Click this link if you cannot read the issue below: Designfax - Tech for OEM Design Engineers
January 07, 2014Volume 10 Issue 01


Image - Stainless Steel Retaining Rings from Stock
Stainless Steel Retaining Rings from Stock
Smalley has over 6,000 Spirolox® Retaining Rings in 302 and 316 stainless steel from stock in 1/4" to 16" diameters. Customs can be manufactured from .200" to 120". Smalley's manufacturing process allows for the economical production of stainless steel retaining rings. Spiral-type retaining rings are interchangeable with standard snap ring grooves and have No Ears To Interfere™ with the assembly. Free samples are available of stock parts to test in your application.

Click here to learn more about Spirolox® retaining ring advantages, types, and applications.


In this issue of Designfax

  • Wheels: Ford's new sheet metal 3D forming process
  • FEA aids Deepwater Horizon failure forensics
  • Is bigger better for golf driver heads?
  • Wireless devices go battery-free
  • Robots with flywheels inside
  • Inflatable space antenna
  • Wheels: Jaguar 4WD conquers U.S. Snowbelt
  • Wheels: Seat-adjustment design
  • 2-D tin may be the next super material
  • Engineer's Toolbox: Gear crowning
  • Top Mike Likes: Plastic parts with no molds required
  • Top Mike Likes: ID/OD retaining ring lock
  • Top Mike Likes: Brighter, stronger, cooler flip-chip LEDs
  • Top Product: Mini rotary actuator
  • Top Product: TI stereo speaker amplifiers
  • Videos+: Technologies and inspiration in action
    • Human-powered helicopter wins $250,000 challenge
    • 3D-printed M.C. Escher drawings (not a typo)
  • Most Popular Last Issue
    • Most Popular Stories Part 1
  • New Products
    • Electrical, Mechanical, Motion, Special: Materials
    Cover Image: Flywheels inside robots give MIT researchers surprising results

News

Better than diamond: NRL researchers discover novel material for cooling electronic devices

Cracked metal heals itself to the astonishment of MIT scientists

GE scientists working on electric air jets that could smooth out your plane ride

Chinese scientists produce world's lightest material

IMPORTANT message for gmail users



Image - Mobile Measuring Systems Deliver Best-In-Class Precision
Mobile Measuring Systems Deliver Best-In-Class Precision
Powered by DC micro-drives, a miniature, vibration-free measuring device that detects even the smallest irregularities has been created. Measuring devices for surface roughness measurement are usually rather large. In the past, the measuring object has always been brought to the measuring device rather than vice versa. In order to give this micro device best-in-class precision, vibration resistance, and portability, FAULHABER DC Motors from MICROMO were used.

Read the full article.


Feature articles
Wheels:
Ford develops totally new sheet metal 3D forming process

How do you stamp out prototype sheet metal parts without "stamping" them in a single blow -- and without a die to boot? No, it's not a Zen riddle. It's a question that Ford engineers have been working on for a while, and now they think they have the answer.
Read the full article.
Image -
Click here to get your Proto Labs
2014 Cool Parts Calendar.


Image - FEA aids Deepwater Horizon failure forensics
FEA aids Deepwater Horizon failure forensics
On the evening of April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon suffered a blowout while drilling in the Macondo Prospect, an area in the Gulf of Mexico 40 miles off the southeast coast of Louisiana. The platform caught fire, and two days later, it sank. Eleven crewmen were killed. The spewing oil caused the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. In this article, engineers use Abaqus Finite Element Analysis to do some of the detective work concerning what went so terribly wrong with the rig's blowout preventer stack.
Read the full article.

Image - Is bigger better? Not always when it comes to golf driver heads
Is bigger better? Not always when it comes to golf driver heads
Engineers at Adams Golf talk about the reasoning behind their development of the company's successful Speedline driver line in 2009 and how using NX Flow software from Siemens PLM Software in new-generation models has changed their engineering game and radically sped up their time to market.
Read the full article.

Image - Wireless devices go battery-free with new communication technique
Wireless devices go battery-free with new communication technique
We might be one step closer to an Internet-of-things reality. University of Washington engineers have created a new wireless communication system that allows devices to interact with each other without relying on batteries or wires for power.
Read the full article.

Image - Flywheels inside make for surprisingly simple self-assembling robots
Flywheels inside make for surprisingly simple self-assembling robots
Researchers at MIT have created some amazing small cubes with no exterior moving parts that can propel themselves forward, jump on top of each other, and snap together to form arbitrary shapes.
Read the full article.

Image - 'Magic powder' is secret to inflatable space antenna design for CubeSats
'Magic powder' is secret to inflatable space antenna design for CubeSats
Researchers at MIT have come up with an inflatable antenna design that may significantly increase the communication range of small satellites called CubeSats, enabling them to travel much farther in the solar system. But the real story is in the "magic powder" used to inflate the device.
Read the full article.

Image - Wheels: <br>Jaguar conquers America's Snowbelt with 4WD
Wheels:
Jaguar conquers America's Snowbelt with 4WD

For Jaguar, competing across the broad swathe of "Snowbelt" states in North America meant equipping its XJ and XF luxury sedans with four-wheel drive -- something totally new. Time was short, so international automotive design expert Ricardo was summoned to help. Jesse Crosse reports.
Read the full article.

Image - Wheels: <br>Johnson Controls has simple 'aha' moment in seat-adjustment design
Wheels:
Johnson Controls has simple 'aha' moment in seat-adjustment design

When engineers at Johnson Controls decided to try to simplify seat adjustment in small and compact vehicles, they didn't look at adding an extra dial, a new button, or even a better lever. They looked at how drivers of different heights adjusted their seats, and that put them on the right track. Literally.
Read the full article.

Image - Watch out graphene: 2-D tin may be the next super material
Watch out graphene: 2-D tin may be the next super material
A single layer of tin atoms could be the world's first material to conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at the temperatures that computer chips operate, according to a team of theoretical physicists led by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University.
Read the full article.

Image - Engineer's Toolbox: <br>Gear crowning: A cheap fix for noise
Engineer's Toolbox:
Gear crowning: A cheap fix for noise

With the demands for smaller gearboxes transmitting more power at higher rpm and incumbent demands for greater efficiency, gear engineers are always searching for new ways to reduce vibration and limit noise -- without increasing costs.
Read the full article.

Image - Top Mike Likes: <br>Plastic parts with no molds required
Top Mike Likes:
Plastic parts with no molds required

How often have you wondered what life would be like without having to worry about paying tooling charge after tooling charge for products in early development? The "No Molds Required" (NMR) manufacturing technology from Envision Plastics & Design could be your answer. This unique production process harmonizes a combination of sheet metal fabrication and woodworking practices to produce plastic parts used for enclosures, panels and shrouds, brackets and shields, medical-based products, and more.
Read the full article.

Image - Top Mike Likes: <br>ID/OD retaining ring lock
Top Mike Likes:
ID/OD retaining ring lock

Spirolox Retaining Rings, available only from Smalley, can operate in an internal and an external groove at the same time! Spiral-type retaining rings have many great benefits for the ID/OD Lock, some of which include concealed fastening, no required assembly tooling, and a 360-degree rotational capacity.
Click here to see application examples and more.

Image - Top Mike Likes: <br>Brighter, stronger, cooler flip-chip LEDs
Top Mike Likes:
Brighter, stronger, cooler flip-chip LEDs

TitanBrite Wireless Bonded LEDs from Lumex feature "flip chips" that are up to 15 percent brighter than any others in the market. In addition to the standard 3-W and 6-W LEDs, Lumex's TitanBrite Wireless Bonded LED is also available in 9 W. Wireless bonded LED technology, also referred to as "flip chip," offers several key performance benefits over traditional surface-mount technology (SMT) LEDs, including enhanced durability, enhanced heat dissipation, and superior light performance. A flip-chip LED is up to 15 percent brighter, 5x stronger, and 25 percent cooler than alternative technologies. Applications include: automotive interiors, appliance backlighting, industrial control lighting, medical lighting, signage, construction, and military.
Click here to learn more.

Image - Top Product: <br>Mini rotary actuator has highest torque and power output
Top Product:
Mini rotary actuator has highest torque and power output

New Scale Technologies has demonstrated a miniature rotary actuator module (M3-R) with torque of 0.17 Nm and speeds of more than 400 degrees per second in a compact, 60-mm-diameter by 8-mm-thick design. Resulting from the successful completion of a Phase 1 SBIR project for the U.S. Navy, the non-inductive rotary actuator module delivers higher power output in a smaller footprint than electromagnetic pancake motors or other piezoelectric actuators. Applications include guided munitions and missile systems, MRI-compatible medical devices, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) controls, gimbal systems, and computer equipment.
Click here to learn more.

Image - Top Product: <br>TI 20-W stereo speaker amplifiers reduce BOM cost for mid-power audio applications
Top Product:
TI 20-W stereo speaker amplifiers reduce BOM cost for mid-power audio applications

Texas Instruments has introduced a new family of four digital-input, closed-loop I2S amplifiers for mid-power stereo audio applications including TVs, soundbars, portable docking stations, Bluetooth speakers, and aftermarket automotive audio products. The TAS5760xx devices feature high switching frequency, allowing designers to use smaller output filter components to reduce overall solution size and bill of materials (BOM) cost. They stream 20-W continuous power per channel without a heatsink and deliver the industry's best performance specifications, including THD+N of 0.03 percent at 1 W, crosstalk of -92 dB, and 66-uV idle channel noise.
Click here to learn more.

Most popular last issue

Image - Most Popular Stories Part 1
Most Popular Stories Part 1
What's the No. 1 most-read story in Designfax for 2013? What research stories did readers find most interesting in the past six months? What products and tools generated the most buzz? Find out these answers and more in our best-of issue Part 1.
Read the full article.

Videos+: Technologies and inspiration in action
Bigger really is better:
'Impossible dream' achieved in Sikorsky human-powered helicopter challenge

After 33 years of trying, a team has finally won the American Helicopter Society (AHS) Igor I. Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter Competition -- and its $250,000 prize! The challenge: fly a human-powered helicopter above 3 m and hover for more than 60 sec in a 10-m x 10-m space. Canadian team AeroVelo Inc., comprised largely of students at the University of Toronto, flew its extremely novel (and huge!) ATLAS pedal-powered helicopter for 64 sec June 13. A single pilot powered the craft, which featured four, nearly 70-ft rotors attached to a 115-lb carbon-tube and polymer frame. The AHS first issued the human-powered flight challenge in 1980, with an initial prize of $10,000. More than 20 human-powered helicopters have been designed and built since the competition began, though only a handful have gotten off the ground. Officials from AHS International verified the flight data over several weeks and concluded that it met all of the criteria necessary to win the competition. Sikorsky increased the prize to a quarter-million dollars in May 2009. Who would have guessed that this would be the winning design? Incredible.
View the Sikorsky video.

Video Image
Making M.C. Escher's drawings come to life with 3D printing
Is it possible to create 3D objects that represent some of M.C. Escher's head-scratching 2D drawings? Well that is what Prof. Gershon Elber of Israel's Technion's Faculty of Computer Science has done. See the impossible come to life using an Objet 3D printer. Super cool.
View the video.

Video Image

New products

Electrical/Electronics
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Mechanical
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Materials
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