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Siemens Meet at the Machine: Be productive from day one of new CNC machine delivery

Traditionally, many programming, validation, and training activities begin only after a machine is installed. Not anymore. Meet at the Machine is Siemens' new initiative uniting machine builders, software, and automation for next-level CNC through a continuous digital thread across engineering, programming, virtual validation, and execution. By pairing a Digital Twin with Digital CNC powered by SINUMERIK, manufacturers can prepare, validate, train, and optimize workflows before your specialized machine's physical delivery! TRAK Machine Tools is the launch partner -- see what they are doing.
Learn more.

How to master metal powder management in 3D printing

What's the real cost of "good enough" powder tracking for powder-bed fusion 3D-printing machines? According to Tim Wischeropp, CEO and Co-Founder of amsight, the technology is rife with hidden costs. Every cycle, every handling step, every exposure, and every mixing decision plays a part. Surprisingly, though, with the right strategy, users can turn their losses into a competitive edge. Learn how.
Read the full article.

Aluminum oxide filament for FDM printers

Virtual Foundry, the company that brought us 3D-printable lunar regolith simulant, has a new product called Aluminum Oxide Filamet™, giving users the power to print alumina parts using the FDM printers they already own. This composite 3D-printing material allows researchers, engineers, and makers to bypass expensive ceramic tooling and produce pure ceramic components in-house. Print using a 0.6-mm hardened-steel, standard-flow nozzle on virtually any open-architecture printer.
Get all the material specs.

New metal extrusion retrofit system helps manufacturers get into ShAPE

A new invention from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory could soon help manufacturers more easily adopt the lab's patented Shear Assisted Processing and Extrusion (ShAPE™) technology, enabling faster manufacturing of superior extrusion products while reducing costs and energy use.
Read the full article.

Pneumatics: Dual guide rod cylinders and exhaust silencers

Automation-Direct has expanded its guided actuator lineup with compact 12-mm dual guide rod cylinders from Metal Work. Ideal for packaging and material handling, these double-acting cylinders feature 10-mm to 250-mm strokes, magnetic pistons, and integral sensor slots. Additionally, new durable acetal plastic silencers are now available in multiple NPT/BSPP sizes to reduce pneumatic exhaust noise.
Learn more.

Expanded injection molding capabilities

Pexco LLC has acquired Recto Molded Products and Legacy Extrusions, expanding its capabilities in complex injection molding, tooling, assembly, and engineered thermoplastic solutions for OEM manufacturers. The Cincinnati-based companies bring more than a century of manufacturing expertise, advanced production technologies, and value-added services that strengthen Pexco's ability to support customers from product design through full-scale production. Injection molding presses ranging from 55 to 500 tons.
Learn about Pexco and its value-added manufacturing services.

Custom 3D-printed steering wheel for jet dragster

Jet dragsters use General Electric J85 engines -- the same turbines pulled from U.S. military F5 Freedom Fighters -- mounted to a custom 26-ft chassis. The racers achieve quarter-miles in 5.5 sec, but standard metal parts can fail custom ergonomic needs. Traditional manufacturing of low-volume aluminum steering wheels demands long, 8-day lead times, high costs, and multi-piece assemblies. Larsen Motorsports solved this by replacing metal with continuous fiber 3D printing using the Markforged X7. Embedding continuous carbon fiber into an Onyx nylon matrix allowed them to target specific load paths, delivering a custom steering wheel that is stiffer, lighter, and faster to produce than aluminum.
View the video.

Application Spotlight: Light-duty ring in an air vent nozzle

Explore how a light-duty Spirolox^® retaining ring is used in an airplane air vent nozzle to regulate airflow. This application spotlight shows how the ring fits into a groove in the plastic housing, securing the nozzle during rotation. Designed for light loads and axial positioning, it offers a simple, economical solution that is easy to install and remove.
View this informative Smalley video.

Fasteners for automotive and agricultural equipment

Norm Fasteners has acquired an automotive fastener manufacturing plant in Plymouth, MI, expanding its North American footprint beyond sales, engineering, and logistics. The local facility produces metric fasteners (M4-M24) and engine bolts. Norm’s portfolio includes wheel bolts, studs, custom fasteners, and licensed MAThread^® and TAPTITE^® products, serving diverse automotive and industrial assembly needs.
Learn more or contact Belgin Tunce for more information.

3M Cooling Film for vehicle roofs launched

New 3M Cooling Film is a roof-applied heat-management solution designed to help keep vehicle cabins cooler, reduce cooling demand, and improve operational efficiency. The aftermarket product uses advanced thermal management technology to reflect more than 85% of solar radiation. Interior vehicle temperatures can be reduced by up to 10 degrees F with this product. Installs like graphics by professional installers using 3M adhesive technologies. Initially designed for fleet and rail operators.
Learn more.

Test your knowledge: High-temp adhesives

Put your knowledge to the test by trying to answer these key questions on how to choose the right high-temperature-resistant adhesive. The technical experts from Master Bond cover critical information necessary for the selection process, including questions on glass transition temperature and service temperature range. Some of the answers may surprise even the savviest of engineers.
Take the quiz.

New Air Holster Safety Air Gun Mount

EXAIR's new Model 5930 Air Holster provides a simple and convenient way to keep Safety Air Guns secure and within easy reach at workstations throughout a facility. Designed to give operators a designated location for their air gun when not in use, the Air Holster helps prevent misplaced tools while keeping work areas organized and efficient. Its practical design makes it an ideal addition to manufacturing, assembly, maintenance, and other industrial workstations where Safety Air Guns are frequently used.
Learn more.

Southco access hardware in rail applications

Discover how Southco's rail access hardware solutions help improve safety, reliability, and operational efficiency across modern rail networks. The video showcases a range of rail applications where Southco's access hardware plays a critical role, including driver cabins, lighting systems, tray tables, headrests, armrests, and other passenger and operator touchpoints. Designed to support dependable performance in demanding moving environments, Southco's solutions help operators streamline maintenance processes, minimize downtime, and enable more proactive asset management.
View the video.

Multi-zone tension leveler for hard-to-flatten alloys

Redex USA's Levelflex^® is a modular, multi-zone tension leveler engineered for continuous processing lines, including coating and heat treatment of aluminum alloys and where flatness is critical to coating adhesion and downstream formability. By stretching material within 95% of its yield strength, it corrects stubborn flatness defects in fewer passes. It comes in open-loop pure stretch or closed-loop tension measurement modes to optimize surface integrity and eliminate crossbow.
Learn more.

Hold any shape with ID and OD Form Holding Clamps

These simple OD and ID clamping solutions from Fixtureworks clamp onto your part in one easy operation, eliminating the need for custom fixtures. They allow users to clamp onto the inner or outer diameter of small-size, irregularly shaped work parts fast. Lots of options.
Learn more.

Suicide bomb-detecting device moves forward with Sandia engineer's help

On the chilling list of terrorist tactics, suicide bombing is at the top. Between 1981 and 2015, an estimated 5,000 such attacks occurred in more than 40 countries, killing about 50,000 people. The global rate grew from three a year in the 1980s to one a month in the 1990s to one a week from 2001 to 2003 to one a day from 2003 to 2015.

Terrorism experts say suicide bombings are pervasive because they generate publicity and require little expertise, resources, or planning. Perhaps most importantly, they are almost impossible to prevent.

Until now, said Albuquerque businessman Robby Roberson.

Wearing a mock suicide vest, Albuquerque businessman Robby Roberson stands in front of his company's CBD-1000 bomb detector, being adjusted by Sandia National Laboratories scientist JR Russell. Russell worked with R3 Technologies to iron out technical issues and bring the suicide bomb detector close to commercialization. [Photo by Randy Montoya]

 

 

 

 

Roberson's company R3 Technologies (Albuquerque, NM) and a group of other small businesses are developing a way to prevent suicide attacks by detecting concealed bombs before they go off. After a frustrating start, the group decided it needed more technical help and turned to the New Mexico Small Business Assistance (NMSBA) program, which pairs entrepreneurs with scientists and engineers at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

"The suicide bomber can walk into a crowded place unnoticed and inflict a horrifying amount of death and destruction," Roberson said. "It's very hard to stop. There was no technology to deal with it."

Roberson found a partner in Sandia sensor expert JR Russell, who has helped bring R3's Concealed Bomb Detector, or CBD-1000, close to commercialization over the past two years. "JR has been all over it and really turned things around for our company," Roberson said. "He brings in sharp people from Sandia. I love working with those guys."

Russell said his role largely has been to develop ways to measure how well the technology works. He zeroed in on the device's accuracy by analyzing false positives and pushed to redevelop software so it would more reliably detect a bomb threat. "After getting to know Robby and the team, I got more and more interested in the problem," said Russell, who enlisted Sandia engineers Matt Erdman and Michael Bratton in the project. "The technical part of me took over. Engineers want to validate the model, and we needed to validate the performance of Robby's system. We threw out a lot of the existing technology. Early versions were a good start, but not where the technology needed to be."

Screening for bombers in public places
The CBD-1000 uses X-band radar to detect metallic and nonmetallic explosives. Roberson said it can detect ball bearings, glass, nails, ceramics, rocks, and other materials frequently used as shrapnel in suicide vests.

The device is designed to detect bombs that current metal detector technology would miss and is intended for screening areas, such as airports, embassies, public and government buildings, border crossings, transportation hubs, and military compounds. It is portable and could also be used at large special events.

The CBD-1000 is the size of a cereal box, weighs about 13 lb, and is mounted on a tripod. It is electric or battery powered and works with proprietary embedded software. The device uses a spread-spectrum, stepped, continuous-wave radar to bounce a signal off a subject. The software analyzes both horizontal and vertical polarized signals to determine the presence of a potential threat. "If the person is not carrying a threat, the return signal is in the same polarity as when it was transmitted," Roberson said. "A threat will rotate the polarity of the signal, and it comes back differently."

The system sets up in about 15 minutes, and an operator, who does not need a working knowledge of radar, can be trained in 30 minutes. The scan takes about 1.3 seconds from 9 ft away. Roberson said the team is refining algorithms that will allow people in motion to be scanned at greater distances.

"We're working toward an instantaneous scan, so a person can be checked while moving through the beam field. And we hope to extend the range to 100 feet," Roberson said. "We want to take movement out of the equation. People who want to protect their citizens want to detect at a distance, keep the threat away. They want to scan crowds and stop threats before they get too close."

First system didn't work
The original technology was developed by another Albuquerque company in the early 2000s as a hand-held, radar-based sensor that police could use to scan people moving at a distance who they suspected might be armed. It evolved into a stationary system. After years of development, the technology just didn't work. "It became apparent that the system was not completely accurate," Roberson said.

Roberson and his father, Coda Roberson, founded R3 Technologies to further develop and commercialize the technology. They approached Sandia for help through the NMSBA and added partners including Manuel Rangel of APPI Inc. in Las Cruces, the acclaimed radar scientist Don McLemore of McLemore Enterprises LLC in Albuquerque, Lawrence Sher of Wind Mountain Research Associates in Albuquerque, and Julie Seton of Indelible Enterprises in Las Cruces.

"When JR came onboard, we all took a hard look at what we had, what it did, and how it worked," Roberson said. "JR came at this problem from a different point of view. He wanted to know everything about it. He helped us realize we had to go in a completely different direction. We reverse engineered the hardware and software. I can't stress enough how important JR was."

Russell said the Sandia employees studied noise surrounding the radar signal and how it impacted true positives and true negatives. They found a way to reduce noise and strengthen the signal, improving accuracy by minimizing false positives. "If the signal is bigger than the noise, it can scan people as they're walking. They don't have to stop," he said. "These breakthroughs will enable new applications in security of the future and will increase the marketability and desirability in the field of the CBD-1000."

Continuing the NMSBA collaboration
Roberson hopes to go to market this year after working with Sandia to further improve the machine's speed, distance, and accuracy. He said the CBD-1000 will cost about $50,000 and that several hundred units have been produced. The device is patented, and the company has received inquiries from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Singapore, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, he said.

Russell said he enjoys helping a small business. "It's good for our community," he said. "Helping someone succeed helps us succeed, too, as a lab. I get to see science though the eyes of business people. And I've learned things that will help me in my work."

Russell said R3's suicide bomb detector resonates with Sandia's national security mission. "We want to help our nation protect our people, our assets," he said. "If we can save one life, we can make a difference. The opportunity to make us safer from attacks is one of the idealistic things that drive us."

NMSBA was created in 2000 by the state legislature to bring national laboratory technology and expertise to small businesses in New Mexico, promoting economic development with an emphasis on rural areas.

Source: Sandia

Published March 2016

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