Good article on close in work on and using 3D Printing in Macine Design, a favorite of mine since the ’70s (my dad’s read at home magazine.)
Went to the Midwest ReRap Faire in Elkhart today, cool gear, lots of info, lots of enthusiasts.
Some photos:
Article in wired but others as well ultra cool use the knowledge, vision, wisdom of those who come to do.
3D / Additive Manufacture in Space! Two favorites in one!
And its an SBIR…Small Business Innovative Research, program, how cool is that on top? The SBIR program is a personal favorite of mine. It basically provides entrepreneurs and engineers with ideas with funds to develop a concept and put together a prototype then helps them either commercialize it or work with a big company to bring to the market or to NASA, USAF, Navy, Army, DoE, DoT, DHS etc. When done right which NASA, the Navy and to some extent the AirForce and Army have done this can provide fantastic bang for the buck. Its only downside is that it can be seen as a substitute for bigger development programs and it’s not. SBIR works for initial concepts, for components, basic materials, small-scale projects (App scale maybe) but it’s not enough bucks to do anything major. The only program that does something similar on a larger scale is DARPA, which is also a world leading organization in this area.
On Thursday, NASA announced the selection of 39 proposals for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II awards. …… Made in Space, a Silicon Valley company working on 3-D manufacturing in space.
Made in Space, Inc.
Moffett Field, CA
PROPOSAL TITLE: ISS Additive Manufacturing Facility for On-Demand Fabrication in Space
SUBTOPIC TITLE: ISS Utilization
Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) Begin: 6 End: 8
TECHNICAL ABSTRACT
Made in Space has completed a preliminary design review of the Additive Manufacturing Facility. During the first half of Phase 1, the design went through conceptual development, simulation testing, cost analysis, and comparison testing of which off-the-shelf parts can be used. The deliverables for Phase I include a written report detailing evidence of demonstrated technology (TRL 5) in the laboratory and will outline in detail the path taken toward hardware demonstration for Phase II (TRL 6). The preliminary design is ready to be manufactured as an engineering test unit in Phase II. A feasibility study was created to demonstrate what could be fabricated for the inside of the ISS (parts and spares) and for the outside (possible satellites). It is anticipated that many of the sample uses that the AMF will make possible on-orbit have not yet been envisioned.
Better chemistry: To produce drugs in a continuous-manufacturing method, MIT engineers had to develop several new pieces of equipment, including this reactor, which enabled a faster reaction and eliminated the need for a toxic solvent.
This is a big breakthrough, this is part of the maker revolution though a long way from maker bot. In the long run such a system can be miniaturized and stocked with a range of precursors which will allow a single system to produce any number of different drugs on demand. In the early days such systems will be huge and hugely expensive but will make drug exploration exponentially quicker and less expensive. In the long-term the system makes the whole pharmaceutical infrastructure we have today obsolete…except that it will probably increase the need for scientists, physicians specializing in individualized medicine, etc, etc. Old jobs go away new ones come on-line. And the new ones will generally be much more about the outer edges of technology and the connection between people and between people and their machines, instead of embedding people as cogs in the machines.
The article is pretty high level but a good quick read on the topic.
From SAE drivetrain e-newsletter
Arens’ automotive-hardened traction inverters with power ranges from 30 to 500 kW (40 to 670 hp) are for applications ranging from large transit buses and medium-duty trucks to hybrid passenger cars. With the Powerpac series, adapting an existing vehicle design to hybrid power does not involve intensive re-engineering. The Arens Powerpac 100-kW (134-hp) traction inverter features a high power density in a compact enclosure designed to fit with the battery, in the vehicle’s existing battery box. The inverter offers an insulated gate bipolar transistor-based design and is suitable for truck, bus, agricultural, and construction equipment applications. All Arens inverters feature cast enclosures sealed to IP67 with intelligent thermal protection.
Jenny Hessler
Very much like what my team at SatCom came up with for the AIPM Advanced (or Automotive depending on the audience) Integrated Power Module. The switches are bolted to the base the bus bar connects across them with capacitors integrated as close to the devices as possible and the gate drive and controller board on the other major flat face. Doubt any of the Aren’s team ever saw anything we did, it’s just the most economic and sensible use of surfaces and volumes to get the best performance.
As far as I can see the whole mess with Mike Daisey is the common American confusion between celebrity and profundity. The Wikipedia entry above starts out :
“Mike Daisey (born 1976) is an American monologist, author, and actor best known for his full-length extemporaneous monologues…”
And that sums it up, he’s not a reporter, does not purport to be one and yet his monologuing is taken as a serious expose of Apple’s factories in China. The whole problem is that NPR got confused about what they had, it was in some ways not even Daisey’s fault…until he denied any fault as with so many things today, “..it wasn’t the break in it was the coverup…” inept spinning.
Now Apple knows that its old core and even its younger adherents are biased to the progressive/lefty “down with capitalism” side. Apple is also forced to build their products in China these days, they could not keep their products in the painfully but not prohibitively expensive category otherwise. They will not purposely turn a blind eye to abuses at their Chinese factories, especially as they know that they are likely to depend on Chinese customers for a lot of growth in the not too distant future.
Victor Russell Mead at Via Media has the best overall take on the Daisey mess, I won’t go into it any more.
However thinking about Apple and China does bring up other issues about manufacturing and the outsourcing of said. Two Questions of Apple:
And the answer is the same in both case. Apple has an extremely short product cycle most of the time and tries to keep their products under wraps until the last second. They use a very deep supplier base on the Asian shore to the fullest extent, the parts are cheaper and more available there, and Apple parcels the parts out so its hard for their competitors to figure out what’s coming until the last month or so before introduction. Final assembly of many gadgets is the most labor intensive part of the process and the hardest to automate, it can be done but if you are only going to build the product for a couple of years then completely rejigger why put the capital into a fixed site? And its the Social IP of how you design and proof out a product like the iPad in a very short time that is the secret sauce as much as anything else. And that IP the IP of the Apple way, the Apple Corporate Society, that gives them the edge, and its not one that anyone can copy easily. The whole infrastructure of design spin, parting out, having multiple products at various levels of development at one time, and staying mum, that keeps Apple ahead, their competitor’s head’s spinning and the Apple paparazzi merrily dancing in trail.
A DUAL-USE technology is one that has both civilian and military applications. Enriching uranium is a good example. A country may legitimately do so to fuel power stations. Or it may do so illegitimately to arm undeclared nuclear weapons. Few, however, would think of concrete as a dual-use technology. But it can be. And one country—as it happens, one that is very interested in enriching uranium—is also good at making what is known as “ultra-high performance concrete” (UHPC).
Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Such materials could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs.
The above quote is from this wonderful Economist article, read it, as always clear prose, useful info well presented and minimal spin (&despite what some say that’s about as good as it gets spin wise if you want to explain/make a point.). It’s actually of general interest if you are interested in Civil Engineering or modern buildings and structures.
The point is that the US and others have been working on bunker busting for decades. The Massive Ordinance Penetrator shown dropping from a B52 above and in more detail below are the king of the hill right now.
Their reason for existence right now is to hold Iran’s nuclear bunkers at risk. The MOP is supposed to penetrate up to 200 ft of concrete:
The problem is that the work of Iranian engineers on tough concrete could mop up the MOP. The Iranians have added metal nano fibers and particles as well as fairly ordinary metallic, plastic and ceramic, whiskers, flakes etc to the mix to toughen the concrete in various ways. This work is being done to save lives world wide, including the US since it’s focus is on Earthquake damage reduction. But this is a wonderful example of dual use since exactly the same technology could make future bunkers all but impregnable to conventional weapons, which big as it is the MOP still is.
Bottom line if the best of the best tech were used they might get 6 or more times the strength and testing has shown just doubling concrete strength reduces penetration by more than half!
This is not good news and probably explains this:
Congress ‘Urgently’ Approves $82 Million To Improve Its Biggest Bunker-Buster
Despite this:
The 30,000-lb Massive Ordnance Penetrator Bomb Works So Well It Earned A Rare Honor
It would seem we may soon get a chance to see if the Iranians were smart enough to use the super concrete vs if our super bunker busters can slam, blast, burrow their way in. There is also the question of corruption, in a vastly corrupt civil society using expensive concrete which probably looks like any other concrete is an invitation for shaving. Many is the time when a fortress has fallen because of under spec materials. Also you have the long term espionage and internal strife driven sabotage the story is that bunkers for Nazi super Vengeance weapons were sabotaged by the addition of small amounts of sugar to the mix drastically weakening it.
This would all be a wonderful background for a comedic farce, if so many people’s lives were not at risk.
Enough said….
A fascinating set of articles came out recently discussing the progress in micro and nano robotic techniques above. Is the picture from a short piece in IEEE Spectrum discussing the work of Dr. Ada Poon at the Standford Poon Group who are working on medical applications of beamed power.
Poon Group Tech Map
The basis is this technical paper (PDF). Which talks about the chip, it essentially couples the beamed energy with a tiny antenna and converts the energy to a form needed to drive the chip using a electromagnetic propulsion fabricated on chip. Very cool. I will also point out that the Poon Group appears to be reasonably focused, some similar organizations I have run across or worked with have gotten way too diffuse and seem to wander off topic all the time. Dr. Poon is doing a good job focusing on some key enabling technologies in the field.
So every battle platform needs its weapons, and what do you know these guys seem to have just the ticket.
DNA Nanobot Shell
Obviously they are looking to ways to use this in the form of a more traditional delivery system, say a shot, but the Dreadnought could also use these for delivering deadly loads into exactly the right spot possibly repeatedly over time without repeated shots etc.
On its own very cool, in combination with everything else going on, mind-blowing!!
And yet we also complain about the costs of medicine. The reason that money is put into these efforts is both altruistic and profit driven:
And so the cycle will go on. Do not take my screeds against Health Care costs and the Medical Establishment as any kind of Luddism, I want more technology more quickly, its the only path to better human lives. What I hate is the almost Medieval Economic model of the existing ME in the US.
This piece of news popped up all over earlier this week, but the Technology Review piece though short gives it some context. The rapid advances in imaging, tissue creation, stem cell technology, bio compatible materials, low impact surgery and 3D fabrication are being brought together to make things possible that were once fantasy and to eventually overtake transplants in the traditional sense.
While this is fascinating from a sci-fi writer’s viewpoint, the reality is something close to awe-inspiring.
Now..THAT’s what I’m talking about!
This World and Others 