I love learning about engineering colleagues who are innovating in new ways — people who are rethinking problems that seem to be up against the proverbial brick wall. Take the current issues with renewable energy. While strides have been made in many areas of solar and wind, the daily (or hourly) variability of these technologies…
What’s stalling energy storage system production in 2023?
Jabil announced the findings of its 2023 global survey of energy storage and battery solution providers. The results reveal a steady expansion in the production of energy storage systems (ESS) to ensure a consistent energy supply while increasing power grid stability. Amid intensifying global energy demands, 88% of the survey participants are struggling to scale…
NORD develops intelligent heat recovery on machine tools to avoid fossil fuel use
NORD DRIVESYSTEMS continuously looks for opportunities to gain manufacturing efficiencies and implement practices that have less impact on the environment. In 2012, Fertigungstechnik NORD, a member of the NORD DRIVESYSTEMS Group located in Gadebusch, Germany, developed a concept for heat recovery from machine tools in their production areas. To this day, the recovered energy has…
ABB helps iconic Maid of the Mist boats go green
Anyone who’s visited Niagara Falls in the summer has surely watched the famed Maid of the Mist boats ply the waters of the Niagara Gorge. These sightseeing tour vessels, which appear tiny from above, seem to get perilously close to the thundering water from both the American and Canadian falls, crashing down roughly 180 feet.…
Intuitive and advanced compact energy analyzers
CARLO GAVAZZI is pleased to announce the launch of our new EM530 and EM540 Three Phase Energy Analyzers. These compact analyzers are an exciting new addition to our well-established range of energy meters and power analyzers, which are targeted to assist manufacturers and end-users in monitoring and managing escalating energy costs. The EM530 is a…
Keeping cool with capacitors
Ordinary vapor-compression cooling is inefficient and un-green. Future-generations of air conditioning may instead use electrocaloric techniques with almost no moving parts. Leland Teschler • Executive Editor Here’s some bad news about our warming world, courtesy of the International Energy Agency: The use of air conditioners and electric fans already accounts for about a fifth of…
Carlo Gavazzi launches EM50 energy analyzers
CARLO GAVAZZI has announced the launch of its new EM50 Energy Analyzers. This is a new addition to the company’s range of energy meters and power analyzers, which are targeted to assist manufacturers and end-users in monitoring and managing escalating energy costs. The EM50 is a Class 0.5 ANSI C12.20 energy analyzer that can be…
Harnessing waste heat for electrical power
Solid-state devices that convert heat to energy have a reputation for being inefficient. New materials may eventually change the equation. Leland Teschler • Executive Editor Estimates are that 61% of the energy consumed in the U.S. is lost to heat. No wonder, then, that there is interest in finding ways to harvest some of these…
IIT prints 3D embedded sensors in electrical packaging for next generation MEMS devices
The Center for Biomolecular Nanotechnologies (CBN) of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), is using a DragonFly additive manufacturing system to 3D print embedded sensors in electrical packaging. IIT is a leading research institute in Italy with the mission of promoting technological development and higher education in science and technology. IIT plans to use the […]
Wiegand wire energy harvesting components
POSITAL’s Wiegand assemblies offer a compact and efficient way of harvesting power for electronic circuits in electromechanical devices, eliminating the need for backup batteries. The operating principle of POSITAL’s Wiegand modules is simple. A “Wiegand wire” is a short length of specially prepared Vicalloy (vanadium-iron-cobalt) wire. When exposed to a changing external magnetic field (e.g. […]
POSITAL kit encoders for cost-effective position control of stepper motors
While servomotors remain the gold standard for precision motion control in industrial machinery, the improved performance of stepper motors is making these lower-cost devices an increasingly attractive alternative for many applications. The key to these performance gains is the addition of rotation-measuring encoders, especially the new absolute multi-turn kit encoders from POSITAL. Stepper motors are […]
Creating a “wayback machine” for IT security
Many people are familiar with the “wayback machine,” an incredibly useful internet archive at web.archive.org. But until now, there’s been no similar type of system for cyber security professionals. An attack may happen today and then not manifest itself for months or years … by then, it’s nearly impossible to do the sleuthing necessary to figure…
IoT-enabled Sentinel 1 shock absorber features on-board monitoring
ITT Inc. and its Enidine brand is redefining the shock absorber industry with Sentinel 1, ITT Enidine’s first-generation on-board monitoring system. “Sentinel 1’s new patent-pending design is the first of its kind in the shock absorber industry,” said Farrokh Batliwala, Senior Vice President and President, Connect and Control Technologies, ITT Inc. “By incorporating microelectronic solutions…
Mechanical Engineers Develop Process to 3D Print Piezoelectric Materials
Piezeolectric materials are used in many consumer products such as mobile phones, watches, and instruments. Now, scientists at Virginia Tech have found a way to 3D print piezoelectric materials so they are not restricted by shape or size. Xiaoyu ‘Rayne’ Zheng, assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering, and a member of the…
How can the power consumption for computing be reduced for energy harvesting?
At Sensors Expo 2018, Chet Jewan, vice-president of sales and business development from Eta Compute, explains how his company’s computing technology can benefit heart rate monitoring and energy harvesting applications. The first demo, with an Eta Compute chip running at 0.476V powered by solar energy, displays Jewan’s heart rate. A second demo has sensors being […]
How can you harvest RF energy?
At Sensors Expo, Eric Biel, an engineer from Powercast Corporation, explains how radio frequency (RF) energy can be used in energy harvesting applications. RF wireless power transmitted by the PowerSpot transmitter is received by two receiver sticks with LEDs. The TX91503 PowerSpot transmitter broadcasts an RF signal in the unlicensed 915 MHz industrial, scientific and […]
POSITAL ramps up production of Wiegand Sensors for energy harvesting
POSITAL, a manufacturer industrial position and motion sensors, has upgraded its facilities for producing Wiegand sensors. These components, which generate small amounts of electrical energy from rotary motion, are used to energize low-power electronic devices such as counter circuits. To date, more than 500,000 Wiegand sensors have been manufactured and sold, 80% of which are […]
Lighting The Way For New Materials
What happens when gold and silver just don’t cut it anymore? You turn to metallic alloys, which are what Army researchers are using to develop new designer materials with a broad range of capabilities for our Soldiers. This is exactly what scientists Dr. David Baker and Dr. Joshua McClure from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory…
What’s new in supercapacitors for energy harvesting?
At Sensors Expo 2018, Pierre Mars, head of the applications team at Cap-XX, a supercapacitor manufacturer from Australia, explains the supercapacitor demos in their booth. Using a 800 mF supercapacitor provides the energy to power a 2.9V near-field communication (NFC) 13.5 MHz sensor puck from Silicon Labs. With the charged supercapacitor (above 2.6V) the unit […]
What’s new in batteryless sensing?
To solve the problem of replacing batteries in ever-increasing wireless sensing applications in the Internet of Things (IoT), PsiKick has developed proprietary sensors called Smart Sense Nodes (or S2Ns) that employ ultra-low-power digital and RF circuit technologies. The S2Ns are powered by energy harvested from heat or indoor lighting that eliminates the need for a […]
What’s new in solar energy harvesting for sensors?
At Sensors Expo 2018, Ben LeNail, Director of Business Development at Alta Devices, a maker of thin, flexible solar photovoltaic cells for energy harvesting, provided an update on the company’s technology, its applications and energy harvesting solutions for sensors. The company’s specialty photovoltaic cells are ultra-high efficiency devices. Alta Devices has held the world record […]
What’s new in thin-film batteries?
At Sensors Expo 2018 in San Jose, CA, Jeff Sather, the vice president of Customer Solutions at Cymbet Corporation, explained the various formats for the company’s EnerChip thin-film, solid-state batteries. The wafer fabricated batteries have 5 µAH and 50 µAH ratings. The 5 µAH CBC005-BDC is a rechargeable 1.75mm x 2.15mm x 200 microns thick […]
Closed-loop motor feedback with the absolute advantage
Posital has expanded its line of kit-style encoders for feedback for servo and stepper motors with new models that use the same mounting form factor as incremental kit encoders from US Digital, Broadcom and other manufacturers. This makes it very easy to upgrade a motion control application from incremental to absolute position control. With Posital […]
POSITAL closed-loop motor feedback for absolute positioning
POSITAL FRABA encoders for closed-loop motor feedback allow upgrades to existing motion control applications. The mechanical drop-in replacement encoders have the same footprints as US Digital’s E5 models and Broadcom’s (Avago) HEDS-5500 models. POSITAL kit encoders provide absolute position feedback — to give controls complete information on the physical position of the mechanical components they’re […]
Harwin expands robust surface mount 3-point PCB socket series
Harwin has announced further additions to its Sycamore Contact product offering. While this series was initially capable of accommodating 1 and 1.5-mm diameter contact pins, it now covers pin sizes from 0.80 to 1.90 mm. There are a wide variety of scenarios where electronic devices/modules will require replacement over time (such as depleted gas sensors […]