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High-capacity benchtop video measurement system

Optical Gaging Products has introduced the SmartScope^® E18, a compact, benchtop video measurement system. Featuring a 12" x 12" stage, IntelliCentric™-E fixed-lens optics, and VIRTUAL ZOOM™ technology, it offers fully automatic 3-axis performance without taking up floor space. Standard LED lighting, a rigid fixed-bridge design, optional touch probes, and advanced metrology software ensure accurate, repeatable inspection.
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Tech Tip: Fan selection - Why airflow is not just CFM

For many engineers, fan selection starts and ends with a single number: CFM (cubic feet per minute). Higher CFM feels like a clear win. More air moved must mean better cooling. However, in practice, this assumption is one of the most common causes of thermal problems, excess noise, and late-stage redesigns. Find out why.
Read this Orion Fans technical article.

Useful! Snap-together LED enclosure lighting

Seifert StripLite SL 4000 Series LED enclosure lighting provides bright illumination to 700 lumens. On/off switch and motion sensor models are available. Easily daisy chain up to 16 light strips. Magnetic or clip mounting. See video/info on website or contact Bristol Instruments for more information.
Learn about snap-together lighting.

The hidden hardware helping AI's heat problem: PCHEs

Across AI infrastructure, thermal constraints now connect semiconductor design with power and cooling systems. More compact, lighter, and efficient than conventional shell-and-tube models, printed circuit heat exchangers save floor space, reduce energy costs, and improve overall efficiency in dense, hyperscale environments.
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Nearly 1,000 parts: Industrial enclosure range expanded

Altech Corp. has expanded its industrial enclosure lineup to 10 unique series with nearly 1,000 parts! Designed for control, junction, and terminal applications, these plastic and aluminum housings offer up to IP69 protection. They mount directly to walls or panels, resisting chemicals, corrosion, flames, impacts, and severe outdoor conditions without sacrificing aesthetics.
Find your perfect enclosure today.

Cool Tools: MetraSCAN BLACK2 -- Next-gen shop-floor 3D inspection

You'll gain some superhero powers when you brandish FARO CREAFORM's new MetraSCAN BLACK2, a next-gen portable metrology-grade optical 3D scanner engineered to deliver total inspection flexibility on the shop floor. This unit boasts a 3-in-1 architecture that combines C-Track scanning, stand-alone scanning, and probing in a single metrology-grade system.
Read the full article.

Compact, touchless position sensors: Wear-free operation in tight spaces

Novotechnik's TFD-4000 Series of touchless linear position sensors delivers wear-free measurement in tight spaces. Featuring ranges up to 50 mm, IP67 protection, 12-bit resolution, and analog outputs, these reliable sensors operate from -40 C to 125 C across diverse industrial, mobile, and medical applications such as short-stroke linear valve positioning, solenoid valves, off-highway brake actuation, and more.
Learn more.

World's first 10-m safety laser scanner: See farther, protect more

Datasensing, Datalogic's Sensor & Safety and Machine Vision business unit, has launched the SLS10 Safety Laser Scanner, the world's first 10-meter safety laser scanner. Delivering a 275-degree scanning angle, 240-m² of coverage, and an 84-msec response time, the SLS10 protects larger workspaces with fewer devices. It features best-in-class angular resolution for precise AGV navigation, SIL-2/PLd compliance, dust immunity, and the new ONEGUI platform for simplified configuration.
Learn more and see it in action.

Accelerate AI-driven machine vision systems

BitFlow has announced full production of its Claxon CXP-12 frame grabbers, designed for NVIDIA GPU-accelerated machine vision. Across five models, the CoaXPress 2.0 lineup delivers up to 50 Gbps -- five times 10 GigE Vision -- eliminating data bottlenecks. The full CXP-12 specification ensures deterministic, high-bandwidth streaming to unleash modern AI inference models.
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Millimeter-wave imaging inspection in real time

With its new quality and inspection R&S IMAGER millimeter-wave scanner, Rohde & Schwarz aims to simplify the industrial inspection of packaged products. The system sees through common packaging materials at production speed without using X-rays, protecting both products and operators. The high-contrast 3D images are used as digital twins and can be automatically integrated into AI-powered fault-detection systems. Sees through plastics, cardboard, and composites. Applications include food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, logistics.
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What are single-loop process controllers?

PLCs are powerful, but complex control isn't always necessary. For standalone processes requiring single-variable monitoring -- like temperature, pressure, or flow -- a single-loop controller is ideal. See how single-loop controllers can streamline your next project.
Read the AutomationDirect tech tip.

Great Resources: Flexible circuit design guide

Tech-Etch uses advanced techniques to manufacture flex and rigid-flex circuits to exacting customer specs. Special processes include selective plating a single circuit with two different finishes, contoured circuits with variable metal thickness, semi-additive and subtractive techniques, open window or cantilevered contact leads, plus SMT for component assembly. Tech-Etch specializes in flexible circuits for medical, telecommunications, aerospace, semiconductor, and other high-reliability electronic applications.
Learn about flex circuits and get the guide (no registration required).

EMI Investigations: New immunity development system

Saelig Company announces the Langer E1 Immunity Development System for EMI investigations. This compact, affordable kit simulates burst and ESD interference to pinpoint layout weak spots down to IC pins. By eliminating "black box" guesswork early in development, engineers can efficiently identify coupling mechanisms, test measures, and resolve immunity issues before compliance failure.
Learn more and see it in action.

Battery packs for unmanned aerial vehicles

Re:Build Manufacturing has launched U.S.-assembled, NDAA-compliant lithium-ion battery packs for commercial, public safety, and defense UAV applications. Available in Core, Power, and Performance series, the packs use non-FEOC cells and are produced at Re:Build's advanced facility in New Kensington, PA. Re:Build also offers custom pack and battery management system development.
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Easy-to-use precision measurement system

Optical Gaging Products has announced the StarLite S1, a compact, semi-automatic 3-axis video measurement system. It combines fully automatic video measurements with manual stage motion and features an IntelliCentric-S optical system for high-resolution images. Powered by Measure-X software, this system delivers fast, repeatable, high-accuracy results, making it ideal for both shop-floor and quality-control applications.
Learn more.

New concept turns battery technology upside down

Pump-free design for flow battery could offer advantages in cost and simplicity.

By David L. Chandler, MIT

A new approach to the design of a liquid battery, using a passive, gravity-fed arrangement similar to an old-fashioned hourglass, could offer great advantages due to the system's low cost and the simplicity of its design and operation, says a team of MIT researchers who have made a demonstration version of the new battery.

A new concept for a flow battery functions like an hourglass or egg timer, with particles (in this case carried as a slurry) flowing through a narrow opening from one tank to another. The flow can then be reversed by turning the device over. [Image courtesy of the researchers]

 

 

 

 

Liquid flow batteries -- in which the positive and negative electrodes are each in liquid form and separated by a membrane -- are not a new concept, and some members of this research team unveiled an earlier concept three years ago. The basic technology can use a variety of chemical formulations, including the same chemical compounds found in today's lithium-ion batteries. In this case, key components are not solid slabs that remain in place for the life of the battery, but rather tiny particles that can be carried along in a liquid slurry. Increasing storage capacity simply requires bigger tanks to hold the slurry.

But all previous versions of liquid batteries have relied on complex systems of tanks, valves, and pumps, adding to the cost and providing multiple opportunities for possible leaks and failures.

The new version, which substitutes a simple gravity feed for the pump system, eliminates that complexity. The rate of energy production can be adjusted simply by changing the angle of the device, thus speeding up or slowing down the rate of flow. The concept is described in a paper in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, co-authored by Kyocera Professor of Ceramics Yet-Ming Chiang, Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering Alexander Slocum, School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation Gareth McKinley, and POSCO Professor of Materials Science and Engineering W. Craig Carter, as well as postdoc Xinwei Chen, graduate student Brandon Hopkins, and four others.

Chiang describes the new approach as something like a "concept car" -- a design that is not expected to go into production as it is but that demonstrates some new ideas that can ultimately lead to a real product.

The original concept for flow batteries dates back to the 1970s, but the early versions used materials that had very low energy density -- that is, they had a low capacity for storing energy in proportion to their weight. A major new step in the development of flow batteries came with the introduction of high energy-density versions a few years ago, including one developed by members of this MIT team, that used the same chemical compounds as conventional lithium-ion batteries. That version had many advantages but shared with other flow batteries the disadvantage of complexity in its plumbing systems.

The new version replaces all that plumbing with a simple, gravity-fed system. In principle, it functions like an old hourglass or egg timer, with particles flowing through a narrow opening from one tank to another. The flow can then be reversed by turning the device over. In this case, the overall shape looks more like a rectangular window frame, with a narrow slot at the place where two sashes would meet in the middle.

In the proof-of-concept version the team built, only one of the two sides of the battery is composed of flowing liquid, while the other side -- a sheet of lithium -- is in solid form. The team decided to try out the concept in a simpler form before making their ultimate goal, a version where both sides (the positive and negative electrodes) are liquid and flow side by side through an opening while separated by a membrane.

Solid batteries and liquid batteries each have advantages, depending on their specific applications, Chiang says, but "the concept here shows that you don't need to be confined by these two extremes. This is an example of hybrid devices that fall somewhere in the middle."

The new design should make possible simpler and more compact battery systems, which could be inexpensive and modular, allowing for gradual expansion of grid-connected storage systems to meet growing demand, Chiang says. Such storage systems will be critical for scaling up the use of intermittent power sources such as wind and solar.

While a conventional, all-solid battery requires electrical connectors for each of the cells that make up a large battery system, in the flow battery only the small region at the center -- the "neck" of the hourglass -- requires these contacts, greatly simplifying the mechanical assembly of the system, Chiang says. The components are simple enough that they could be made through injection molding or even 3D printing, he says.

In addition, the basic concept of the flow battery makes it possible to choose independently the two main characteristics of a desired battery system: its power density (how much energy it can deliver at a given moment) and its energy density (how much total energy can be stored in the system). For the new liquid battery, the power density is determined by the size of the "stack," the contacts where the battery particles flow through, while the energy density is determined by the size of its storage tanks. "In a conventional battery, the power and energy are highly interdependent," Chiang says.

The trickiest part of the design process, he says, was controlling the characteristics of the liquid slurry to control the flow rates. The thick liquids behave a bit like ketchup in a bottle -- it's hard to get it flowing in the first place, but then once it starts, the flow can be too sudden. Getting the flow just right required a long process of fine-tuning both the liquid mixture and the design of the mechanical structures.

The rate of flow can be controlled by adjusting the angle of the device, Chiang says, and the team found that at a very shallow angle, close to horizontal, "the device would operate most efficiently, at a very steady but low flow rate." The basic concept should work with many different chemical compositions for the different parts of the battery, he says, but "we chose to demonstrate it with one particular chemistry, one that we understood from previous work. We're not proposing this particular chemistry as the end game."

Venkat Viswanathan, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not involved in this work, says: "The authors have been able to build a bridge between the usually disparate fields of fluid mechanics and electrochemistry," and in so doing developed a promising new approach to battery storage. "Pumping represents a large part of the cost for flow batteries," he says, "and this new pumpless design could truly inspire a class of passively driven flow batteries."

The work was supported by the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The team also included graduate students Ahmed Helal and Frank Fan, and postdocs Kyle Smith and Zheng Li.

Source: MIT

Published June 2016

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