MD_Machine Design Tech Insider_: The hiring environment for engineers

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For design engineers and engineering management

January 22, 2009

What's hot
1. The hiring environment for engineers
2. The cost of mass transit
3. Charging up appliances, wirelessly
4. The economic crisis viewed as a limit-cycle oscillator
5. Featured video: "Electric" hydraulic fluid
6. New products

Articles

The hiring environment for engineers
A pay raise is the farthest thing from the mind of most workers today. That may be doubly so for engineers. The daily hand-wringing about manufacturing layoffs in the press and on TV has made a lot of people nervous about their prospects for employment. It would be easy to get the idea from the somber tone of business commentators that factories everywhere are on the verge of turning out the lights for the last time.

The truth, though, is quite different. Business is down, but engineers are still being hired.

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

The cost of mass transit
In our online forums, the debate is still in progress over an editorial we published last year on mass transit. Readers continue to weigh in on the real cost of popular mass transit solutions. Some other ideas recently floated in the forum: manual driving will soon become illegal; mono rail, as opposed to light rail, makes economic sense; and the location of major industries outside population centers means mass transit will never be economical.

Charging up appliances, wirelessly
EngineeringTV.com went to the Consumer Electronics Show and in this short video covers the Powermat system, which actually beams electrical power through the air for real-time powering and charging of electronic devices. The technology utilizes principles of magnetic induction to transmit electrical power via an ultra thin mat embedded in, or overlaid on, any surface or wall, to electronic devices placed upon it.

The economic crisis viewed as a limit-cycle oscillator
Now here is a different perspective: Columnist Bob Pease, writing in our sister publication Electronic Design Magazine, compares the mis-steps of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan with what happens when you mess up the design of a PID controller.

Featured Content

Featured video: "Electronic" hydraulic fluid
This hydraulic fluid can change properties by the application of electricity. Shot at Germany's Hannover Fair with Hydraulics & Pneumatics Magazine editor Allan Hitchcox, the audio on this short clip is a bit tough to make out in spots, but the application is interesting.

New Products

Diaphragm metering pump

The solenoid-driven FMM20 liquid-diaphragm pump dispenses factory-set volumes of 20 µliter/stroke. The unit is field adjustable from 5 to 25 μliter and includes a choice of manifold mounting, hose barbs, and threaded ports. Available materials include PP/EPDM, PP/FFPM, or PVDF/FFPM. The self-priming pump can run dry. With its low current and power consumption, the FMM is suitable for mobile, battery-powered appliances, as well as analytical instruments, chemical ink-jet printers, fuel cells, and dispensing equipment.
More Information:
KNF Neuberger Inc.

Three-color displays

The Plant Floor Marquee (PFM) Series of multicolor LED displays comes in four sizes and is readable up to 600 ft away. The PFM uses a G3 Series HMI, Data Station Plus, or Modular Controller as a host device to display text and graphics. Free software lets the PFM receive message data from any device on the factory floor, supporting over 170 different protocols and the ability to send and receive data from seven or more devices simultaneously.
Features include the use of vibrant green, yellow, and red LEDs; bar graphs, custom symbols, and other graphics display production trends and goals; data comes from either a single device or customized calculations to display optimized production data from multiple devices; conveys equipment status and alarm conditions for simple troubleshooting; sends text (SMS) messages when alarms are triggered; and an addressable RS-485 port supports multidrop wiring. The displays are available in four sizes, ranging from 26 × 6.6 in. at 80 × 16 resolution to 39.3 × 22.5 in. at 120 × 64 resolution.
More Information:
Red Lion Controls Inc.

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.

Machine Design Video Spotlight

	IAI's Energy Efficient Solution: Green Automation
	IAI America's Derrick Ellerman discusses the Green Automation aspect of factory automation that is becoming increasingly an important part in choosing a complete motion control system. The electro-mechanical ROBO Cylinder is energy efficient, which dramatically reduces running costs and offers complete motion control solutions that have many advantages over pneumatic systems.

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.

Multiple Path Navigation
Find content your way. Improved site navigation creates multiple ways to find the content you are looking for.

Supercharged Search
The search function has been highly improved and tested to provide the most effective results for engineers.

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.