MIT’s Spidery Lego, The Future of large scale 3D ‘Printing’ by little Maker-Bots

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

When you think about it we’re built up from billions of smaller common modules with a lot of minor variations, why shouldn’t our infrastructure be the same?

MIT researchers have developed a lightweight structure whose tiny blocks can be snapped together much like the bricks of a child’s construction toy. The new material, the researchers say, could revolutionize the assembly of airplanes, spacecraft, and even larger structures, such as dikes and levees.

Assemblies of the cellular composite material are seen from different perspectives, showing the repeating “cuboct” lattice structure, made from many identical flat cross-shaped pieces.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KENNETH CHEUNG

Credit: © CC-BY-NC-SA Kenneth C. Cheung

Part production for reversibly-assembled cellular composite materials, slicing from stock produced by a multiplexed fiber winding method. Credit: CC-BY-NC-SA Kenneth C. Cheung

Test apparatus with reversibly-assembled cellular composite materials. Credit: © CC-BY-NC-SA Kenneth C. Cheung

If you can’t tell that last picture is a load cell, an instrument for applying precisely controlled loads to CRUSH YOUR ENEM…. uh, I mean… test the strength of a part or structure.

Read more at:MIT
or at:PhysOrg
or at: 3Ders

Obviously the MIT press piece is the base, but the others each have a little different insight.

Motorbike, jet ski, snowmobile, jet pack…

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Welcome to the future: New Zealand approves permit for jet pack

“It’s essentially a motorbike in the sky, so I imagine anyone who has a snowmobile or a jet ski, this is going to be something they’re going to want in their garage,” CEO Peter Coker told the New Zealand Herald.

. Well… Maybe…

PopSci | Comfortable Light Weight Space Suit for Commercial Space Travel

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Private space company Final Frontier Design shows off the latest orbital fashion.
Read more at: PopSci : New for Space Tourists: A Light Comfy Space Suit

First F1 speed demons now Excavators!

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Ricardo innovated the basic flywheel in a number of ways. The flywheel is hermetically sealed in a container, with a sealed-for-life vacuum, transmitting power through a magnetic gear drive. They use high-speed rolling elements with a composite flywheel unit that allows the system to spin up to 60,000 rpm. The vacuum environment means low losses due to air friction. The demonstration system stores 0.25 kW·h and delivers maximum torque of 28 N·m (20.6 lb·ft) as measured at the flywheel. The company noted that is working on three storage units rated at 0.055 kW·h, 0.25 kW·h, and 1.25 kW·h.

The Williams F1 team, however, developed a novel flywheel-electric system with a flywheel tied to a motor-generator. The flywheel is the energy storage system rather than electro-chemical battery. The race team has formed a subsidiary called Williams Hybrid Power to try and commercialize the system. Williams has now formed a consortium with Ricardo, Torotrac, Land Rover and several other companies for a demonstration project to evaluate its system as well as a flywheel magnetic system from Ricardo in commercial applications. The goal is to develop an on-the-road system for under £1000 ($2,000). The new KinerStor demonstration project is partially funded by the UK government through the technology strategy board.

More at: http://green.autoblog.com/2009/11/25/ricardo-and-williams-team-on-kinerstor-flywheel-hybrid-demonstra/Some background from a 2011 Economist article

England takes a bet on Space

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

The Sabre air breathing rocket and the Skylon single stage to orbit craft grow more real with time. We should all remember that England was a hot bed of jet engine development in the early years and is still a leader (Rolls Royce.)

The announcement late last month that the Chancellor, George Osborne, is planning to put a chunk of the country’s meagre resources for capital expenditure behind a British project to develop a revolutionary jet engine for a reusable space plane, suggests the government has high hopes of the space engineering sector.
….
The Chancellor’s interest in Skylon centres on the hybrid air-breathing rocket engine, known as SABRE, which would power it into orbit in a single stage. The engine relies on an entirely new pre-cooling technology that allows it to function at extremely high speeds, at plus Mach 5. The project has no competitor. If successful it would offer a uniquely lightweight and therefore more affordable means of reaching space. It has already completed a series of tests and the next stage is to build a full-scale prototype.

Read more: The Engineer : Career opportunities in the UK space sector
Also the company developing the tech: Reaction Engines

Technology continues to advance on all fronts

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Servo technology turns press design upside down

A view inside the press showing two of the connecting rods that pull down the press slide

Read more: The Engineer: Servo technology turns press design upside down
Better, Cheaper, Faster, More Efficient, More Capable….

Kick it Beyond the Moon

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

MIT TR: Kickstarter Campaign Wants to Send Tiny Satellites out of Earth Orbit
Space loaf: This artist’s rendering shows a three-unit CubeSat with a propulsion unit.

A mini-satellite, no bigger than a loaf of bread, could push itself out of Earth’s orbit as soon as next year if a crowdfunding campaign to support development of a diminutive propulsion system succeeds. If such small spacecraft can be made to operate far from Earth, they could one day make inexpensive expeditions to asteroids, Mars, and beyond.

Now that’s neat, the ion thruster is pretty crude and tech leaders doubt it will work, but things ‘scale’ oddly, a honeybee can only fly because at it’s scale air is much more viscous…sticky…than we experience it. So it’s possible this simple small relatively short lived little exploring skiff will sail. And just think, if we can flip out these tiny surveyors to asteroids and comets for this sort of investment the haul of new knowledge will be huge.

Building with wood on a Major Scale

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Shiver me timbers. Architects plan wood skyscraper for resident life
Jun 21, 2013 by Nancy Owano

The wooden skyscraper is gaining attention as “green” news because of the wood factor proposed. A number of points in wood’s favor: C. F. Møller’s team noted how timber production releases less carbon dioxide than steel or concrete production, at a time where construction accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide generated from humans. Concrete and steel command a large part of the market, but wood-supporters note that wood is a lightweight, renewable material that can bear heavy loads in relation to its weight.

In general, the word “wood” makes some people nervous because of fears of fire. Architects who favor wood, however, argue that wood is safer than other types of building materials and can be more fire resistant than both steel and concrete. Earlier this year, an article in the Toronto Sun took note of what Geoff Triggs, building code consultants expert, had to say about the use of wood in high-rise construction. Rather than using small two-by-fours super-compressed mass timber is used to make very large panels. The compressed lumber is as strong as concrete but lighter. The compression process creates dense wood blocks that are difficult to burn.

1.2GW of offshore and onshore wind was installed last year

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

1.2GW of offshore and onshore wind was installed last year

I drove up to my parents the other day via a route I had not taken for a year, along the route a new wind farm had sprung up, dozens of multi MW turbines, apparently most went in over a period of only a few months once the tracks cables and bases were in place. Several a week being finished off. Now the support crew is something like twenty full time maintainers. Not sure if this is really the hope of the industrial heartlands, it’s not bad but heatedly the sustained work the towns these behemoths rise near, need.

Same with the sea based units, though the ports the support vessels sail from will get more than the maintenance base of a land based array.

Now for something somewhat different

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

In a gerotor motor, the outer ring’s gear teeth remain stationary while fluid flow turns the internal rotor. This drawing is of a six-pointed gerotor assembly. To see a motor’s internal components in action, view the YouTube video, Motion Study of the Gerotor Motor at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iooA0mJzEIE.

Machine Design has always been one of the best engineering teaching magazines out there and this article on hydraulic motors is an example of why. Informative and elegant graphics, straight forward, intelligent and direct (without dumbing down) explanatory prose. OK it’s about hydraulic motors but it’s cool, neat, etc, especially in this age of the maker revolution.