MD_Machine Design Tech Insider_: The Upside of Negative Thinking

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For design engineers and engineering management

January 15, 2009

What's hot
1. The upside of negative thinking
2. A high-speed video camera for free
3. Speedy Ethernet for tube winders
4. Featured video: The fine art of 360-degree donuts
5. Video: Injection-molding microscopic parts
6. New products

Articles

The Upside of Negative Thinking
For all the rhetoric about the wheels coming off Detroit and the credit market, critics have missed one point: Both situations can be chalked up to too much optimism. That conclusion can be drawn from a body of work that suggests managers typically underplay obvious uncertainties, thinking they have more control over their firm’s performance than is really the case. Managers also tend to be too optimistic about their firm’s performance because they are highly committed to it.

Buy Off-the-shelf Cable and Connector Assemblies Online

Purchase off-the-shelf, factory-direct, high-grade cable and connector assemblies online from NorthwireDirect. Over 100 products are available. Bulk cable and connector assemblies that are ordered by noon are shipped the same day. Retractile cords are shipped after receipt of the order in 3-5 days. Major credit and debit cards and PayPal are accepted. No minimum order. For custom cable orders, visit www.northwiredirect.com/bulk

www.northwiredirect.com/direct

A high-speed camera for free
If you had a super-high-speed camera available -- one that could slow down speedy assembly or manufacturing operations so you could view them at a slow crawl -- how would you use it? The people at Southern Visions Systems want to know. They are offering one of their Streamview LR Portable high-speed camera kits as a prize to the person who writes the best 100-word explanation of how they would use high-speed video to save money or boost efficiency

Machine Condition Monitoring – Free Resource Kit

Machine condition monitoring can help your organization stop unscheduled outages, optimize machine performance, and reduce repair time and maintenance costs. NI condition monitoring systems, scalable from 4 to 32 channels, have been successfully implemented on a variety of turbines, compressors, generators, and other devices.

Download free resource kit

Speedy Ethernet for tube winders
A data network with intrinsic immunity to noise comes in handy for a 14-m-long carbon-fiber winder used to make components for applications such as racing yacht rigging. The winder, from Swiss company Carbo-Link GmbH, uses an Ethernet-compatible Powerlink motion-control network and controller, as well as motor drives from Baldor Electric Co. The machine winds carbon fibers into lightweight yet ultrastrong tubes or rods up to 14-m long. A 50-m-long machine is also in the works. Using Powerlink minimizes cabling complexity, which is important because part of the motion control system moves along a 14-m carriage as the tube or rod forms.

Featured Content

Featured video: The fine art of 360-degree donuts
This short video from Ken Block Racing illustrates what's possible in a Subaru with expert heel-toe braking and clever use of the hand brake during gymkhana practice. After viewing this one, you'll be glad you aren't footing the bill for this guy's tires.

Video: Injection-molding microscopic parts
Recently Machine Design editors spoke with Accumold, a micromolding firm, to get a description of the firm's Micro-Mold process. In one case, the firm produced 56,000 pieces from one-ounce of material. Molding these entails using the special presses which can control exceedingly small shot sizes. Micromolded parts are usually made in one to four-cavity molds because they reproduce features better than high-cavitation molds. Running time: 5 min

New Products

Food-handling gripper

The corrosion-resistant, stainless-steel design of the GGL3060 food-handling gripper is sealed to IP69K standards, allowing it to withstand high-pressure and high-temperature (wash-down) cleanings. The gripper’s jaws swing open to a full 180°, making it easy for the gripper to clear material below it. The unit’s angular design provides up to 33 Nm of gripping torque. The gripper’s sensors sense jaw position.
More Information:
Techno-Sommer

Five Questions to Ask Before Buying a Customized Enclosure

How do you select from the many varieties of standard enclosures and how do you judge the impact of customizing on each?
What factors impact cost?
How can the engineer design for lowest cost?
What documentation should the designer provide the manufacturer?
What happens when unit volumes become really large?

With over 40 years of experience, Fibox offers in-house, state-of-the-art machining systems for customizing over 1,000 plastic and aluminum enclosures.

Get answers to all your questions and more!

Pneumatics system controller

The LS-C41 pneumatics system controller is a high-speed, high-accuracy analog PID controller that is paired with a PWM-based valve driver. The unit features multiple PID and feed-forward options and "Nested Loop" control architecture. Adjustable gain, deadband, and dither frequency give users full control. The controller is designed to control position, motion, flow, force, or pressure.
More Information:
Enfield Technologies

News from MD

IT'S SALARY SURVEY TIME!!

Find out how you stack up against your peers when it comes to income and workload by taking a few minutes to fill out the 2009 Machine Design salary survey. Your confidential response, and the replies of other readers, will show where you fit in among other design professionals. Results will be highlighted in our salary survey article in the April 23 issue. Respond to the survey at http://www.zoomerang.com by Friday, Feb 13 and you're automatically entered into a prize drawing for a $100 American Express gift card.

Check Out the New Machinedesign.com

Our newly redesigned web site still features the best content and information for engineers provided by engineers but with these new great features.

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Highlighted Resources
Looking for CAD drawings? Find them in our CAD Library. Download whitepapers in the Whitepaper Library. Valuable educational content is featured in the eBook section. Check out the latest in editorial and sponsored video in the Video section.

UPCOMING WEBCASTS

Burton Snowboards Brings th eBest Designs to Market with the Help of 3D Printing
Sponsored by Objet
DATE: February 5th, 2009
TIME: 2:00pm ET/11am PT

Design and manufacturing companies are faced with ever increasing competition. More innovative product designs and technology are essential to successfully compete in today’s market.

Burton Snowboards has been the world’s leading snowboard company since 1977 and continues to set itself apart by quickly adapting to snowboarding’s continuous progression. Burton’s latest bindings innovation, Extra Sensory Technology is an example of this adaptation. Fully developed, tested and delivered in 18 months, EST shattered previous timelines by 6 months with the aid of in-house Rapid Prototyping.

Join us as Burton Snowboard Senior Prototyping Specialist Ryan Larson and Objet Senior Applications Engineer Neil Ranney team up for a webinar that explores how Burton Snowboards uses rapid prototyping and 3D printing to cut time and costs off new designs.

Click here to learn more and register!

ARCHIVED WEBCASTS AVAILABLE FOR FREE VIEWING

Click Here for a list of archived Machine Design webcasts.