Original article date: June 2000
How has turning a ball-and-socket joint back-to-front led to significant performance improvements in hydraulic pumps and motors? Tommy Miller explains
Hydraulics is often perceived as an engineering discipline with plenty of rugged, dependable, powerful solutions for problems of motion or high loads, but little innovation. One type of product, however, has just [...]
Original article date: October 1998
The justification for buying capital equipment is all a question of arithmetic says WILL BOURN sales manager of Modular Automation. Or is it?
The cost of automation can be quite high particularly when it employs the latest robotics vision systems and welding technology. There is often a chicken-and-egg decision to make when [...]
This article was originally written in the period 1995-2000
Flexible membrane couplers exploit the tensile and flexural properties of membranes (discs) pressed from cold-rolled stainless spring steel. Attached alternately to the driver and driven members, the membranes transmit torque in tension, while flexing readily in bending mode to comply with alignment errors.
These heat-treated membranes can sustain [...]
Original article date: May 1998
Won the lottery?
No, nor have I, but in common with most of the population I’ve wondered what I’d do if it happened. Actually, I reckon the answers are divided into two key areas.
Firstly, there are the things I’d change to cope with the fact that time was now the most precious [...]
Original article date: February 2000
For 78-year-old Howard Arneson, who invented the famous Arneson surface drive propulsion system, slicing through ocean swells at over 100mph is just a piece of cake.
The Arneson drive, now made under license by US-based transmission systems manufacturer Twin Disc, is probably the most popular propulsion system in high speed boating. It [...]
Original article date: March 1999
Two methods of detecting contrasting colour for production systems are described in detail in a new technical guide from OMRON.
Colour mark sensors are a type of diffuse sensor designed to detect a mark by the contrast between the mark and the background.
A diffuse sensor incorporates emitter and receiver in the same [...]
Original article date: November 1997
There’s a buzzword in medicine at the moment which is ‘clinical effectiveness’. It is accompanied by the phrase ‘evidence based medicine’. What it means is “treating patients in a way which has been shown to work”.
Now you may be horrified to learn that this hasn’t always been the way things are [...]
Original article date: January 1998
Did you know that in the USA they have cameras in nurseries that transmit live pictures over the Internet so that concerned parents can view their kids with Netscape from their desks in work?
One day in the not too distant future, (as a result of compression technology and available bandwidth finally [...]
Original article date: March 2001
I discovered a fascinating product the other day, which could be useful for a lot of engineering companies looking to keep control while expanding. It’s called Citrix Metaframe.
It works like this. Instead of every member of your company having a modern 800MHz PC running MS Office and all the other applications [...]
Original article date: November 2000
The other day, I took the plunge and performed some fairly major maintenance work on my car. It hadn’t been running too well, but the problems were all bit non-specific so I was advised by a mechanic friend to strip the engine down completely.
I took very careful note of the positions [...]