DIGITAL ISSUES

Latest connected car feature: Germicidal lights A year ago, had you brought up the idea of adding germicidal lights to a connected car, you probably would have gotten back facial expressions suggesting you’ d lost your mind. Today, the same idea would be more likely to engender a lot of head nodding. Who knew a…

Why can’t we have innovation all the time? Recently, while listening to the excellent Freakonomics Podcast, one of the guests provided some great insight into our current situation. Marshall Burke, an Associate Professor at Stanford University explained that many times it takes an outside event to force society to move in directions that it had…

COVID-19 and its effects on industrial events The era of social distancing has not been a good one for trade shows and conferences, including those that we attend across the design engineering, fluid power, R&D and related spaces. The big news earlier this Spring was Hannover Fair moving from its traditional April dates to mid-July.…

Will your good samaritanism in the pandemic buy you a lawsuit? IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE INDIVIDUALS voluntarily spending your time on technology to help abate the COVID 19 pandemic, consider the experience of the vacuum cleaner company Dyson in the UK. Company founder James Dyson estimates his firm spent about $25 million and…

Maintaining a sense of positivity — 8 takeaways from Alan Beaulieu’s economic discussion First off , I hope that you are staying healthy and sane in these challenging times. What we’re all going through is difficult for all of us, to varying degrees, based on our jobs, our financial situation, our health, and more. I’d…

Automation in the time of coronavirus Welcome to Design World’s special issue on Power Transmission. Each year our editors assemble this special issue that focuses on the mechanical part of power transmission, the components responsible for keeping things moving, so to speak. These are the screws and actuators, the slides and rails and guide ways…

Are we focusing enough on research? One of the things that’s most enjoyable about covering the design engineering space is seeing, on a continual basis, the amount of new technology being used in so many industries, from the component to the system level. But it’s important to realize that much of what feeds that pipeline…

No, IoT RF radiation won’t cause a pandemic I once had a lengthy exchange with a guy who claimed RF from WiFi was making him sick. After numerous emails back and forth in which I tried to correct his misconceptions about WiFi signals, I gently suggested that he go find an RF screen room and…

Consumer products can be technology ambassadors I THINK AND WRITE ABOUT electric motors (and designs based on motors) every single day of my life. That’s why it’s a special satisfaction for me that after years of mediocrity, robot vacuums — those little bundles of motor arrays designed to reduce drudgery — are finally worth their…

A snapshot of the additive industry It’s always interesting to examine who, how, and why engineers are using additive manufacturing (AM). Recently Stratasys Direct Manufacturing and SME Media conducted a survey on engineers and designers’ experiences with AM . The respondents either currently use or are considering using additive manufacturing. Of the nearly 700 respondents,…

Problem-based learning stands the test of time Engineering students at Stanford are well acquainted with the ME310 course. This year-long design course, now in its 53rd year, is built around problem-based learning. Students work in small teams, focusing on actual engineering problems presented by outside companies that partner with Stanford. The history and evolution of…

Why we don’t need energy efficiency standards for lighting HEADLINES WERE MADE RECENTLY when two national associations dropped a lawsuit attempting to squash light bulb efficiency standards in California. The California standards supposedly save Californians billions of dollars on their energy bills and avoid millions of tons of carbon- warming pollution. The suit was brought…

Leadership in Engineering When a manufacturing company listens to and truly partners with its customers, its engineers will design and build the kind of products that can accelerate innovation. Engineers want to solve problems, whether with custom or off-the-shelf solutions—but they want their products to be reliable. After all, no one would build himself or…

Protecting yourself One of the more interesting talks I heard over the course of 2019 came at the recent Power Transmission Distributors Association’s Industry Summit. Frank Abagnale, whose early exploits as a con man and check forger were detailed in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, spoke about his life and his lessons…

The significance of small choices Years ago, during a high-school woodworking course, our instructor would walk through the shop, repeating: “It’s the nuts and bolts that count!” Students would laugh or roll their eyes. Interestingly, he rarely questioned students about the type of wood selected for a project (though I still have the chestnut bench…

What do your users think of your products? Any smart website designer or software company tests its products, not just for things like basic functionality, but for how the end user interacts with it. San Jose-based UserZoom recently published the results of a survey on user experience trends, and the results are fascinating. Survey respondents…

The growing number of women in leadership roles Women are less likely to be in leadership positions at bigger medical device companies, but the disparity is slowly shrinking. That’s the takeaway from this year’s Women in Medtech issue. Just 18% of executive roles at the top 100 publicly traded medical device are held by women,…

IoT, smart components help improve motion systems Welcome to the (now) 5th annual Motion System Applications special issue. Our editorial team here at Design World puts together four issues on motion control each year, with the last one of the year focusing on motion system applications. Here, we look at some top application examples and…

Designing around gendered data This month, our magazine is producing its second annual Women in Engineering special edition. This endeavor has been a labor of love for our staff, and we’re proud of how the issue turned out. (If you haven’t received a copy yourself, visit designworldonline.com and check out the digital editions, where you…

In this issue… DHL on state warehouse robotics DHL recently opened a 28,000-square-foot Americas Innovation Center in Rosemont, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. This is DHL’s third innovation center, joining the initial center in Cologne, Germany, and a center in Singapore. DHL’s U.S.-based Innovation Center showcases the latest in logistics technology, including robotics. TRI teaches…

How to electrocute yourself in a few easy steps Here’s a fun project: Pop open an old microwave oven and scavenge the high-voltage transformer powering the cavity magnetron vacuum tube. Then use it to make yourself a Lichtenberg generator. But be sure there’s someone nearby to call an ambulance. Lichtenberg generators are used to create…

Not a rosy outlook in industrial markets Scott Hazelton of IHS Markit gave an overview of the industrial markets for hydraulics at the recent NFPA International Economic Outlook Conference in Chicago. His outlook wasn’t a sunny one (“not a lot of roses,” he said), dovetailing with many of the other economic speakers at the conference…

Additive technology expands in multiple directions Welcome to the second annual edition of the Additive Manufacturing Handbook. This dynamic industry continues to find new ways to make parts faster, and some of these new methods are included within this issue. But one of the bigger stories on additive this year is the growth of service…

Celebrating more engineering creativity Last year, we launched the LEAP Awards, a competition to honor the best engineered components across the mechanical and electrical engineering spaces. Not sure what to expect with a first year’s awards program, we kept things rather simple … and were pleasantly surprised when we received well over 100 entries, making…

What ancient myths can teach us about today’s technology As our editorial team was preparing this year’s Motion Systems Handbook, covering the basics of motion technologies as well as their ongoing evolution, I began to wonder about the origins of the technology we cover. This got me thinking about the idea of control systems and…