Designfax weekly eMagazine

Subscribe Today!

Archives

View Archives

Partners

Manufacturing Center
Product Spotlight

Modern Applications News
Metalworking Ideas For
Today's Job Shops

Tooling and Production
Strategies for large
metalworking plants

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.
View the video.

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.
View the video.

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.
Learn more.

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.
Learn more.

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.

Nanoscale programmable switches promise faster, more versatile chip-scale devices

By combining complementary mindsets on the leading edges of electronic and radiofrequency device engineering, a pair of researchers in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Young Faculty Award program has devised ultra-tiny electronic switches with reprogrammable features resembling those at play in inter-neuron communication.

These highly adaptable nanoscale switches can toggle on and off so fast, and with such low loss, they could become the basis of not only computer and memory devices but also multifunction radiofrequency (RF) chips, which users might reprogram on the fly to behave first like a cell phone's signal emitter but then, say, as a collision-avoidance radar component or a local radio jammer.

In this scanning electron micrograph of a programmable memristor switch, a pair of gold and silver electrodes is separated by an air gap of only 35 nanometers. Its switching behavior can be reprogrammed by applying a specific voltage across the electrodes that either leads to the formation or rupture of tiny silver filaments between them.

 

 

 

 

Reconfigurable RF systems like these depend on the availability of minuscule RF switches that can be integrated into chips and whose switching characteristics can be readily reprogrammed to serve different RF functions. So far, however, reconfigurable RF switches have been of limited use because of their performance drawbacks including added noise, size, power consumption, functional instability, and lack of durability.

As a step toward overcoming these constraints, two of DARPA's Young Faculty Award (YFA) recipients, Qiangfei Xia and Joseph Bardin, both Assistant Professors in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, teamed up to invent and demonstrate new nanoscale RF switches based on so-called memristor technology. Bardin (in the YFA program since 2011) brought to the duo expertise in reconfigurable RF integrated circuits, while Xia (in the YFA program since 2012) contributed prowess in the design and fabrication of nanoscale memristor devices. Inspired by discussions with their YFA mentor -- DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office Director Bill Chappell -- Xia and Bardin combined their strengths to devise what they describe in a recent Nature Communications article as "nanoscale memristive radiofrequency switches."

Memristive devices are switches whose ease or difficulty of toggling between on and off states is determined by the history of voltage and/or current applied to the switch structure. That means they have the potential to be programmed to serve a range of purposes by applying specific patterns of charges. Xia and Bardin's switches are made of two conductive elements separated by a thin dielectric of just 35 nanometers, or about the width of a virus. Changes in applied voltages or currents in these switches trigger the formation or disintegration of conductive filaments between the elements -- a process that resembles neuron signal transmission, where similarly tiny gaps are briefly and reversibly bridged by chemical neurotransmitters, allowing electrochemical signals to propagate from one neuron to the next.

"The nanoscale dimensions of these switches, their performance, and the relative simplicity with which they can be integrated into existing chip technology bodes well for inclusion in a new generation of reconfigurable RF chips. These can change from one type of radio to a completely different type without changing the hardware. We can even use one chip set to switch from a communications system to a radar, which are traditionally very different designs," Chappell said. "The fact that these devices are the brainchildren of an interdisciplinary team adds credence to a longstanding DARPA principle that the intersecting edges of technical fields provide especially fertile ground for innovation. Enabling young faculty at the start of their careers from different backgrounds to collaborate has proven valuable."

DARPA's YFA program identifies and engages rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions and introduces them to Department of Defense needs and DARPA's program development process. Since its inception in 2006, the YFA program has provided funding to 272 up-and-coming junior faculty. YFA awardees receive a $500,000 grant over two years, with an opportunity to be considered for an additional $500,000 under the DARPA Director's Award. More information about Dr. Xia's and Dr. Bardin's research can be found, respectively, at http://nano.ecs.umass.edu/ and http://rfic.ecs.umass.edu.

Source: DARPA

Published August 2015

Rate this article