We’ve all seen the fantastic and modern products of designers and engineers which fill our lives- from the phones in our hands to aircraft in the skies, but how do those designs get from the engineers head to the real world?
Long gone are the days of pencil and paper. Now, in the days in which even a mouse is seen as too “last decade”, modern technology has revolutionised computer aided design in mind-blowing ways.
I was lucky enough to meet with a group of engineers to discuss the latest CAD techniques and technology, and was astonished at how close it was to some kind of scene from Iron Man. With a combination of the 3D technology in high-end televisions to tracking systems similar to a Wii remote, the resulting system allowed the engineer to climb inside a model and manipulate components with a “virtual hand”, in order to physically poke around and test things before even having to build a prototype!
This level of technology drastically speeds up the design process, but what techniques are employed to “realise” these creations?
3D printing is becoming the “in” thing in the engineering world, with companies already making home 3D printers for around the same cost as a high-end paper printer. These generally use plastic, either in a long wire or powder form, which is melted and deposited onto a plate to build up an object in layers. With this technique, entire mechanisms can be built from a computer design, with absolutely no assembly required; all the gears and moving parts built in situ!
This is great for any kind of plastic product, but similar techniques can be used in metalworking. Sometimes the metal object is built up from a long wire which is wound into shape and welded together to build up the object. My personal favourite, however, (as it uses lasers) is to spray a surface with metal powder and trace out a layer of the object with a laser; welding the powder together as it goes. Another layer of metal powder is added and the laser builds up the next layer. This process is repeated and the whole thing takes a few hours, but then the remaining powder can be collected and used again- brilliant!
Manufacturing companies are especially excited about the prospect of using 3D printing to build up an entire thing- a mobile phone, say, or a whole computer, circuits and all. The beauty of this sort of thing is any of these can be built on the same machine; perhaps even at the same time!
Now we’ll just wait for holograms to be invented, and forget about building anything at all! Holographic clothing though? Perhaps not…
Tag engineering
How to Build a Backyard Radio Observatory. Part 2.
Having ensured that the signal strength meter was fully working, it was time to find out if this exciting gadget -a Panoramic visualiser- would also be of use in a personal radio observatory. This is another beautiful piece of equipment given to me by a neighbour which I was desperate to use for something like this, and luckily, it even tunes down to 5 Mhz, which makes it ideal for picking up synchrotron radiation from Jupiter/The Sun. I spent at least 10 minutes and as many vertebrae trying to move the thing round to where I would use it, and another half an hour trying to work out what everything was for, but I’m fairly sure I have it sussed now.
At the moment, the sun is nearly at the peak of its cycle so there is a lot of ionospheric interference, but I managed to get a few interesting patterns appearing. So far I have no idea what these mean but hopefully it won’t take long before some interesting observations come out of this setup!
An alternative way to set up your own radio observatory is to use an old satellite dish and get a “satellite finder” which is just a small box which measures how strong the signal is. Since the sun emits a broad band of frequencies it should also give a slight signal. For a more advanced setup, combine a frequency filter or a radio scanner and an AC microvoltmeter (a setup similar to the signal strength meter from Part 1) Then you will be able to select particular frequencies and find signals. (investigate specified radio astronomy “quiet frequencies”, transmission in these frequency ranges is prohibited so any signal you get should be extra-terrestrial!)
Now that all the equipment has been proven to work, the next step is to try to actually make some observations! Watch out for Part 3…
Musings of a Scientist 