Topic

Product Focus: Specialty Metals

Round and Flat Wire Ulbrich, Westminster, SC, offers a fine wire stocking program for medical device developers who need round and flat wire quickly. Materials available include 304V, nitinol, tunga, L6050,...

Product of the Month

Additive Manufacturing Materials Victrex, Lancashire, UK has, developed a high-strength material for laser sintering (LS) that attains lower refresh rates, resulting in improved recycling for unsintered powder. Another...

Integrated Sensor Could Monitor Brain Aneurysm Treatment

Implantation of a stent-like flow diverter can offer one option for less-invasive treatment of brain aneurysms — bulges in blood vessels — but the procedure requires frequent...

Nanosized Traps Diagnosing Bacterial Infections

A new type of lab on a chip has the potential to become a clinical tool capable of detecting very small quantities of disease-causing bacteria in just minutes. The device is made of nanosized...

Training Artificial Intelligence with Artificial X-Rays

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds real potential for improving both the speed and accuracy of medical diagnostics. But before clinicians can harness the power of AI to identify conditions...

Microscale Superlubricity Improves Electromechanical Devices

Superlubricity — the state of ultra-low friction and wear — holds great promise for the reduction of frictional wear in mechanical and automatic devices.

Flexible Microrobots for Medical Tasks

A team of researchers has developed an integrated fabrication process that enables the design of soft robots on the millimeter scale with micrometer-scale features. To demonstrate the capabilities of their...

Improving Cancer Screening by Design

Every year, 50,000 Americans die from colorectal cancer, a common cancer that is easy to detect and can be effectively treated if caught in its earliest stages. Unfortunately, 38 percent of Americans...

Motion Control in Factories: Choosing the Right Solution

The need for Ethernet-based communication within the factory has grown over the past 10 years. Detailed information about the tasks and performance of machines at every stage is critical...

Technique Allows Mobile Robots to Navigate Autonomously

A technique was developed to quickly teach robots novel traversal behaviors with minimal human oversight. The technique allows mobile robot platforms to navigate autonomously in...

Single-Axis Motion Control Systems: Multi-Sourced vs. Single-Sourced

In today’s fast-paced industrial settings, speed and efficiency are key. Reducing time spent on sourcing, installing, and testing motion control systems can play a big role...

Popcorn-Driven Robotic Actuators

When heated, popcorn can expand more than 10 times in size, change its viscosity by a factor of 10, and transition from regular to highly irregular granules with surprising force. These unique qualities can...

Robotic Modules Modify Their Environment for Specific Tasks

Given the exact parameters of the task at hand, a robot can assemble a car door or pack a box faster and more efficiently than a human, but such purpose-built machines are not suited...

Unique Lift System Enables Installation and Servicing of Large Telescope Mirrors

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), under construction atop 8,737-foot El Peñón peak in northern Chile, is a partnership project of the National Science...

New Products

Multi-Voltage Motors Simotics SD Pro low-voltage motors from Siemens (Munich, Germany) are suited for mains-fed operation or with a converter for voltages up to 690 volts. There is generally no need to use special filters at the...

Collaborative Robots Fill Automation Gaps For Medical Device Manufacturers

When small and mid-sized medical device manufacturers envision a robot, many think of either huge industrial robots working in fenced-off areas in large factories or...

Tailoring Plastics Joining Methods to DIVERSE Medical Device Needs

The European Commission defines personalized medicine as, “a medical approach tailored to the patient or a group of patients for prevention, prediction and treatment . . ....

New Products & Services

Gear Measurement Software Software from Werth, Giessen, Germany, enables the measurement of any involute gear, as well as worms, worm wheels, and face gears. The method can be used to measure internal and external...

Using Direct Current with Inverter Technology Reduces Costs and Improves Control

Resistance welding with direct current (DC) using inverter technology reduces costs by improving quality, reducing maintenance, and increasing productivity....

How Second Stage Speed Influences the Molding Process

Hold speed or hold velocity? How many machines today have it, and what does it do to the process?

Research Collaboration Could Reshape Injection Molding

As Ralph Colby peers at the microscope image in front of him, he thinks he can make them out — “shish kebabs,” as polymer scientists call them. Nobody knows for sure what they are,...

Ensuring Injection Molding Quality for Medical Devices

Plastics are incredibly versatile. There are thousands of types available to satisfy a myriad of medical applications. Yet, certain plastics present special challenges during the injection...

Key Considerations When Selecting a Connector Solution

Electronics industry trends develop and change, technologies emerge and improve, and new applications bring new requirements and challenges. While this obviously has an impact on the...

Conformal Metasurface Coating Eliminates Crosstalk and Shrinks Waveguides

Researchers have developed a method to simultaneously control diverse optical properties of dielectric waveguides by using a two-layer coating, each layer with a...

A New Generation of Artificial Retinas Based on 2D Materials

University of Texas at Austin,Austin, TXwww.utexas.eduSeoul National University,Seoul, South Koreawww.useoul.edu Scientists report they have successfully developed and tested the...

Q&A: UCSD's Sheng Xu Builds a Stretchable Health-Monitoring Patch

A team led by UCSD has built a stretchable electronic patch that can be worn on the skin like a bandage and used to wirelessly monitor a variety of physical and electrical...

3D-Printing Light Receptors on a Hemispherical Surface

Researchers have 3D-printed an array of light receptors on a hemispherical surface. This discovery could lead to a “bionic eye” that could someday help blind people see or sighted...

New on the Market: October 2018

Temperature Transmitters The Sitrans TH320/420 and TR320/420 WirelessHART (Highway Addressable Remote Transducer Protocol) temperature transmitters from Siemens, Erlangen, Germany, are available for a range of...

Products of Tomorrow

This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.