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What are Onshape Custom Features?

Certified Onshape Professional Too Tall Toby explains how to supercharge your workflow using community-created tools. In this insightful tutorial, he dives into the world of FeatureScript -- the powerful coding language behind Onshape. Learn where to find new scripts and how to use them. Save time. Learn new skills, shortcuts, and maybe even better ways to do things. Incorporate Custom Features into your everyday work. Very useful.
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What can you do with touchless magnetic angle sensors?

Novotechnik has put together an informative video highlighting real-world applications for their RFC, RFE, and RSA Series touchless magnetic angle sensors. You may be surprised at the variety of off-highway, marine, material handling, and industrial uses. You'll learn how they work (using a Hall effect microprocessor to detect position) and their key advantages, including eliminated wear and tear on these non-mechanical components. We love when manufacturers provide such useful examples.
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What can the new Autodesk Inventor AI Assistant do for you?

Autodesk Assistant brings industry-specific context to help execute tasks and orchestrate actions across your 3D models -- not just answer questions. Designed to understand your workflows, Assistant appears as a dockable panel alongside your Inventor workspace and includes the ability to perform complex tasks or gather information from your designs without writing a single line of code. Find out what this new AI "colleague" can do for you.
Watch this informative Autodesk video.

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.

Next-gen multi-touch panels

Beckhoff's Next line of multi-touch control panels and panel PCs is engineered for demanding human-machine interface and control tasks. These panels offer convenient operation with advanced multi-touch technology, a high-quality look and feel, anti-glare and anti-ghosting effects, and a wide choice of formats (from 7 to 23.8 in.) and options. A main draw is the line's attractive pricing.
Learn more.

Most powerful handheld 3D laser scanner on the market

Creaform, a business of AMETEK, has launched HandySCAN 3D|EVO Series, the most powerful handheld 3D laser scanning solution on the market. This innovative series features a built-in touchscreen display and an integrated high-res 12-MP photo camera, incorporating augmented reality (AR) and advanced on-scanner visualization. Users can streamline repetitive inspections and enhance quality control processes using the new auto-alignment feature. Powered by 46 blue laser lines with accuracy of 0.020 mm. The Creaform Metrology Suite includes four application software modules: Scan-to-CAD, Inspection, Automation, and Dynamic Tracking. So many more features.
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Continental develops first sensor to measure heat in EV motors

Global automotive supplier Continental has developed a new sensor technology that measures the temperature inside permanently excited synchronous motors in electric vehicles directly on the rotor for the first time.
Read the full article.

LEDs with highest output power available

The new OCI-460 SWIR LED series from EPIGAP OSA Photonics features markedly improved output power compared to the company's previous OCI-480 package and all competitive SMD SWIR LED devices. For example, model OCI-460 ID1550-XS operates at 1,550 nm and features drive current up to 1.5A to deliver approximately 13% higher output efficiency over EPIGAP's OCI-480 package. This impressive advancement features 96% higher output power compared to any other SWIR SMD LED currently on the market. Ideal for use in sensing, machine vision, and more.
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AI and collaboration in SOLIDWORKS

Discover AURA, the new AI assistant built into SOLID-WORKS, in this informative video from TriMech Group. What can AURA do for you? It can streamline workflows and make collaborating on and tracking projects even easier, for starters. Other top features of SOLIDWORKS Design 2026 are also covered. Some good tips here.
View the TriMech Group video.

Solutions for weighing and force measurement

Automation-Direct now offers Sensy 2172L series single point, 5510 series shear beam, and 2782 series tension/compression load cells that deliver flexible solutions for weighing and force measurement. They are ideal for applications ranging from small packaging scales to rugged industrial tanks and conveyor systems. Built from aircraft-grade aluminum or stainless steel, these models feature built-in overload protection, accuracies down to 0.03% of full scale, protection ratings up to IP67, and capacities up to 2,000 kg.
Learn more.

Top Product: Future-proof enclosure cooling

Seifert's new SLIMLINE NEO ushers in next-generation industrial cooling with natural refrigerant R290 (GWP 0.02) and high-efficiency inverter technology. It cuts energy costs with EER up to 3.6, reduces refrigerant charge by 75%, and extends electronics life. A fully redesigned, lighter, smaller enclosure delivers lower vibration, better component protection, and easier handling. Available in two elegant surfaces: stainless steel and mild steel, powder coated.
Learn more.

Coin cell supercapacitors: High capacity, quick release

Coin cell supercapa-citors are compact, high-capacity energy storage devices that rapidly charge and discharge and endure far more cycles than rechargeable batteries. They're ideal for high switching loads such as real-time clock and battery back-up power, battery-swap ride-through, and LED or audible alarms. SCHURTER's latest versions support up to 5.5 V and 100 to 1,500 mF.
Learn more.

Tech Tip: Mastering sheet metal bend calculations in Onshape

Mastering bend calculations in sheet metal design is a key skill that can impact the accuracy and manufactur-ability of your designs significantly. Explore the various options available to become a pro in this Onshape Tech Tip: K Factor, bend allowance, and bend deduction, with guidance on when each should be used. You will probably learn something even if you don't use this software.
Read the Onshape blog.

Digital Engineering: How a private jet gets a high-end refurb

Ever wonder how private jets get overhauled from standard OEM layouts to exotic, artful interiors? It takes engineering expertise, specialty design skills, and true craftspeople. Increasingly, it also takes automation provided by middleware to weave a digital thread through CAD, BOM, ERP, and PDM software.
Read the full article.

How AI is quietly transforming simulation

Is AI really useful, or is it just a passing trend? Balavignesh Vemparala, an R&D Engineer II at ANSYS, lays out a compelling case for how artificial intelligence is already hard at work in the simulation world with real results for users. From faster solves to accelerated workflows, improved quality and traceability, generative models, and more, discover what you might be overlooking when it comes to real-world AI application. Worth the read.
Read this informative ANSYS blog.

Weird science: Can electricity flow without electrons?

Strange metals defy the 60-year-old understanding of electric current as a flow of discrete charges.

We all learned that electricity is caused by electrons moving in a metal. Each electron carries a discrete charge. The picture is more complicated, because electrons repel each other. Any motion from a single electron may disturb a cloud of neighboring electrons. If the disturbance is mild, electrons end up moving in clumps instead of as solitary entities. Physicists call these clumps electron quasiparticles.

In the end, a current is still carried by discrete charges, except that these discrete charges are not technically "free" electrons. This collective motion, called a Fermi liquid, has been the standard theory of metals for six decades.

Surprisingly, many new conductors, named "strange metals," fail to obey this paradigm. In these materials, the electricity is not carried by discrete charges but by something else. Using a measurement technique called shot noise, researchers observed a radical quantum blurring of electrons into a featureless liquid.

Weird behavior: In a strange metal (translucent box), electrons (blue marbles) lose their individuality and melt into a featureless, liquid-like stream. [Credit: Image courtesy of Mario E. Norton, Rice University Office of Proposal Development]

Strange metals defy the orthodox understanding of electric transport via discrete charges. In these materials, the resistance changes linearly at low temperature. In contrast, typical metals carriers have a quadratic behavior in resistance change.

To determine whether electricity is transported in discrete chunks, researchers used a technique called "shot noise." Shot noise measures random fluctuations in a direct electrical current. These random fluctuations occur because the current is a flow of discrete charges, and each charge's arrival varies statistically. It's like when a small number of large drops of rain hit a roof. They do not all hit the roof at the same time, but rather their arrival is distributed. In this case, the shot noise is high. At the other extreme, if the rain is hard enough, there are no drops -- the flow of rain is continuous and featureless. In this case, the shot noise is zero. This is what seems to happen in strange metals.

Measuring shot noise without external influences is not easy. In a metal, the vibration of the atoms' lattice can push electrons around and obscure the shot noise. Researchers had to fabricate nanoscale wires so small that electrons pass through them faster than it takes to feel the ripples of the lattice vibrations. The experiments provided strong evidence that in the strange metal YbRh₂Si_2, there are no quasiparticles, and the current is not carried by discrete chunks. It's like electrons lose their identity and meld into a quantum soup.

The claim of absence of quasiparticles is a very strong one, and not all physicists are ready to accept it. These results will spark a flurry of high-profile investigations and contribute to the development of new theories of strange metals.

If individual electrons do not carry electricity, then what does? The Fermi liquid explanation of electrical transport is one of the foundational successes of condensed matter physics -- the study of solid substances. This new research challenges our current understanding and may lead to a new theory of electrical transport. The repercussions might be far reaching. For example, understanding the departure from Fermi liquid behavior might reveal the hidden workings of high-temperature superconductors, which in their normal, non-superconducting state behave like strange metals.

Source: DOE/US Department of Energy

Published April 2025

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