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July 14, 2015Volume 11 Issue 26


Image - Completely Updated New Full Line Catalog: <br>Full of New Fasteners
Completely Updated New Full Line Catalog:
Full of New Fasteners

Micro Plastics introduces its new 300-page catalog #40 containing thousands of fastening solutions for engineers and product designers. Find hundreds of new problem-solving products, including Spacers, Washers, Clips, Clamps, Ties, Bushings, Screws, Nuts, Rivets, and Plugs. Micro Plastics specializes in Nylon threaded fasteners, but the company also offers extensive product lines for wire management and circuit board hardware. FREE samples are available upon request.

Click here for more information.


In this issue of Designfax

  • Ford GT carbon fiber supercar
  • WWII 30-ton overhead crane
  • Wings: B-52 bomber weapons launcher
  • Battery bounce test often bounces off target
  • Wheels: Supersonic air blower for train rails
  • Wings: 3D-printed jet engine
  • Swelling magnets new discovery
  • Most Popular Dev Kit: 9-axis sensor toolbox
  • Top Mike Likes: Zipper-fin heat sinks
  • Top Mike Likes: 'Digital Manufacturing for Dummies'
  • Engineer's Toolbox: Combat cooler engineered to survive
  • Engineer's Toolbox: Stainless steel pressure sensors
  • Top Product: Turn pipe into conveyor
  • Top Product: Instant hybrid cyanoacrylate adhesive
  • Top Cool Tools: Creaform GO!SCAN 3D scanner
  • Videos+: Technologies and inspiration in action
    • How do you stop a 1,000-mph car?
    • Hacker's motorized gadget cracks combo locks
  • Most Popular Last Issue
    • Part 1 | Designfax Most Popular
  • New Products
    • Electrical, Mechanical, Motion
    Cover Image: Most popular items last 6 months: Part 2

News

First-ever snapshot taken of light as both a particle and a wave

Freightliner Inspiration Truck gets its autonomous vehicle license from Nevada DMV

Test of most-powerful rocket motor ever moves NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System closer to deep space

After falling into National Corvette Museum sinkhole, restoration of 1-millionth Corvette underway



Image - Select the best shaft for your bearing system
Select the best shaft for your bearing system
In order to optimize the friction and wear of your bearing systems, shaft and bearing materials that work well together are crucial. Cohesiveness between the shaft and bearing materials is essential, as a whole range of problems can arise if the wrong shaft material is used with a particular bearing. In this technical guide from igus, review what to consider when it comes to choosing the surface treatment of your bearings' shaft surfaces.

Read the shaft selection guide.


Feature articles

Image - Ford GT carbon fiber supercar aims to redefine innovation in aerodynamics, EcoBoost, and lightweighting
Ford GT carbon fiber supercar aims to redefine innovation in aerodynamics, EcoBoost, and lightweighting
Ford unveiled its all-new 2017 GT supercar at the 2015 North American International Auto Show (Detroit) January 12, and the crowd went wild. The ultra high-performance supercar serves as a technology showcase for top EcoBoost performance, aerodynamics, and lightweight carbon fiber construction.
Read the full article.

Image - 30-ton overhead crane is testament to U.S. manufacturing, WWII sabotage-plot intrigue
30-ton overhead crane is testament to U.S. manufacturing, WWII sabotage-plot intrigue
An 85-year-old overhead crane provided the ultimate testimonial to the quality of American manufacturing recently when it was discovered still in good working condition 10 floors below Grand Central Terminal in the middle of New York City. The 30-ton Whiting double-girder crane was spotted when it was featured in an historic film about how spies sent by Hitler tried to cripple the U.S. rail transport system during WWII.
Read the full article.

Image - Wings: Boeing modernizes B-52 bomber weapons bay launcher
Wings: Boeing modernizes B-52 bomber weapons bay launcher
Boeing and U.S. Air Force personnel have successfully installed the first prototype of a new B-52 bomber weapons bay launcher that improves the aircraft's "smart" weapons capacity and mission flexibility.
Read the full article.

Image - Battery bounce test often bounces off target
Battery bounce test often bounces off target
Don't throw away those bouncing batteries. Researchers at Princeton University have found that the common test of bouncing a household battery to learn if it is dead or not is not actually an effective way to check a battery's charge.
Read the full article.

Image - Wheels: Supersonic air blower sweeps train rails clean
Wheels: Supersonic air blower sweeps train rails clean
Like an SUV towing a trailer in winter, locomotives can lose their grip on slick rails if they're pulling too much behind them. Since the weather in mountainous areas can change quickly, railroads play it safe and usually only run trains long enough to pull through all weather conditions. But shorter trains can get expensive. That's why GE locomotive engineers developed a software-guided supersonic air blower to keep the rails clear.
Read the full article.

Image - Wings: 3D-printed jet engine is big leap forward for additive manufacturing
Wings: 3D-printed jet engine is big leap forward for additive manufacturing
A group of researchers at Monash University in Australia, along with international collaborators, has 3D printed all of the major metal parts for a small, business-class jet engine. These are final parts, not prototypes. The project, which took a year of scanning and optimizing components from an existing engine, aims to fire the engine up in the future.
Read the full article.

Image - Swelling magnets have potential to help energize the world
Swelling magnets have potential to help energize the world
A new type of magnet that expands its volume when placed in a magnetic field and generates negligible amounts of wasteful heat during energy harvesting has been discovered by researchers at Temple University and the University of Maryland. The discovery sheds new light on a 175-year-old principle.
Read the full article.

Image - Most Popular Dev Kit: <br>Freescale 9-axis sensor toolbox breakout board
Most Popular Dev Kit:
Freescale 9-axis sensor toolbox breakout board

Newark element14 has added the Freescale 9-axis Sensor Toolbox Breakout Board to its extensive portfolio of technology products, which includes the largest range of development kits available globally from one single source. The BRKT-STBC-AGM01 9-axis board can be soldered onto a prototype design to determine motion, position, and location as well as angle of rotation for real-world testing.
Click here to learn more.

Image - Top Mike Likes: <br>Lightweight high-density zipper-fin heat sinks
Top Mike Likes:
Lightweight high-density zipper-fin heat sinks

New zipper-fin heat sinks from Advanced Thermal Solutions (ATS) are protecting thousands of components from the dangers of excess heat at a lower cost than other high-fin-density heat-sink types. Zipper fins are machined from thin sheet metal, typically aluminum or copper, and are formed into custom shapes. Zipper-fin sinks can be designed with integral ducts to contain and optimize cooling airflow for LEDs as well as hot components in the telecom, datacom, military, and embedded electronics industries.
Click here to learn more.

Image - Top Mike Likes:<br> Get 'Digital Manufacturing for Dummies' book gratis
Top Mike Likes:
Get 'Digital Manufacturing for Dummies' book gratis

Proto Labs has put together a comprehensive guide to the major 3D-printing, CNC machining, and injection-molding technologies that are frequently used in digital manufacturing. The book helps readers to compare processes, explore material options, and see how digital manufacturing can fit into every stage of the product life cycle.
Get your copy on the house.

Image - Engineer's Toolbox: <br>Army combat cooler engineered for helicopter drops, blast survivability
Engineer's Toolbox:
Army combat cooler engineered for helicopter drops, blast survivability

Army researchers have answered a call from Soldiers in the field for better, safer insulated bottled-water containers. The result may be a life-saving product to protect Soldiers in vehicles during combat missions when water bottles could become dangerous projectiles during explosions.
Read the full article.

Image - Engineer's Toolbox: <br>What's the difference between 17-4PH and 316L stainless steel for pressure sensors?
Engineer's Toolbox:
What's the difference between 17-4PH and 316L stainless steel for pressure sensors?

Stainless steel pressure sensors and transducers are most commonly manufactured from either 316L or 17-4 PH. Both offer good material strength and good elasticity, but there are key differences that can have significant impacts on which material you should choose for your application.
Read the full article.

Image - Top Product: Turn ordinary pipe into a conveyor
Top Product: Turn ordinary pipe into a conveyor
EXAIR's new aluminum 3/8 NPT and 1/2 NPT Threaded Line Vac Air Operated Conveyors convert ordinary pipe into a powerful conveying system for parts, scrap, trim, and other bulk materials. Their small size makes them perfect for fitting in the cramped spaces and tight confines of many production lines. The Threaded Line Vac is designed to attach to plumbing pipe couplers, making it easy to build a complete system using ordinary pipe and fittings. Threaded Line Vac Conveyors eject a small amount of compressed air to produce a vacuum on one end with high-output flows on the other. Response is instantaneous. Regulating the compressed air pressure provides infinite control of the conveying rate.
Click here to learn more.

Image - Top Product: First instant hybrid cyanoacrylate adhesive
Top Product: First instant hybrid cyanoacrylate adhesive
Henkel has introduced Loctite 4090, a versatile, patented hybrid adhesive that combines the bond strength of a structural epoxy with the speed of an instant adhesive. This powerful combo delivers the first structural cyanoacrylate: an adhesive that offers rapid, high-strength bonding to a range of substrates along with impact and moisture resistance, and temperature resistance to 300 F. Versatile enough to solve both indoor and outdoor design and assembly challenges, the new tech greatly expands the capabilities of cyanoacrylates, especially in applications where traditional instant adhesives offer too little strength or are too brittle.
Click here to learn more.

Image - Top Cool Tools: Creaform GO!SCAN 3D scanner
Top Cool Tools: Creaform GO!SCAN 3D scanner
Creaform's Go!SCAN 3D is a simple, portable, and affordable 3D scanner that lets engineering users effortlessly capture the 3D shape of any object, including complex, freeform, and organic shapes. This is a really slick tool that lets you scan using a super-easy spray-paint motion style for accurate reverse-engineering or prototyping models. Dynamic referencing makes it possible to move the part during scanning, all while keeping the accuracy level up to 0.1 mm.
View the video.

Most popular last issue

Image - Part 1 | Designfax Most Popular Stories, Products, Cool Tools, And More
Part 1 | Designfax Most Popular Stories, Products, Cool Tools, And More
What were the most-read stories in Designfax for the first half of 2015? 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 the first of our two-part Designfax special.
Go to the Most Popular issue Part 1.

Videos+: Technologies and inspiration in action
How do you stop a 1,000-mph car?
Find out how air-brake technology from motion-control specialist Parker will help stop the 6.5-ton BLOODHOUND Supersonic jet-rocket car. The air brakes are deployed after BLOODHOUND travels 800 mph. Runway testing in preparation for attempting to break the World Land Speed Record is expected to take place in South Africa this year.
View the video.

Video Image
Hacker's motorized gadget cracks combo locks
C-C-C-Combo Breaker is a motorized, battery-powered, 3D-printed, Arduino-based device that can crack any Master combination lock in less than 30 seconds. According to an NBC News report, the device was created by Samy Kamkar, a hacker and engineer "who in April revealed a method of cracking Master locks by feeling carefully for hitches in the dial's spin, which hint at the actual combination and limit it to eight options. ... One part grips the dial and spins to the numbers as it goes through the process of checking for the resistance that indicates the combo. Meanwhile, a little lever tugs on the shackle at the right moments -- and to see if the lock opens after each attempt."
View the video.

Video Image

New products

Electrical/Electronics
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Mechanical
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Motion
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