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hyperMILL 2024 CAD/CAM software suite

OPEN MIND Technologies has introduced its latest hyperMILL 2024 CAD/CAM software suite, which includes a range of powerful enhancements to its core toolpath capabilities, as well as new functionality for increased NC programming efficiency in applications ranging from 2.5D machining to 5-axis milling. New and enhanced capabilities include: Optimized Deep Hole Drilling, a new algorithm for 3- and 5-axis Rest Machining, an enhanced path layout for the 3D Plane Machining cycle, better error detection, and much more.
Learn more.

One-part epoxy changes from red to clear under UV

Master Bond UV15RCL is a low-viscosity, cationic-type UV-curing system with a special color-changing feature. The red material changes to clear once exposed to UV light, indicating that there is UV light access across the adhesive material. Although this change in color from red to clear does not indicate a full cure, it does confirm that the UV light has reached the polymer. This epoxy is an excellent electrical insulator. UV15RCL adheres well to metals, glass, ceramics, and many plastics, including acrylics and polycarbonates.
Learn more.

SPIROL Press-N-Lok™ Pin for plastic housings

The Press-N-Lok™ Pin was designed to permanently retain two plastic components to each other. As the pin is inserted, the plastic backfills into the area around the two opposing barbs, resulting in maximum retention. Assembly time is quicker, and it requires lower assembly equipment costs compared to screws and adhesives -- just Press-N-Lok™!
Learn more about the new Press-N-Lok™ Pin.

Why hybrid bearings are becoming the new industry standard

A combination of steel outer and inner rings with ceramic balls or rollers is giving hybrid bearings unique properties, making them suitable for use in a wide range of modern applications. SKF hybrid bearings make use of silicon nitride (twice as hard as bearing steel) rolling elements and are available as ball bearings, cylindrical roller bearings, and in custom designs. From electric erosion prevention to friction reduction and extended maintenance intervals, learn all about next-gen hybrid bearings.
Read the SKF technical article.

3M and Ansys train engineers on simulating adhesives

Ansys and 3M have created an advanced simulation training program enabling engineers to enhance the design and sustainability of their products when using tapes and adhesives as part of the design. Simulation enables engineers to validate engineering decisions when analyzing advanced polymeric materials -- especially when bonding components made of different materials. Understand the behavior of adhesives under real-world conditions for accurate modeling and design.
Read this informative Ansys blog.

New FATH T-slotted rail components in black from AutomationDirect

Automation-Direct has added a wide assortment of black-colored FATH T-slotted hardware components to match their SureFrame black anodized T-slotted rails, including: cube connectors (2D and 3D) and angle connectors, joining plates of many types, brackets, and pivot joints. Also included are foot consoles, linear bearings in silver and black, cam lever brakes, and L-handle brakes. FATH T-slotted hardware components are easy to install, allow for numerous T-slotted structure configurations, and have a 1-year warranty against defects.
Learn more.

Weird stuff: Moon dust simulant for 3D printing

Crafted from a lunar regolith simulant, Basalt Moon Dust Filamet™ (not a typo) available from The Virtual Foundry closely mirrors the makeup of lunar regolith found in mare regions of the Moon. It enables users with standard fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printers to print with unparalleled realism. Try out your ideas before you go for that big space contract, or help your kid get an A on that special science project.
Learn more.

Break the mold with custom injection molding by Rogan

With 90 years of industry experience, Rogan Corporation possesses the expertise to deliver custom injection molding solutions that set businesses apart. As a low-cost, high-volume solution, injection molding is the most widely used plastics manufacturing process. Rogan processes include single-shot, two-shot, overmolding, and assembly. Elevate your parts with secondary operations: drilling and tapping, hot stamping, special finishes, punch press, gluing, painting, and more.
Learn more.

World's first current-carrying fastening technology

PEM^® eConnect™ current-carrying pins from Penn-Engineering provide superior electrical connections in applications that demand high performance from internal components, such as automotive electronics. This first-to-market tech provides repeatable, consistent electrical joints and superior installation unmatched by traditional fastening methods. Features include quick and secure automated installation, no hot spots or poor conductivity, and captivation options that include self-clinching and broaching styles.
Learn more about eConnect pins.

New interactive digital catalog from EXAIR

EXAIR's latest catalog offers readers an incredible source of innovative solutions for common industrial problems like conveying, cooling, cleaning, blowoff, drying, coating, and static buildup. This fully digital and interactive version of Catalog 35 is designed for easy browsing and added accessibility. Customers can view, download, print, and save either the full catalog or specific pages and sections. EXAIR products are designed to conserve compressed air and increase personnel safety in the process. Loaded with useful information.
Check out EXAIR's online catalog.

5 cost-saving design tips for CNC machining

Make sure your parts meet expectations the first time around. Xometry's director of application engineering, Greg Paulsen, presents five expert tips for cutting costs when designing custom CNC machined parts. This video covers corners and radii, designing for deep pockets, thread depths, thin walls, and more. Always excellent info from Paulsen at Xometry.
View the video.

What can you secure with a retaining ring? 20 examples

From the watch dial on your wrist to a wind turbine, no application is too small or too big for a Smalley retaining ring to secure. Light to heavy-duty loads? Carbon steel to exotic materials? No problem. See how retaining rings are used in slip clutches, bike locks, hip replacements, and even the Louvre Pyramid.
See the Smalley design applications.

Load fasteners with integrated RFID

A crane, rope, or chain may be required when something needs lifting -- plus anchoring points on the load. JW Winco offers a wide range of solutions to fasten the load securely, including: lifting eye bolts and rings (with or without rotation), eye rings with ball bearings, threaded lifting pins, shackles, lifting points for welding, and more. Some, such as the GN 581 Safety Swivel Lifting Eye Bolts, even have integrated RFID tags to clearly identify specific lifting points during wear and safety inspections and manage them digitally and without system interruption.
Learn more.

Couplings solve misalignments more precisely with targeted center designs

ALS Couplings from Miki Pulley feature a simplistic, three-piece construction and are available in three different types for more precisely handling parallel, angular, or axial misalignment applications. The key feature of this coupling design is its center element. Each of the three models has a center member that has a unique and durable material and shape. Also called a "spider," the center is designed to address and resolve the type of misalignment targeted. Ideal for unidirectional continuous movement or rapid bidirectional motion.
Learn more.

What is 3D-MID? Molded parts with integrated electronics from HARTING

3D-MID (three-dimensional mechatronic integrated devices) technology combines electronic and mechanical functionalities into a single, 3D component. It replaces the traditional printed circuit board and opens up many new opportunities. It takes injection-molded parts and uses laser-direct structuring to etch areas of conductor structures, which are filled with a copper plating process to create very precise electronic circuits. HARTING, the technology's developer, says it's "Like a PCB, but 3D." Tons of possibilities.
View the video.

Sandia Labs develops way to spot defects inside low-density materials such as foams and airplane-wing laminate layers

It's hard to get an X-ray image of a low-density material like tissue between bones because X-rays just pass right through like sunlight through a window. But what if you need to see the area that isn't bone?

Sandia National Laboratories studies myriads of low-density materials, from laminate layers in airplane wings to foams and epoxies that cushion parts. So Sandia borrowed and refined a technique being studied by the medical field, X-ray phase contrast imaging, to look inside the softer side of things without taking them apart.

Sandia has to be able to spot defects before they might cause a high-consequence failure, because materials don't perform well with voids or cracks or if they're separating from adjacent surfaces. For example, conventional X-rays can't see a defect called a grafoil in the laminate layers of an airplane wing without removing the protective copper mesh that diffuses energy if lightning hits the plane. And they can't see the critically important foams and other materials that guard against shock, high-voltage breakdown, and thermal stresses in nuclear weapon components.

X-ray phase contrast imaging measures not just the number of X-ray photons that get through the sample, as in conventional X-ray imaging, but also the phase of the X-rays after they pass through, offering a complete look at interfaces inside a structure.

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Amber Dagel holds a calibration sample to be loaded into the labs' X-ray phase contrast imaging machine. Dagel is principal investigator for the labs' work into using X-ray phase contrast imaging to study low-density materials. [Photo by Randy Montoya]

 

 

 

 

"For low-density materials like plastics, polymers, foams, and other encapsulants, this phase signal can be a thousand times bigger than the absorption signal (of conventional X-ray)," said principal investigator Amber Dagel, who studies physics-based microsystems.

X-ray phase contrast imaging could be used to inspect microfabrication packaging, integrated circuits, or microelectromechanical components and could be used to study ceramics, polymers, chemicals, or explosives.

Sandia's technique achieved X-ray phase contrast imaging in a lab without a synchrotron, an expensive piece of equipment the size of a football field.

More sensitive technique needed
Other current techniques aren't sensitive enough to distinguish between materials. "You have a dense material mixed in with a low-density material, and traditional X-rays can't see that low-density material," Dagel said. "So they don't know if the gaps are filled with the low-density materials or if that's air."

Take an orange. Dagel had one in her office and, recognizing it's really just low-density materials, she and her colleagues imaged it to demonstrate their system.

A conventional X-ray picture of an orange is fuzzy, without detail. X-ray phase contrast imaging clearly shows the differences between the thin layers of zest and pith and how those layers look compared to the thick pulp.

"When light hits the zest, it bends a little. It hits the pith and it bends a little bit more, then it goes through the pulp, and it bends another direction," Dagel said. "Every interface, every time the material changes within the sample, it bends the light a little bit. Different parts of your sample bend the light differently, and measuring that is what gives rise to the phase contrast image."

Sandia Labs' research began with a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project from 2014-2016 that demonstrated X-ray phase contrast imaging could show details where one material meets another. A new LDRD takes the next step, learning to make gratings that operate at higher X-ray energies.

Sandia National Laboratories' X-ray phase contrast imaging system fits on a laboratory table. The source grating fits in front of the X-ray tube on the right, creating an array of tiny X-ray sources, which travel to the sample that sits in the ring. Behind the sample are phase and analyzer gratings and the detector. [Image courtesy: Sandia National Laboratories]

 

 

 

 

Gratings, optical components that look like bunches of upright parallel bars, create interference in the X-ray beam, like an interferometer, merging sources of light to create an interference pattern that can be measured.

Gratings are critical to the technique, and using them at higher energies "will let us look at more samples, samples that are denser or samples that are bigger," Dagel said. They're difficult to make, but Dagel said Sandia's metal micromachining team led by Christian Arrington makes highly uniform ones up to 4 in. sq. That's considered large scale, and Sandia is able to make gratings as one large piece with good uniformity, she said. Grating size determines how much of a sample can be seen at once.

Most other groups studying phase contrast X-ray imaging are looking into the technique for medical imaging, while Sandia is studying it for materials science applications.

Gratings make Sandia system possible
"By sampling the bright and dark pattern, we're able to reconstruct on the detector what this pattern must have looked like," Dagel said. "That's if the light just goes through with no sample there. What if now I put something, like an orange, in front of it?" The light wave is delayed even more going through the orange, "so now you took that waviness and you gave it even more shape. We're measuring how this wave front, this phase, changes as it passes through the sample."

She believes the technique eventually will have an enormous impact, both for research and quality control on the factory floor.

"I think it can be useful in the research phase, when you're trying to understand the distribution of microbeads within an epoxy or how the foam is mating with the canister it's filling up, is there a gap there? Or what defects can I see in my airplane wing laminate?" she said. "I also think it can be used in quality assurance: I know what my part should look like, but I need to make sure there aren't cracks, there aren't voids."

Dagel and colleagues have presented their research at several conferences, including the International Workshop on X-ray and Neutron Phase Imaging with Gratings in 2015 and the SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing conference last year.

Source: Sandia

Published August 2017

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