Paul Heney

The LEAP Awards (Leadership in Engineering Achievement Program) celebrates the most innovative and forward-thinking products serving the design engineering space. This dynamic competition honors the most innovative engineered products/components across several of our flagship brands: Design World, Fluid Power World, EE World, and Engineering.com. Submissions for the 2025 LEAP Awards program are being accepted starting Wednesday,…

At the recent National Fluid Power Association’s Annual Conference in Tucson, brothers Alex and Eugene Chausovsky of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy spoke about geopolitical disruption and what it can mean for manufacturers. They highlighted how today we have a multipolarity in the world, with global powers (the U.S. and China), global players…

When I caught up with Festo Corp. at the recent Hannover Press Preview, I learned from Sabine Lückfeldt of the company’s Corporate Communications department about a very special machine that will be featured in the company’s booth at Hannover Messe 2025, “We’re looking forward to Festo’s 100th anniversary, and as part of that, we designed…

By Mark Jones The experiment is brilliant. Researchers came up with a way to compare the intelligence of ants to humans. It didn’t go so well for us. Some of us perform worse at a cognitive test than an ant. Disturbing as that is, the study also shows that when we cooperate in a group,…

By Mark Jones 2024 was the year of spatulageddon. Plastic spatulas were trashed due to reports of dangers lurking within. The journal article that raised concern contained an error, an obvious error. A correction was made, but there’s more to the story. The study causing spatulageddon was published in the journal Chemosphere. The corresponding author…

At this year’s Hannover Messe trade fair, igus will be showcasing its latest product developments, including PTFE-free materials, a complete energy chain series made from recycled materials, and the new dry cleanroom certificate for igus e-chains, which was developed with Fraunhofer IPA. Design World caught up with the company at the recent Hannover Messe press…

More than 100 international journalists assembled in Hannover, Germany today to learn about Hannover Messe 2025, which is roughly six weeks away. More than 130,000 attendees and 4,000 exhibitors are expected at the 2025 event. Dr. Jochen Köckler, the Chairperson of the Managing Board, Deutsche Messe AG, Hannover, explained that Hannover Messe is looking ahead…

By Mark Jones I was bored as I waited for my “torch” — something that this food truck called its sandwiches — and so random thoughts came and went. This torch name seemed to be an unnecessary gimmick. Fumes directed my next thoughts: fumes from portable generators. Each food truck in the line of food…

By Mark Jones As I passed the horse and buggy, I noticed a buggy whip in the driver’s hand. While buggy whips are the standard analogy for obsolete technology, here I was confronted with one currently in use. Any technology doomed to be replaced will, at some point, be compared with buggy whips. Yet, buggy…

By Mark Jones I’m sure detailed questions about fuel consumption from a passenger aren’t common, but the pilots on flights 2030 and 1114 humored me. My ticket showed the emissions allotted to my seat, something I noticed for the first time. The numbers were lower than I anticipated, so I wanted to check the math.…

By Mark Jones Mistakes happen. But small mistakes create big impacts when perpetrated by enormous companies. The largest IT meltdown ever occurred because a small mistake took down 8.5 million computers. Scale made it a big problem, just like a recent ice cream issue. The pictures of airport concourses with bright blue screens on kiosks…

Winning entries in the 2024 LEAP (Leadership in Engineering Achievement Program) Awards were announced by WTWH Media today in 10 categories: • Advanced Materials • Connectivity • Embedded Computing • Fluid Power • Industrial Automation • Mechanical • Motion Control • Power Electronics • Switches & Sensors, and • Test & Measurement. These brands cross…

AI will revolutionize industrial processes. Most companies agree on this, yet a large number are still reluctant to actually adopt AI technologies. This is where the AI conference presented by Hannover Messe on January 22nd in Frankfurt comes in. The event shows how companies can put AI technologies successfully to use and significantly boost their…

Deutsche Messe is once again inviting entries for the Hermes Award, the next edition of which will be featured at Hannover Messe 2025. This is one of the world’s most important industrial prizes, and will be presented by Germany’s Minister of Education and Research, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, on March 30, 2025. The deadline for companies and…

Brazil has been announced as the Partner Country at Hannover Messe 2026. The news was announced by Jorge Viana, President of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (APEX) and Dr. Jochen Köckler, Chairman of the Managing Board of Deutsche Messe AG, at a recent ceremonial signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in Wolfsburg. The…

By Mark Jones My wife, Erin, is now the proud owner of a plug-in hybrid vehicle. It is a purchase intended to make us more sustainable. Like previous purchases intended to reduce our environmental impact, it does not make economic sense. It is not our first hybrid. It is our first lithium-ion battery vehicle, fitting…

Engineers around the world are invited to apply for the 12th manus award in 2025. For more than two decades, the German manufacturer igus has been honoring applications that feature bold and sustainable use of plastic plain bearings. The winners will receive prize money of up to €5,000.  The pressure on engineers in their day-to-day…

Celera Motion has announced Aura P, an extension to the Aura series of precision rotary and linear optical encoders with MicroE technology. Eccentricity, caused by off-center scale mounting and bearing runout, is a common source of angular error. Two encoders are often employed to compensate for the error increasing cost and power consumption. Aura encoders…

By Mark Jones The norm is technology just gets better. Cars are better. The feeler gauges I used to adjust the valves in my first car still reside in the upper right drawer of my toolbox. I haven’t adjusted valves in decades. Same for my grease gun. There isn’t a grease zerk on my current…

Designatronics Inc. has announced that it has appointed Simon Brazier as its Director of Sales and Marketing, following a wide-ranging search process. In this newly created role, Brazier will assume responsibility for leadership and growth for both domestic and international business development.  “We’re extremely excited to add Simon to our sales and marketing team. His…

By Mark Jones “Save water. Shower tomorrow” is the message on a billboard I just passed. It stood out from the others along I-75 near Flint, Mich., a mix of personal injury lawyers, fast food, and cannabis shops. As it happened, I was listening to a podcast on water. Seemed fitting. Flint is synonymous with…

Bivar, a manufacturer of LED and light pipe solutions has announced its new surface area light guides. These guides combine advanced light pipe technology, lensing, and control techniques to uniformly illuminate surface areas in a space-saving design. Bivar’s high reliability PLCC surface mount LEDs onboard ensure vibrant color output, attractive appearance, and long-lasting performance. The…

By Mark Jones The cause of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse seems clear. The Dali, the cause of the bridge’s demise, sits grounded with parts of the bridge strewn across its bow. Drifting after losing power, the ship hit one of the bridge’s supports, bringing it down in an instant. Removal of the support…

By Mark Jones I was relieved at Acadia National Park when I didn’t see the plastic trash I was expecting. It was the same in Anguilla. I expected fouled beaches I never found. It was the same in Florida. Sadly, I found the plastic trash where I wasn’t expecting it: Kentucky. Cave Run Lake, in…

Germany’s Hannover Messe can be a show of excesses, with too many halls to visit, too many new products to see, and never enough time — or walking stamina — to take it all in. But the show is full of little nuggets of information that help engineers and designers find solutions to do their…