Powder coating and wet painting are two of the most popular finishes — specifically for metal products. Though they share some similarities, they differ in terms of color mixing, durability and cost.
A finish is necessary to prevent corrosion. Without one, certain metals like iron will react with oxygen and rust. Thanks to processes like powder coating and wet painting, you can avoid rust and erosion.
You may be wondering which of the two is objectively better. However, they each come with their pros and cons — here’s a closer look at each method.
Composition
You’ll find various similarities and differences when studying the composition of both materials. Both contain resins — a type of paste or malleable substance that can harden under the right pressure, heat and circumstances. The resins in powder are usually polyester, polyester-epoxy, acrylic or polyethylene.
The main difference in composition is that wet paint contains solvents, whereas powder does not. Since the paint is a liquid, the solvent is necessary to maintain the right fluid consistency. The powder doesn’t need a solvent because once the crushed pigments and plastics become powder, they maintain that color and consistency.
Additive manufacturing — especially 3D printing — has captured the attention of hobbyists and manufacturers everywhere. Its capabilities and demand are certainly on the upswing. However, it would be premature to count out the more traditional subtractive manufacturing techniques.
Additive manufacturing builds objects by depositing a chosen material layer by layer. Subtractive manufacturing, including carving, milling, laser cutting and others, removes portions of a solid material until it reaches the desired shape.
There are still many situations where subtractive manufacturing makes better practical sense for the application at hand. Here are a few of them:
1. Time Is of the Essence
Additive manufacturing lends itself well to rapid prototyping. Unfortunately, 3D-printing a product is still not as “rapid” as subtractive manufacturing can be. If the production time is of critical importance, manufacturers should know whether to budget their time for the few minutes injection molding requires or the several hours a 3D printer requires to complete a workpiece.
The video surveillance industry continues to develop and prosper as awareness for safety grows among citizens concerned for the security of their homes. According to a poll conducted in 2018 by SDM, in which both integrators and dealers were asked about their state of confidence with the current surveillance market, 75% said they believed the market’s state to be excellent. As video surveillance continues to grow in prominence and ubiquity, with more homeowners looking to secure their households, the more technical aspects of home surveillance should be made transparent and readily available. Placement technique and varying types of surveillance systems are being continually innovated and specialized towards fostering intuitive home security setups. Here’s an overview of the current standards for installing CCTV systems and their variant iterations.
Conventional surveillance setup
A
conventional surveillance setup is comprised of either mountable or
stand-alone cameras, positioned independently in various areas which
work in conjunction with each other to capture consistent video. The
collective of cameras send footage to a monitor system; the signal being
broadcast from the cameras to the monitors is closed circuit. Viewing
of the camera’s feed is strictly observable from connected equipment.
The majority of modern surveillance cameras capture high resolution
video and are best situated in corner areas of an indoor space, since
they are typically capable of wide range viewing. The system itself is
conventionally connected by coaxial cables. Inconspicuous and out of
reach, wired systems are still commonly used by homeowners to deter potential burglary and more generally maintain consistent observance of their property.
Wireless configuration
As
a means of eliminating the need for cumbersome wire installation, newer
surveillance systems are entirely wireless. Composed of a camera,
transmitter, receiver, visual monitor, and a supplemental data storage
system, wireless setups allow for broader range in regards to placement
and proximity from the central monitoring unit. Footage is captured and
streamed from a radio transmitter to an antenna; the receivers can
either be based within the camera and monitor or separate from one
another. Being wireless, these units are able to be disguised as everyday items, or can be totally mobilized and mounted onto a tripod or other peripheral.
Flexibility of location for surveillance
Areas
of the home that experience the most break-ins are the front door,
backyard, and the ground floor parallel to the house. What should be
considered when plotting effective surveillance locations is the
camera’s proximity to a power supply and proximity to the home’s router –
if wireless. Integration of IoT principles makes it possible to use a
smart device for wireless monitoring of the surveillance feed. Some
cameras are designed for communication with other smart and IoT outfitted devices.
Homeowners are granted the flexibility to place camera’s base on their
own concerns for which area of the home is considered a security risk.
Freedom
for homeowner’s and how they arm their home is the priority for
surveillance companies. As the industry continues to develop along with
smart technology’s integration to domestic life, surveillance systems
will persist in popularity and normalcy.
When you want to join two things together, you have a lot of options depending on the two materials. If you attach paper to cardboard, you can grab a bottle of glue. If you stick plastics together, epoxy is your go-to adhesive. If you try to attach two different pieces of metal, glue won’t cut it. That’s where welding comes in. Let’s take a look at the science of welding, as well as the different types of welding and how they work.
The Science of Welding
The
science of welding depends on the type of metals you want to join, as well as
the kind of filler material you use to attach the pieces. The most common type of welding is known as arc welding,
which gets its name from using an electrical arc to melt both the metals and
the filler to create a solid connection or joint between the two.
Start
by attaching a grounding wire to the welding material. Then an electrode gets
attached to the piece you weld and an electrical arc is generated between the
two points, creating a high-temperature area that melts the metal and the
filler, creating a uniform joint. Welding is tricky because you need to
continuously feed the filler into the welding joint at an even rate to create a
uniform weld.
Now
that you understand the basics of welding, let’s take a closer look at the
different types of welding, including the common less common options. There are
30 different types of welding, ranging from simple to complex.
MIG – Gas Metal Arc Welding
MIG
welding is a type of arc welding that uses a shielding gas to reduce the
combustibility of the materials. This type of welding reduces waste because it
uses a high-efficiency electrode that creates cleaner welds. MIG welds are
usually found in the automotive, industrial, robotics and maritime industry.
TIG – Gas Tungsten Arc Welding
TIG
welding, also known as heliarc welding, uses a tungsten electrode that can be
used with or without a filler rod to melt two metal pieces together. Like MIG
welding, this style also uses an external gas supply — most commonly a mixture
of helium and argon. You’ll usually find TIG welding in the aerospace industry,
water pipe joints and motorcycle manufacturing.
3D printing has taken the world by storm in the last decade, but the technology isn’t as new as you might think. Believe it or not, the idea behind that desktop-sized 3D printer in your shop dates back to the 1980s. Let’s take a closer look at the history of 3D printing and where it might go in the future.
The 1980s — The Birth of 3D Printing
The
first attempt at creating a 3D printer occurred in 1980. Dr. Hideo Kodama filed
a patent in May of that year. This new 3D printer relied on photopolymer
materials — liquids that could be printed, then exposed to light to harden into
plastic. While this plan does sound like a viable one, Kodama never
commercialized the design, and the 3D printing industry seemed dead on arrival.
In
1986, Chuck Hull invented the SLA-1 — the world’s first 3D printer that could
build objects one layer at a time. In this case, the SLA-1 used lasers to cause
selected chains of molecules to link together, forming plastics or polymers.
The next year, Carl Deckard of the University of Texas came up with a different
type of 3D printing — Selective Laser Sintering, or SLS. Deckard’s machine
built an object out of layers of powder, then used lasers to melt the powder,
hardening it into the finished plastic.
In
1989, S. Scott and Lisa Crump, a married pair of inventors, came up with the 3D
printing technology that we know today — fused deposition modeling. The machine
would melt a polymer filament and deposit it onto a substrate layer by layer
until it finished the design.
3D
printing had officially been born, but these early models lacked something — an
easy and user-friendly way to design things for printing.
The 1990s — Computer-Aided Design
Designing
something for a 3D printer might seem easy now, but imagine doing it without a
CAD program at your fingertips. That’s what the early 3D designers had to do —
create plans to build their objects without the assistance of a computer-aided
design program. Commercial CAD programs became more readily available
throughout the 1990s, though purchasing a 3D printer was still often too
expensive for the home inventor.
It’s
one thing that no homeowner wants to deal with, but it’s often the reality
during cold winter months — frozen pipes. In addition to cutting off water to
the home, these pipes can also burst, causing water damage. Why do pipes freeze
in the winter, and what can you do to prevent them from getting cold enough to
freeze? What should you do if the pipes burst? Here are some tips and tricks to
help you get through the winter with your plumbing intact.
Why Do They Freeze?
First,
why do pipes freeze?
Like
most things filled with water, they freeze when the temperature drops below the
freezing point of water — 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius.
With
pipes, there are two more variable to consider — movement and expansion. It’s
harder for water to freeze if it’s in motion. That’s why lakes will freeze at
32 degrees, but it takes much lower temperatures to solidify rivers and
waterfalls.
If
a section of your pipe starts to freeze, the water expands. This behavior is an
anomaly in nature because most liquids don’t grow when they
solidify. Water, however, will become denser until it reaches a point just
before freezing, then it will start to expand again. In a confined space like
the inside of a pipe, this extra pressure doesn’t have anywhere to go, so it
will cause the tube to split.
Sport is big business these days, with the market worth $60.5 million in North America and predicted to rise to $73.5 billion in 2019. Sports is not only a moneymaker for event promoters and the media; it is also increasingly being seen as a top career choice for those with the talent, drive, and commitment required to succeed. New developments in sport have shown that success is not all about the individual athlete. In popular sports like tennis, football, or golf, science & technology are playing an important role in helping competitors perform at their full potential. In this post, we look at just a few ways that science is changing the way we play and compete.
Swing Training Technology for Golf
You would need to be a master physicist to work out the exact angle at which to position your club when playing golf, but science and technology are making it a whole lot easier with swing training technology, which brings real-time body positioning analysis to everyday golfers with the help of a handy app. The app ‘tells’ golfers exactly how to position their body and gives them top information on how to do better next time. Of course, the app won’t fix deeper problems such as weak muscles in the shoulder and back. Top level athletes will also need to regularly carry out specific training programs for golf, which include strength training for key muscle groups. In essence, performing the right swing depends on issues like back strength, so you may need to address this first to perfect your game.
Head and Neck Support for Motor Sports
Dale Earnhardt’s death on the track at the Daytona 500 race revealed the extent to which the head and neck area are vulnerable in motor sports. HANS devices have been created by scientists to stop the head from whipping forwards and backwards in the event of an accident, and to lend more support to the neck. The device is U-shaped and is positioned behind the neck, with two ‘arms’ that extend over the pectorals. Over 140,000 devices have already been sold worldwide.
Wearable Computers and Hawk-Eye Camera Systems
Wearable computers are allowing both players and managers to assess a player’s level of fatigue, hydration levels, etc. This type of information is vital to avoid heart attacks and other major health events from taking place on the field. Smart fabrics will enable athletes to glean even more information, including heart function data and movement of the body’s center of mass. Scientists have stated that the future could take us beyond wearables. The Hawk-Eye camera system is currently used to obtain information on running biomechanics and other metrics during games of elite players. The NBA, meanwhile, relies on Second Spectrum’s computer vision technology to obtain information about player positioning and other 3D data such as ball and referee positioning.
We have presented just a few ways in which science and technology are enabling athletes to perform more optimally, but also to stay safe. Wearable devices and fabrics, aerial camera systems, and new safety gear are making sport a much more scientifically accurate and appealing pursuit. Information is power, and nowhere is this truer than on the field or track.
If six years ago you had forgotten a Fisher space pen in your car’s glove box and you pull it out today, it will write without a hiccup. It will also write underwater, in extreme heat and in freezing cold. In fact it will write in space too. It has been used for exactly that for decades.
You must have heard of that story where NASA spent millions to invent a pen that writes in space. That is not really true. The millions in research was Paul Fisher’s own money that he spent to develop a pen which would write in weightless conditions. Well, NASA was spending money on it at almost the same time too. But their research program’s budget spiraled out of control and had to deal with public pressure before going back to using pencils.
There’s a good chance you must have received an email like this one, maybe around April 15th:
When NASA started sending astronauts into space, they quickly Discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero Gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a Decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero
Gravity, upside-down, on almost any surface including glass And at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 C.
The Russian one line solution compared to the “$12 Billion” dollar Americans used sounds like a smooth story to tell. But that is not really how it all went down.
At the height of space race, both Americans and Russians used pencils to write in space. But since pencils use graphite to leave a mark, and graphite is flammable, it made pencils not the best things to take into space, especially after the Apollo 1 fire incident. Secondly, graphite conducts electricity pretty well. That means a broke piece of pencil tip, or even the small amount of graphite dust from it could get into the electronics and cause shorts. And then there’s paper, wood and eraser which go with a pencil. All of which produce particles when used and are combustible.
Mechanical pencils were a better solution as they eliminated wood but the graphite was still a problem. Grease pencils or wax pencils solved it to some extent. But again the mark left by any pencil was not as reliable as a pen. Ballpoint pens worked pretty well. However the problem with normal ball pens was that the ink was not designed to work well at low pressures, nor would it do very well in extreme space temperatures. Felt tip pens again used a much thinner ink which wasn’t an ideal choice for usage in low pressure environments like space.
Fisher solved all of these problems by inventing a pen that used an ink cartridge that was pressurized at 35 psi. This ensured the ink would come out irrespective of the orientation of the pen, or the pressure it was in. It also used a non-newtonian thixotropic ink which acted like ketchup – stayed put as long as the pen was not intending to write, and flowed due to a change in viscosity when the pen had to write. Oh and the ink was designed to work well at -25 to 120 degrees C, not 300 C.
This original spacepen – Antigravity 7 or AG7, the one which was used on Apollo 7 space mission in 1968 after 2 years of testing by NASA, sells on Fisher spacepen’s website for about $60.
This video talks about how it all started from a sandwich:
Even though they’re not on the roads yet, driverless cars are disrupting the automotive industry in unforgettable ways. Keep reading to learn about expected factors related to the evolution of these futuristic vehicles.
1. Market Trends
Automotive analysts say emerging technology is gaining momentum in the automotive market. Top car brands are making their vehicles compatible with popular gadgets and tech-related services, and some people think the Internet of Things (IoT) will also play a role in upcoming models.
Business leader Elon Musk has even announced he plans to earn income by lending extremely safe self-driving cars to interested persons.
2. Potential Reductions in Car Ownership
Musk’s idea doesn’t seem so far-fetched when you consider most of us are accustomed to carpooling at least occasionally. If you’re from a city where the service is available, you may have even used car-sharing companies that allow you to drive a vehicle on an as-needed basis, then drop it off in a pre-determined spot when you’re done.
Once driverless cars become more mainstream, we may increasingly use borrowed vehicles rather than owning cars. That’s especially true because self-driving cars will be too expensive for some people to own.
Think Angelina Jolie shooting curved trajectory shots with her gun in the movie Wanted. Well, the end result is not exactly fictional anymore (the technique is). I recently stumbled upon the following video demonstrating DARPA’s new self-steering bullet technology and it blew my mind.Here’s the video:
The video shows new missile-like self-steering projectiles hitting a moving target, only this time these are not missiles but 0.5 caliber sized sniper bullets (0.5 inches internal diameter of the gun’s barrel). As seen in the video, enabled by technology, a novice-sniper seems to be able to make a fairly good shot. On a funnier note, I see it like the autotune technology that helps music artists to fit their out of tune recording to a perfect tune.
Jokes aside, watching this smart bullet change its path mid-air, stirred up the curious cat that lives in my head. I would have had a tough time sleeping without knowing how DARPA’s self-steering bullet actually works. So, armed with free journal access (being a Ph.D. student has its perks), I fired up my google scholar and started looking for white papers with some mention of these keywords. With this technology being developed under DARPA, it’s of course one of those hush-hush things and was sure I won’t find much. Still, I was happy to glean a tiny hint of its inner workings.
Over the years, I have been fed with one shocking new fact a time about the Pyramids the Egyptians built over 3,800 years ago. Although not anywhere even close to being a new fact, this is the latest fact I have uncovered about the Great Pyramid of Giza, or the Pyramid of Khufu – The largest and the oldest of all the three pyramids in the Giza pyramid complex.
When observed carefully, what actually looks like an average square pyramid with four visible sides, that actually isn’t the case. Technically, there are eight visible sides. Here’s an exaggerated cartoon of what I mean by the eight sides.
In fact, the Menkaure, the third pyramid at Giza and the Red Pyramid at Dahshur have also been observed to have a similar concavity to each of their faces!
I know it is hard to believe, just because not many a people talk about it. For that, here are a few images of what it looks like from up above.
If you had a formal education that touched even a little bit of composite materials in the course, you will immediately be able to recall what these amazing materials can do. For others, Composite materials, as the name suggests, are materials that are composed of two or more different kinds of materials.
In a simple case think of your body, which is, in a broad sense, a combination of skin material and bone material. These materials are designed to take advantage of the contrasting properties of, say two different materials. For simplicity’s sake, skin is soft and bone is hard. The bone gives body a solid structure, while the skin and muscle tissues enables this hard skeleton to make fluid movements – flex or bend – and still be together.
Individually the materials that make up a composite material are not very capable. But when they come together, composite materials can blow your mind. To appreciate how this simple coming together of two humble materials can create a super material, and to appreciate the mind blowing properties it can have, let us first look at what most of us have heard of – “Carbon Fiber”. We will get into the more mind bending aspect of composites after that.
Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP)
Now carbon fiber itself isn’t a composite material. As the name suggests, it is a fiber of carbon. The fiber is composed of strands of carbon each of which are much thinner than a single human hair. Hundreds of these come together to form a thicker fiber. This fiber can be woven to make sheets or the carbon fiber itself can directly be used in a composite material.
Water repellent technology has advanced a lot since it was first introduced. Durable water repellent is a coating which is received by the products to make them water resistant and is made from nano structures. These nano structures are the result of the advancement in the modern chemicals and thus offer far more protection than any other thing. Here are some of the facts which makes explains how this new water repellent technology uses the concept of nano technology to help your car remain cleaner:
The Lotus Effect
The nano structures are byproducts of nanotechnology which are used to give protection to your car’s windows, windshields, rims and to the whole body. The main function of the hydrophobic coating is to act as water repellent agent making your car waterproof and increase the car’s auto wash cycles. The mechanism from which it was inspired is itself found in nature and therefore called as “Lotus effect”. This is named after lotus leaf which has self cleaning properties and insects such as butterflies and dragonflies also exhibit such properties.
The term cocktail party effect was coined by a British Cognitive scientist Colin Cherry, in the 1950s. He was interested in understanding how people listened, by conducting a few experiments. In his first experiment, he played two different overlapped messages recorded in the voice of the same person, through headphones. The participants were asked to listen carefully and try to write one of the messages on paper. If they put in enough concentration, the participants usually succeeded.
The cocktail party effect is the phenomenon of being able to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, much the same way that a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room. Continue reading The Cocktail Party Effect
I find it fascinating that today you can define certain rules and provide enough historical data to a computer, reward it for reaching closer to the goal and punish it for doing bad, which will get it trained to do a specific task. Based on these rules and data, the machine can be programmed to learn to do tasks so well that we humans have no way of knowing what steps it is explicitly following to get the work done. It’s like the brain, you can’t slice it open and understand the inner workings.
The days when we used to define each step for the computer to take are now numbered. The role we played back then, of a god to the computers has been reduced to something like that of a dog trainer. The tables are turning from commanding machines to parenting them. Rather than creating code, we are turning into trainers. Computers are learning. It has been called machine learning, for quite a while now (defined in 1959 by by Arthur Samuel). Other names being artificial intelligence, deep simulation or cognitive computing. However now, it really has picked up and based on the amazing things it can help computers do now, it is clearly going to be the future of what the IT industry will transform into.
