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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.
Learn more.

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.
Read the full article.

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.
Learn more.

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.
Learn more.

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.
Learn more.

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.

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

A team of theoretical physicists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Boston College has identified cubic boron arsenide as a material with an extraordinarily high thermal conductivity and the potential to transfer heat more effectively from electronic devices than diamond, the best-known thermal conductor to date.

As microelectronic devices become smaller, faster, and more powerful, thermal management is becoming a critical challenge. This work provides new insight into the nature of thermal transport at a quantitative level and predicts a new material, with ultra-high thermal conductivity, of potential interest for passive cooling applications.

Schematic of thermal management in electronics: Local temperature increases occur as a result of current flow in active regions of devices and can lead to degradation of device performance. Materials with high thermal conductivities are used in heat spreading and sinking to conduct heat from the hot regions. [Photo: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory]

 

 

 

 

Calculating the thermal conductivity of cubic III-V boron compounds using a predictive first principles approach, the team has found boron arsenide (BAs) to have a remarkable room temperature thermal conductivity, greater than 2,000 Watts per meter per degree Kelvin (>2000 Wm^-1K^-1). This is comparable to those in diamond and graphite, which are the highest bulk values known.

Unlike metals, where the electrons carry the heat, diamond and boron arsenide are electrical insulators. For the latter type of materials, heat is carried by vibrational waves (phonons) of the constituent atoms, and intrinsic resistance to heat flow results from these waves scattering from one another. Diamond is of interest for cooling applications, but it is scarce and its synthetic fabrication suffers from slow growth rates, high costs, and low quality. However, little progress has been made to date in identifying new high thermally conductive materials.

Historically, fully microscopic, parameter-free computational materials techniques have been more advanced for electronic properties than for thermal transport.

"In the last few years with contributions from the NRL team, 'ab initio' quantitative techniques have been developed for thermal transport," said Dr. Thomas L. Reinecke, physicist, Electronics Science and Technology Division. "These techniques open the way to a fuller understanding of the key physical features in thermal transport and to the ability to predict accurately the thermal conductivity of new materials."

These surprising findings for boron arsenide result from an unusual interplay of certain of its vibrational properties that lie outside of the guidelines commonly used to estimate the thermal conductivity of electrical insulators. These features cause scatterings between vibrational waves to be far less likely than is typical in a certain range of frequencies, which in turn allows large amounts of heat to be conducted in this frequency range.

"If these exciting results are verified by experiment, it will open new opportunities for passive cooling applications with boron arsenide, and it would demonstrate the important role that such theoretical work can play in providing guidance to identify new high thermal conductivity materials," Reinecke says.

Thermal conductivity calculations from this group are in good agreement with available experimental results for a wide range of materials. The team consisted of Drs. Lucas Lindsay and Tom Reinecke at NRL and Dr. David Broido at Boston College.

This research, supported in part by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), gives important new insight into the physics of thermal transport in materials, and it illustrates the power of modern computational techniques in making quantitative predictions for materials whose properties have yet to be measured.

Source: ONR

Published August 2013

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