Technology for OEM Design Engineers March 6, 2007 — Volume 3, Issue 9
Custom Wave Springs Smalley can manufacture custom Wave Springs quickly and economically to meet your specific application requirements. Because force and deflection requirements are application specific, custom springs are often needed. With Smalley's No-Tooling-Cost™ manufacturing process, specials can be produced from .200" to 90" diameters in carbon steel, stainless steel or other readily available exotic alloys. Prototypes can be available in as little as two weeks for testing.
Visit Smalley and send us your spring design requirements.
More distributed power to the people
A common concern in systems and applications requiring large amounts of DC current is how to effectively and efficiently distribute power. Any power distribution system must be capable of handling hundreds — if not thousands — of amps, while allowing power to be tapped off wherever required. The system must be cost-effective, safe, reliable, and provide good electrical performance. Enter the PowerRail: a new pluggable rail power distribution system developed by Methode that is an easily installed, cost-effective evolution in blind-mate, high-power distribution technology. Read the full article
Low-cost Powerhouse ø22mm Low-cog DC Micromotor Micro-Drives announces the Series M2232U. The lDC micromotor has a motor-diameter of 22 mm and length of 32 mm. The M2232U can achieve stall torque of 25.62 mNm and speeds of up to 10,000 rpm. The M2232U can be combined with gearheads, encoders, and linear actuator for a complete minimotor DC drive system. Visit MicroMo.
Profits crash when firms delay product launches
Surprisingly, little previous research has attempted to estimate the economic consequences of postponed product launches, according to operations management professors Vinod Singhal (Georgia Tech College of Management) and Kevin Hendricks (Wilfrid Laurier University). In the recent case of Microsoft, the company lost 10% of expected sales from June to December 2006 because of delays getting Vista and Office 2007 into the marketplace. Sony also suffered greatly last year when design issues kept its highly anticipated Playstation 3 videogame machines off store shelves for months longer than originally planned. But can you really quantify the effect of delays? Read the full article
Polycarbonate resin critical for heart-failure therapy pump
For patients suffering from congestive heart failure, Orqis Medical Corporation’s Cancion System offers an investigational method to supplement the heart in its job of pumping blood to the body. Makrolon 2558 polycarbonate resin from Bayer MaterialScience LLC (BMS) is used for molding multiple components of the Cancion System, which serves to minimize damage to fragile blood cells and reduce clotting as the device augments blood flow through the patient’s descending aorta. Read the full article
Electric Replacement for Hydraulics! Exlar's electric linear actuators deliver the force of hydraulics and the speed of pneumatics. The patented roller screw technology offers peak forces in excess of 40,000 lbf., speeds to 60 in/sec, and stroke lengths to 96 inches, all with the ease and reliability of servo control. Visit Exlar online for more information.
Tracking pedestrians with machine vision
Machine vision systems have been used for years to automate processes, but people are the focus of new tracking efforts. The Institute for Digital Image Processing at Joanneum Research recently designed and implemented high-level computer vision algorithms for object detection, classification, and tracking applications to address topics such as how to detect and track pedestrians in video streams. This was no simple inspection with a pass/fail result. It involved tracking objects of different sizes, velocities, accelerations, directions, and colors. Read the full article
Can U.S. companies measure up — literally?
A new NIST report based on an analysis of more than 700 scientific and technical measurement challenges facing U.S. industry today calls on the public and private sectors to address those challenges by crafting a
"strategic, long-term approach" designed to sustain U.S. innovation at a world-leading pace.
"Innovation has in some cases been stalled," the study explains,
"due to lack of measurement technology to assure and
verify compliance or to resolve questions regarding
potential risks and hazards that emerging
technologies may pose." Read the full article
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