With the new year always comes change. Here at Design World, we’re bidding adieu to two fantastic editors who are retiring after long and fruitful careers. Leslie Langnau, who served for more than a decade as this publication’s Managing Editor, has truly been my mentor here. She’s covered a bit of everything for us, with…
Machine control and connected machines for DX initiatives
The COVID-19 pandemic permanently changed the way in which tens of thousands of businesses worldwide operate. It also changed how many view automation and digital transformation (DX) initiatives. The latter have proven helpful where businesses aim to make remote work for office personnel permanent; toggle operations from on to idled and back more nimbly; allow…
One more worry for industry: CNC hacks
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Back in the 1980s, a buddy of mine who was a plant manager proudly showed me the computer network he’d set up. The primary task of the network was to let people in the front offices program the plant’s CNC machines with…
When music crashes a laptop hard drive
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Back in the 1980s, I wrote an article about hard drives as the PC revolution brought them into the hostile environment of factories. They weren’t faring well. Most hard drives of the time were designed to sit in pristine mainframe computer rooms.…
When all materials are sustainable
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler More and more manufacturers are making an effort to use sustainable materials. With that trend in mind, consider what happened about five years ago when China, which once imported a lot of U.S. refuse for recycling, stopped accepting 24 different recyclables. Paper…
EXAIR Whitepapers help educate customers on a variety of topics
EXAIR.com offers a great number of resources to assist customers with making an informed decision and few tools are more educational than EXAIR Whitepapers. EXAIR Whitepapers provide highly detailed explanations on various subjects related to EXAIR products in an easily downloadable PDF. Helping customers garner a better understanding of not only the products, but the…
igus and the semiconductor industry
Information capsule U.S. investment: The U.S. Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 in August 2022. The bill includes $52.7 billion for the research, development, and domestic manufacturing of semiconductors and $39 billion to incentivize manufacturers. $2 billion will be used to create existing/legacy chips for automotive and defense. Why: The investment will…
Leading — and not giving advice
Engineers who move up the so-called corporate ladder and become team leaders sometimes struggle with managing other employees. That can be because it was simply not part of their educational experience — or because their organizations are lacking in meaningful internal leadership development programs. One habit that new leaders can fall into is becoming advice…
How to get a free STEM education
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler If you are a kid living in the UK and want an engineering degree, you can get a free one by attending the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology. James Dyson—probably best known for his invention of the bagless vacuum cleaner—set up…
Nuclear fusion: Always 10 years away
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler When I was a college freshman I had the opportunity to take a guided tour of KMS Fusion. KMS was one of the first private companies that tried to build a fusion reactor. That tour was a bit more than 50 years…
Book review: A plain explanation of every day engineering
Engineering in Plain Sight, by Grady Hillhouse, No Starch Press Perhaps the best way to describe Engineering in Plain Sight is as an answer to the question, “What am I looking at?” If you’re like me, you have family members and acquaintances who think your engineering degree automatically allows you to be fully acquainted with…
Who’s reading your email?
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler There was a brouhaha recently on Twitter and Reddit regarding the Dutch telecom company KPN. Some of KPN’s central network equipment was made by the Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei. An investigation found that Huawei had uncontrolled and unauthorized access to the…
Hirschtick on the cloud, CAD, and the future
I attended the recent Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston, and one of the highlights was hearing Jon Hirschtick’s keynote. Hirschtick is General Manager, Onshape and Atlas, PTC — and is famous in engineering circles as being the fellow who created Solidworks. He was also a member of the famed MIT Blackjack Team, which was the…
Is China’s manufacturing future in trouble?
At the recent NFPA Annual Conference, I was eager to hear Peter Ziehan, the famed geopolitical analyst, and his take on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ziehan has been predicting this type of aggression from Putin for years, based on his country’s terrible societal demographics, which indicate a country slowly imploding. But what I came away…
The real reason for hiring engineers
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Ask most people about the role of engineers in the economy and you’ll get back answers that mention technology research and new ideas embodied in patents. That’s certainly the image you could come away with if you examined some of the undergrad…
TriStar, a misunderstood failure of design
By Charles Tschaggeny, Tschaggeny Design In 1984, Lockheed ceased production of the L1011 TriStar airplane and exited the world of commercial aircraft for good. For Lockheed, its latest passenger jet had been heralded as a technological marvel but was, in fact, a business disaster. The TriStar is a fascinating story that clearly illustrates fundamental concepts…
More on engineering and science
In January, I talked about how engineers and scientists really are kindred spirits, as they play on the same team of knowledge seekers. And hopefully you read the fascinating “Leadership in Engineering” feature article on Dan Arvizu, the Chancellor of New Mexico State University, who has been a leader and a trailblazer his whole career.…
Keynote speakers announced for the online event COMSOL Day: Oil & Gas
COMSOL Day: Oil & Gas is the next installment in a series of events hosted by COMSOL, makers of the COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software. This event will cater to both experienced users and those new to simulation with a comprehensive program that will include keynote presentations from industry leaders as well as COMSOL-led technical sessions.…
The perils of dodgy engineering research
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Engineers looking for information about how heat treating affects the tensile strength of hardened steels may stumble onto a journal called Multidscipline Modeling in Materials and Structures. It published a paper in 2010 by researcher Ali Nazari that analyzes failures of high-strength…
When the big bang happens in the lab
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor Back in the dark ages of my undergrad career, I heard about a classmate enrolled in second-semester freshman chemistry. One of his lab sessions left oily carbon muck in the bottom of a test tube that wouldn’t come out. In his attempts to clean the test tube,…
Most engineers aren’t innovators
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler You’ll frequently find pundits today equating engineering with innovation. Typical observations: “The foundation of a nation’s common innovation infrastructure is its pool of scientists and engineers available to contribute to innovation throughout the economy,” from Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter and…
Engineering and science — together
Although I am a degreed engineer, I’ve always felt a kinship with scientists; I suppose it’s that we’re playing for the same team of knowledge seekers. As a kid, I was attracted to subjects like meteorology and astronomy, and on many nights, you could find me in the backyard or at a star party with…
Unrealistic expectations for PHEVs
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, recently convened in Scotland. Perhaps unsurprising to cynics, soon after COP26 came an analysis from the Washington Post that found a significant gap between the amount of greenhouse gases countries say…
Did you foresee Facebook?
Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor [email protected] On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Back in the dark days around the end of the year 2002, the NASDAQ-100 had dropped 78% from its peak, and the country was in the middle of a recession. Many early dot-com companies had run out of capital and gone bankrupt.…
Profile: Nicole Lang
Engineering Career Twisted Away from Legal Path After Earning Law Degree, igus’ Nicole Lang Found Enjoyment in Solving Mechanical Dilemmas By Thomas Renner If Nicole Lang had followed her original career path, you might find her today at the negotiating table for Tom Brady, Mookie Betts, or some other high-profile professional athlete. Instead of pursuing…