Mill-Max has added to its diverse mix of swage mount PCB pins with six new offerings designed for interconnect applications. These swage mount terminals are designed to be mechanically fastened to a board or panel and plugged into sockets or soldered into mating boards in board stacking and other interconnect configurations. Swage pins are often thought of…
Candy Cane Supercapacitor Could Enable Fast Charging Of Mobile Phones
Supercapacitors promise recharging of phones and other devices in seconds and minutes as opposed to hours for batteries. But current technologies are not usually flexible, have insufficient capacities, and for many their performance quickly degrades with charging cycles. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the University of Cambridge have found a way…
Chemists Make Laser-Induced Graphene from Wood
Rice University scientists have made wood into an electrical conductor by turning its surface into graphene. Rice chemist James Tour and his colleagues used a laser to blacken a thin film pattern onto a block of pine. The pattern is laser-induced graphene (LIG), a form of the atom-thin carbon material discovered at Rice in 2014.…
Removable Lid Spring Pin Socket for QFN module
Ironwood Electronics recently introduced a new QFN socket addressing high performance requirements for custom size devices – CBT-QFN-7053. The contactor is a stamped spring pin with 14.5 gram actuation force per pin and cycle life of 100,000 insertions. The self inductance of the contactor is 0.98 nH, insertion loss of < 1 dB at 31.7…
Wearable Electronics: Superstretchable, Supercompressible Supercapacitors
Flexible, wearable electronics require equally flexible, wearable power sources. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Chinese scientists have introduced an extraordinarily stretchable and compressible polyelectrolyte which, in combination with carbon nanotube composite paper electrodes, forms a supercapacitor that can be stretched to 1000 percent in length and compressed to 50 percent in thickness with even gaining, not…
75GHz Clamshell Socket for NXP’s FCPBGA
Mill-Max launches swage mount PCB pins for interconnect applications
Mill-Max is adding to its diverse mix of swage mount PCB pins with six new offerings designed for interconnect applications. These swage mount terminals are designed to be mechanically fastened to a board or panel and plugged into sockets or soldered into mating boards in board stacking and other interconnect configurations. Swage pins are often […]
Researchers Flip the Script on Magnetocapacitance
Capacitors, electronic components that store and quickly release a charge, play an important role in many types of electrical circuits. They’ll play an equally important role in next-generation spintronic devices, which take advantage of not only electron charge but also spin — the tiny magnetic moment of each electron. Two years ago, an international team…
Filtered Connectors And The Coming Alien Invasion
One of the standard indications of a nearby UFO is the sudden failure of all electrical components: your cellphone no longer operates and your car coasts to a stop, often on an isolated country road late at night. You glance out of the window to see a plane falling out of the sky. Clearly, an…
Ironwood Presents Removable Lid Spring Pin Socket for LGA module
Ironwood Electronics recently introduced a new LGA socket addressing high-performance requirements for custom pitch devices – CBT-LGA-5015. The socket features an IC guide for precise LGA edge alignment. The specific configuration of the package to be tested in the CBT-LGA-5015 is LGA, 3.6×3.6mm body size and 0.514mm pitch. To use, drop IC into the socket,…
New 380 Series Pressure/Vacuum Pumps
Gardner Denver THOMAS is pleased to announce the release of its newly developed 380 series variants: 380CE32 (115/60/1), 380CS32 (100/50/60/1) (380CUU32 (230/50/1) coming soon). These oil-less single WOB-L® piston units can be used for pressure or vacuum operation and are engineered to be versatile and reliable for a wide array of market applications, ranging from…
Ideal Power unwraps Stabiliti, a next gen power conversion system
New features in the system including full galvanic isolation, seamless transfer in switching from grid-tied to off-grid modes, and paralleled microgrid functionality.
Green Roll-to-Roll PCB Process Aims to Cut Carbon and Costs
Roll-to-roll manufacturing processes for printed circuit boards are already showing promise for lowering the cost and environmental impact of high-volume electronic products. But a new roll-to-roll system, developed by the Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan (ITRI) promises to simplify the process while further reducing the carbon footprint involved. The Self-Guided Additive Manufacturing for Minimum…
Troubleshooting VFDs 101 — with no-power checks
Before you rip that variable frequency drive (VFD) off the wall and send it in for a rebuild, stop. Some simple check diagnose a VFD in moments. Here’s how to make the necessary inspections with a multimeter. By Daniel Schubert • Yaskawa Product Training Engineer Variable frequency drives (VFDs) are a staple component of many industrial […]
Going Green with Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology offers many chances to benefit the environment and health. It can be applied to save raw materials and energy, develop enhanced solar cells and more efficient rechargeable batteries, and replace harmful substances with eco-compatible solutions. “Nanotechnology is a seminal technology,” Ulrike Scharf, Bavarian Minister of the Environment, said Nov. 23 in Erlangen, where the…
What turbine electronics are repairable, and which are not
An analysis conducted by Wind Energy Update suggests that 50% of all failures in wind turbines are due to electronic problems.
Ac drives help reduce energy costs
The more efficient a drive, the lower the energy costs. The Allen-Bradley PowerFlex 755T drives offer harmonic mitigation, regeneration and common bus system configurations. The latest versions include TotalFORCE technology, which enhances motor control through precise, adaptive control of velocity, torque and position of electric motors. AC drive technology is an important investment for our…
Designing with Smart Analog Building Blocks
The circuit integration in system on chip (SOCs) drives today’s embedded system design where the complex and flexible (programmable and configurable) analog, digital, and processing engines are expected to be in a single chip. This trend has led to the fabrication of complex and advanced analog features in SoCs and MCUs. These flexible analog fabrics…
Powering remote wireless applications in harsh environments
More self-powered remote wireless devices are used in extreme environments. Here’s a look at some of the newer battery devices that will help you handle the power needs of these devices in such environments. Sol Jacobs, VP and General Manager, Tadiran Batteries We live in an increasingly wireless world, where self-powered remote sensors and communication…
Engineers Build Carbon-Free Supercapacitor
Today’s supercapacitors, energy storage devices capable of quickly delivering a large charge, feature carbon-derived components — the production of which requires harsh chemicals and large amounts of energy. Recently, scientists at MIT built a supercapacitor without carbon. In place of carbon, scientists deployed metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. “We’ve found an entirely new class of materials…
FAQ: What are current source inverters and voltage source inverters?
As we’ve discussed before, the main components of a variable frequency drive (VFD) are a rectifier (also referred to as a converter), which converts AC voltage to DC voltage, a DC bus (also referred to as a DC link), which filters and stores the DC power, and an inverter, which converts the DC power back to […]
Engineering a groundbreaking hydraulic hybrid
Here’s an inside look at the concepts, engineering and testing behind Caterpillar’s highly successful 336EH hydraulic hybrid excavator. By Aleksandar Egelja, Engineering Manager, Advanced Hydraulic Systems, Caterpillar Inc. Recently, I had the…
Thin, Plastic Membrane from OSU Researchers Promises Rapid Battery Recharging
Researchers at Ohio State University have developed a thin, plastic membrane that keeps rechargeable batteries from discharging while not in use and allows for faster recharging. The new technology, called an ionic redox transistor, controls how charge flows inside a battery, inspired in part by how living cell membranes transport proteins in the body. The…
Supercapacitors Supplement Energy Harvesters’ Output
At Sensors Expo 2016, Pierre Mars from the Application Engineering Team at Cap-XX supercapacitors explains the company’s demo that showcases the use of supercapacitors to provide high peak…
Harvard researchers build pneumatic octopus
In a departure from the engineering behind typical rigid industrial robots, a team of Harvard University researchers have built what’s reportedly the first autonomous, untethered, entirely soft robot….