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Porsche, Bernhard smash ‘Ring record, but will it stand the test…
Ross Lancaster Transportation Technology & AutomotiveGermany’s Stefan Bellof had a great chance to be the country's first Formula 1 World Champion had he not been killed in a vicious accident at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in 1985. However, despite his untimely passing at age 27, Bellof’s legacy was immortalized thanks to his record lap at the Nürburgring Nordschleife in a Porsche 956 in 1983, completed in 6 minutes, 11.13 seconds — a thought-to-be everlasting monument to speed at one of the world’s longest and most dangerous circuits. After all, the record couldn’t be possibly topped, because Formula 1 stopped racing at the Nordschleife after 1976 and sports car prototypes departed after the 1000-kilometer race that accompanied Bellof’s record lap in 1983.
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Automotive lightweighting technologies from NAIAS 2018
Don Rosato EngineeringThe North American International Automotive Show (NAIAS) is an annual, 6-day automotive trade show in Detroit focusing on the latest mobility innovations, including industry-shaping announcements, global reveals, and policy and industry conversation on an autonomous future. Many plastics technologies build forward and evolve out of this annual, early-year event. Let’s take a look and highlight some emerging plastics and related competitive to plastics technologies from the recent NAIAS 2018.
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Developing a sustainable cooling industry for the future
Andrew Gaved ManufacturingThe present view from the cooling industry in Europe has something of an air of déjà vu about it. There are tightening markets, and therefore significantly rising costs for higher-GWP refrigerants like R404A. The industry is dealing with general consternation from end-users that they are having to pay more than they forecast even a year or two ago, and mild panic from AC contractors that R410A is no longer available from some wholesalers. These views were all represented, or reported, at RAC’s recent F-Gas Question Time.
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Stamp collecting with my Porsche maintenance book
Jeff Coe Transportation Technology & AutomotiveMany of us like to collect stamps. When I was very young my mother told me about S&H Green Stamps. You would receive these at stores as a reward for purchases, and as you collected them, you could trade them in for prizes. Years later, I’m still excited to see or collect stamps, especially when it comes to my Porsche vehicle maintenance book. This is a great source of documentation, especially for the collector Porsche, and I feel entrusted in keeping up the maintenance book for my cars.
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Cobots are coming: When mech, man and manufacturing combine
Delany Martinez ManufacturingWhile humans are capable of astonishing endurance and precision, repetitive motion tasks are bad news for manufacturing: they aren't just physically harmful over time, they can lead to worker burnout. When productivity is the main focus of most industries today, what's a large company with large needs to do when faced with human limitations? Hiring more workers is a huge drain on finances, but going fully automated isn't likely to win any favors with the workforce, and by extension, the public. The solution? Cobots, or collaborative robots.
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Emerging plastics technologies highlighted at NPE and ANTEC shows
Don Rosato EngineeringRecently, the global plastics industry community was welcomed to a great National Plastics Exposition (NPE) that took place May 7-11, along with the equally impressive ANTEC from May 7-10 in Orlando, Florida, at the Orange County Convention Center. Let’s highlight some emerging plastics technologies at NPE and ANTEC, starting with what’s leading the 3-D printing plastics revolution. In the traditional 3-D printing area of fused filament fabrication, novel open-source software has come to the forefront.
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3-D printing in the commercial construction world
Miranda Y. Brumbaugh Construction & Building MaterialsBelieve it or not, 3-D printing has been around for nearly 40 years. However, it would take 20 years before the technology involved in 3-D printing became reliable and accessible on a global scale. Today, jet packs, limb replacements, cars and even houses are made using this technology. The commercial construction industry is also utilizing this more-efficient method of building commercial spaces and infrastructure.
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Renewable energy jobs are growing worldwide
Scott E. Rupp Waste Management & EnvironmentalThe renewable energy sector created more than 500,000 new jobs globally in 2017, with the total number of people employed in renewables surpassing 10 million for the first time. Per the International Renewable Energy Agency’s report, "Renewable Energy and Jobs," jobs in the sector increased 5.3 percent in 2017, for a total of 10.3 million people employed worldwide. China, Brazil, the United States, India, Germany and Japan have remained the world’s largest renewable energy employers, per the report, representing more than 70 percent of all of the sector’s jobs.
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Are the new ideas to stop climate change crazy or potential panaceas?
Michelle R. Matisons Waste Management & EnvironmentalWhat do reflective sand, water pumps, tiny flying robots and space umbrellas all have in common? They are all projects intended to stop climate change and the disastrous melting of Arctic ice. Now that climate change is more widely accepted, we have just as many solutions as we do concerned people. After all, the idea that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free by 2030 is overwhelming, unimaginable and devastating to many people. But is there one magic bullet that can make all this warming disappear?
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Getting the training right for flammables
Andrew Gaved EngineeringAs any reader of past columns will know, the ongoing mechanism of the F-Gas regulation, with its emphasis on moving the industry to lower-GWP refrigerants via bans and quota reductions, has caused European cooling businesses to do a lot of soul-searching. Now, the urgency of the message appears to be percolating through the industry. But, the advent of lower-GWP refrigerants also brings with it serious longer-term considerations. The fact that the majority of alternatives in the future will have some degree of flammability has given rise to concerns that the current engineering base does not have the right skills to handle them.
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