligence to try and work out how to build those layers better. Instead of picking through video recordings to work out how different layers work, researchers were able to train a computer system to spot the hidden signs of good and bad coatings.
After the system was built, it was able to be used to better understand how to change the production to make it more efficient, researchers said.
“These are extremely exciting results,” said Ulrich W Paetzold, a researcher from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, who worked on the new study. “Thanks to the combined use of AI, we have a solid clue and know which parameters need to be changed in the first place to improve production.
“Now we are able to conduct our experiments in a more targeted way and are no longer forced to look blindfolded for the needle in a haystack. This is a blueprint for follow-up research that also applies to many other aspects of energy research and materials science.”
For more information: Advanced Materials
Materials scientist Frank Mücklich, Professor of Functional Materials at Saarland University, Germany, has developed a laser surface texturing procedure that makes the surfaces of electrical contacts more stable and more efficient.
Continue reading
Samsung Electronics Co., South Korea, the world’s largest memory chipmaker, plans to unveil an advanced three-dimensional chip packaging technology to compete with foundry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Continue reading
United Safety & Survivability Corporation, Exton, Pa., a global leader in advanced safety solutions, launched its latest innovation, a groundbreaking lithium-ion battery failure detection sensor that could help prevent electric vehicle fires before they happen and sets a new standard in safety for electric vehicles across industries.
Continue reading
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, along with paleontologists from Spain and Poland, have utilized fossil records to create a soft robotic model of Pleurocystitid. This marine organism, which lived about 450 million years ago, is thought to be among the earliest echinoderms that could move using a muscular stem.
The research seeks to broaden the modern perspective of animal design and movement by introducing a new field of study – Paleobionics – aimed at using Softbotics, robotics with flexible electronics and soft materials, to understand the biomechanical factors that drove evolution using extinct organisms.
“Softbotics is another approach to inform science using soft materials to construct flexible robot limbs and appendages. Many fundamental principles of biology and nature can only fully be explained if we look back at the evolutionary timeline of how animals evolved. We are building robot analogs to study how locomotion has changed,” said Carmel Majidi, lead author and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
With humans’ time on earth representing only 0.007% of the planet’s history, the modern-day animal kingdom that influences the understanding of evolution and inspires today’s mechanical systems is only a fraction of all creatures that have existed through history.
Using fossil evidence to guide their design and a combination of 3D printed elements and polymers to mimic the flexible columnar structure of the moving appendage, the team demonstrated that pleurocystitids were likely able to move over the sea bottom by means of a muscular stem that pushed the animal forward.
Despite the absence of a current-day analog (echinoderms have since evolved to include modern-day starfish and sea urchins), pleurocystitids have been of interest to paleontologists due to their pivotal role in echinoderm evolution.
The team determined that wide sweeping movements were likely the most effective motion and that increasing the length of the stem significantly increased the animals’ speed without forcing it to exert more energy.
“Researchers in the bio-inspired robotics community need to pick and choose important features worth adopting from organisms,” explained Richard Desatnik, PhD candidate and co-first author.
“Essentially, we have to decide on good locomotion strategies to get our robots moving. For example, would a starfish robot really need to use 5 limbs for locomotion or can we find a better strategy?” added Zach Patterson, CMU alumnus and co-first author.
Now that the team has demonstrated that they can use Softbotics to engineer extinct organisms, they hope to explore other animals, like the first organism that could travel from sea to land – something that can’t be studied in the same way using conventional robot hardware.
“Bringing a new life to something that existed nearly 500 million years ago is exciting in and of itself, but what really excites us about this breakthrough is how much we will be able to learn from it,” said Phil LeDuc, co-author, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “We aren’t just looking at fossils in the ground, we are trying to better understand life through working with amazing paleontologists.”
For more information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Image: A pleurocystitid fossil and pleurocystitid robot replica. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering.
Intertek, England, a leading total quality assurance provider to industries worldwide, unveiled its new Battery Xcellence Center in Mestre, Italy. Featuring the latest technologies for battery and energy storage systems testing, paired with unrivalled industry expertise, this new center of excellence will meet industry’s increasing need for fast and reliable testing, certification, and assurance services.
The 500 sqm facility is equipped with state-of-the-art battery cyclers, climatic and salt spray chambers, vibration plans, and mechanical testing equipment as well as two ATEX certified anti-fire containers and a dedicated altitude test chamber, enabling it to meet testing needs for transportation and storage safety, functional safety, and performance for a wide range of cells and battery packs.
As one of the world’s fastest growing industry sectors, the battery market is estimated to reach €135 billion globally and €35 billion in the EU by 2030. A pioneer in this space with specialist battery capabilities strategically located in the USA, China, Taiwan, India, Hong Kong, and Europe, Intertek is working at the forefront of the industry, helping its customers to shape the future of energy storage and mobility.
This new state-of-the-art facility in Italy complements Intertek’s existing European battery centers of excellence in the Nordics, UK, and Germany, allowing the company to bring its expertise from more mature battery markets to Italy and the wider South Europe region. The Italian team will be supporting businesses across a range of sectors, including automotive, transportation, energy, and consumer goods, to successfully take their products from initial design phases through to compliance evaluation and global market access.
At the official opening of the Mestre Battery Xcellence Centre, André Lacroix, Chief Executive Officer of Intertek, said: “Sustainability is the movement of our time, and we at Intertek are pioneering the global Quality Assurance industry to help our clients on their sustainability journeys. On the road to Net Zero, we know energy storage is more critical than ever, and with the electrification of society moving at pace we are continuously investing in the future of electrification. This new state-of-the-art-facility enables our customers in this exciting region to benefit from our cutting-edge technology and industry-leading experts, helping them navigate the rapidly evolving regulatory environment for batteries and battery-operated products.”
Arianna Fogar, General Manager for Italy’s Electrical business, said: “Italy is the second largest market in the EU for domestic energy storage systems, as well as a key hub for the European automotive supply chain. We are delighted to be able to meet the industry’s need for local assurance, testing and certification services in this dynamic region with the opening of our pioneering battery and energy storage laboratory.”
As the energy density of battery packs for vehicles and grid energy storage increases, how can we make high-density energy systems less hazardous and more reliable? That’s the question explored by scientists at Exponent Inc., Menlo Park, Calif.
Their new technical paper, “Understanding the Fundamental Mechanisms of Battery Thermal Runaway Propagation and Mitigation” published by the Society of Automotive Engineers, explains how severe thermal runaway scenarios can occur and outlines the tenets of successful mitigation to reduce these hazards.
Thermal runaway events often begin with the failure of a single battery cell or group of cells, cascading to other neighboring cells, and increasing in severity as the stored energy of the battery pack is released. To reduce the likelihood and severity of these scenarios, the scientists discuss design strategies that can impede propagation of thermal runaway events between cells.
To implement these design strategies and moderation measures, the authors suggest that design engineers first develop a deep understanding of the mechanisms that drive battery thermal runaway propagation. To start, the authors outline a number of the factors that drive many cell failures and runaway events such as acute exposure of a cell to high temperatures, mechanical abuse, and flaws in the construction of either individual cells or the battery pack.
The paper then discusses the mechanisms by which thermal runaway propagation can occur between cells and provides details on the fundamentals of these methods. In addition, the authors provide an overview of potential mitigation approaches to prevent thermal runaway propagation that are currently used in industry and commentary on pathways for developing an effective protection strategy.
For more information:
Exponent, Inc.
ASG AMF Engineering, a precision engineering company known for manufacturing components and assemblies for research facilities across Europe, announced a significant investment in an additional factory in Wirral, England.
The company will continue to retain its existing premises for machining, creating additional space for future investment. It has enabled the company to increase the size of its clean assembly facility, chemical cleaning and welding processes.
It has also allowed the firm to invest around £400,000 in automated thermal spraying equipment and expanding its UHV cleaning facility.
The new factory unit represents a major step forward for ASG AMF Engineering, allowing the company to streamline its operations and enhance its service offerings. One of the key highlights of this expansion is the additional space created and the ability for further investment in the latest technology.
A £500,000 investment in an additional large 5-axis machining center with pallet loader will enable fully automated lights out machining. This investment will significantly improve the company’s capabilities and increase production capacity.
ASG AMF Engineering’s new thermal spray and cleaning facility has led to increased efficiency and productivity. By automating these processes, the company has freed up skilled labor, ensuring a smoother workflow and maintaining the highest quality standards in the industry. The new factory unit will also facilitate the creation of new jobs, contributing to the local economy and offering employment opportunities within the Wirral community.
ASG AMF Engineering is well-known for its commitment to quality and precision in manufacture of complex components and assemblies. The company’s primary customer base includes prominent names in the semiconductor industry and analytical science, such as ESRF, ILL, CERN. With this expansion, ASG AMF Engineering is poised to better serve its existing clients and cater to the growing demands of these industries.
For more information:
ASG Group
Motion control is necessary to ensure operator safety and coating quality. Although handheld spraying has been carried out for nearly a century, it is not the preferred or safest means of spraying. The thermal spray environment is harsh and not suited for handheld operations.
Safety has become more of an issue as HVOF and plasma energies and velocities have continued to increase. Operator fatigue (typical surface speeds are 30 m/min, or 1200 in/min) and inconsistency also affect coating uniformity. Part- and gun-handling equipment is required to eliminate the operator from the process. Commercially available, off-the-shelf motion-control equipment usually takes the form of turntables, x–y manipulators, and six-axis robots.
Where the production volume of a specific part warrants the investment, specialized tooling is often used. The disadvantage of using manipulators is in spraying small numbers of complex parts. In limited production runs, programming the manipulation equipment can be more expensive and time-consuming than spraying the part. There are many applications where handheld spraying seems to be the only practical approach to the problem, for example, bridges, boilers, architecture, artwork, one-of-a-kind parts, and so forth.
High-volume production spraying dictates that ancillary processes such as surface cleaning, masking, and grit blasting also be automated. Coating process cells, which represent the highest level of automation, may include pick-and-place robots to handle part loading and unloading.
The figure shows an automated thermal spray cell for coating aircraft engine components. In this plasma spray cell, the operator loads and unloads parts, and the spray cell does all of the operations, including process control, statistical process control, quality inspection for thickness, and final processing. Although expensive, such equipment is justified for coating applications where consistency is critical.
Image – Advanced thermal spray cell. Courtesy of Sulzer Metco.
This information is from ASM Handbooks Online, Vol. 5A: Thermal Spray Technology, Coating Structures, Properties, and Materials. To find this information (subscription required), click on the link below and scroll down to Figure 11.
Florida International University, Miami, Fla., introduced its new Cold Spray and Rapid Deposition Laboratory, a facility that will advance techniques in the repair, design and durability of high-performance materials. The lab is supported by a five-year, $22.9 million grant from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory.
The lab will advance additive manufacturing techniques such as cold spray, a technique where particles are blasted onto a material surface at low temperatures. The techniques are highly relevant to 3D printing, the rapid repair of machinery, and the coating of materials to make them stronger. The research stands to benefit the manufacturing of next-generation vehicles and munitions while also boosting workforce development and activity across the economy.
“FIU’s commitment to innovation and impact is on full display today as we celebrate the opening of this lab,” said Kenneth A. Jessell, president of FIU. “We show the world today that we are a leader for Army Research Lab Cold Spray Technology and an influential partner, together with our congressional delegation, in building up Miami’s tech, innovation and manufacturing ecosystem.”
The lab will be led by Distinguished University Professor Arvind Agarwal, chair of FIU’s department of mechanical and materials engineering at the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) and a renowned expert on advanced additive manufacturing techniques.
“From developing antibacterial coatings for biomedical use to assisting in environmental corrosion prevention in coastal communities, these technologies promise to deliver solutions to a myriad of real-world problems, while helping to train the next generation of researchers, technologists and STEM professionals in the fields of robotics, advanced manufacturing, aerospace technologies and machine learning,” Agarwal said.
The opening of the lab positions FIU as a key provider of research and talent for the Department of Defense and industry partners, particularly due to the increase demand for electronics and the expansion of both the aerospace and defense industries.
Image – Cold spay lab. Courtesy of: FIU.
For more information:
Florida International University
YouTube Video – First large scale cold spray facility in a Florida university
ProteanTecs, Israel, a global leader of deep data analytics for advanced electronics, and ELES, Italy, a worldwide provider of semiconductor device reliability testing solutions, announced their partnership for safety and mission-critical applications.
Continue reading
Sensiworm (Soft ElectroNics Skin-Innervated Robotic Worm), a highly intelligent, acutely sensitive soft robot from GE Aerospace, Niskayuna, N.Y., could serve as extra sets of eyes and ears for aerospace service operators, enabling less invasive inspection and repair of jet engines on wing to reduce downtime.
Continue reading
Spee3D, Australia, partnered with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force to introduce its innovative cold spray additive manufacturing technology to Japan.
Continue reading
The University of Michigan will lead an international team of scientists, engineers and educators to bring nature’s efficiency and flexibility to advanced materials and additive manufacturing.
Continue reading
CFN and Northrop Grumman researchers bring an innovative way to store and process information up to room temperature.
Continue reading
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a coating for steam condensers used in fossil fuel steam-cycle generation that is made with fluorinated diamond-like carbon, or F-DLC.
Continue readingNitrex, Quebec, successfully commissioned two nitriding systems for Alumil S.A., Greece’s largest extrusion company and the leading producer of architectural systems, with an international sales network in over 60 countries worldwide.
With this collaboration, Nitrex further strengthens its global presence in extrusion profile manufacturing, demonstrating the industry’s confidence in Nitrex’s expertise to optimize die performance, increase the throughput of extruded profiles, and reduce overall tooling costs.
Catering to various sectors, including construction, automotive, energy, and more, and serving as a key exporter to Europe, the Middle East, and the USA, Alumil has recently started up two pit-type nitriding systems installed at separate locations. The first system, an NX-1215 model with a 3-ton load capacity, is operational at Alumil’s facility in Greece. The second system, an NX-620 furnace model with a 1.2-ton load capacity, is located at the company’s operation in Serbia.
The turnkey solution provided by Nitrex includes the exclusive Nitreg® technology, ensuring consistent and superior nitriding results. In anticipation of Alumil’s plans to expand manufacturing capacities in Greece, the system installed at this location has been specially sized up to accommodate future growth.
University of Missouri researchers are using a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to launch a doctoral training program for future material scientists and engineers.
Continue reading
Rutgers scientists have devised a highly accurate method for creating coatings of biologically active materials for a variety of medical products. Such a technique could pave the way for a new era of transdermal medication, including shot-free vaccinations, the researchers said.
Continue reading
Advantest Corporation, Japan, announced two new additions to its MPT3000 solid-state drive test platform.
Continue reading
Oxford Instruments Asylum Research released its new atomic force microscope package developed for battery research, the Cypher ES Battery Edition.
Continue reading
Distortion in tool steels encompasses all irreversible dimensional changes. There are two main types: size distortion and shape distortion. Size distortion involves expansion or contraction in volume or linear dimensions without changes in geometrical form. Shape distortion entails changes in curvature or angular relations, as in twisting, bending, and/or nonsymmetrical changes in dimensions. In most cases both types of distortion occur during a heat-treatment operation.
Some of the main interactions occur between temperature, microstructure, and stress/strain. Especially for tool steels these interactions are mainly influenced by the carbon content in the steel matrix, the types and relative amounts of the alloying elements, and the carbide formation/transformation/precipitation characteristics of the alloy system.
For more information, click on the link below (subscription required). Then scroll to Figure 1..
R Schneider; R. Mesquita; W Schützenhöfer, Distortion in Tool Steels, ASM International, 2014, https://doi.org/10.31399/asm.hb.v04d.a0005958
Chrome plating is set to be banned over health-related issues, with one of them being the risk of lung cancer.
Continue reading
Sulzer, Switzerland, with expertise in rotating equipment retrofits and abrasive services, has helped a Philippines petrochemical plant solve a persistent reliability issue and prepare for a 64% increase in capacity by replacing critical pump components with new parts made from high-chromium C6 steel with an abrasion resistant coating applied using a high HVOF process.
Continue reading
