Pneucon Selfeeder Portable Pneumatic Drilling Units

Sugino Corp. introduces its entry into portable pneumatic drilling units specifically designed for the aerospace industry. The Pneucon Selfeeder (TM) Family is currently being developed with cooperation of some of the World’s largest aerospace manufacturers to streamline drilling applications on large wing and fuselage assemblies. The portable air powered Pneucon Selfeeders are designed to provide very tight T.I.R. less than .0006” and deliver .0008” repeatability on depths. The typical nose mount unit to be used in fixtures with precision collet holders and clocking bushing fixtures.

The prototype units released incorporate a requested design feature from Sugino’s field tested Double Hydro-Speed Regulator technology which will produce fine holes without burrs. The rapid approach of the drill is slowed when the primary control feed rate regulator is engaged prior to entering the part, as the drill approaches its preset depth, the secondary control feed rate regulator further slows the drilling unit to virtually eliminate burrs on breakthrough. Pneucon Feeders have a precision spindle and a built-in guide bar to create tighter tolerances vs. the existing pneumatic drills used in the industry and offer through the tool coolant delivery.

Pneucon Feeders have a precision machined turbine for smooth operation without vibrations. They operate with positive air pressure in both forward and reverse directions. Pneucon Feeders are operated exclusively on compressed air for ease of use and safety. One key advantage is the unit is equipped to provide cutting oil directly at and through the tooling to the tool tip where lubrication is most needed; this feature can extend tool life and provide superior drilling capabilities.

Sugino

www.sugino.com

::Design World::

Universal Air Filter Products Support Green Initiatives

UAF filters can be designed and configured to maximize surface area to reduce pressure drop and promote increased service life. Low-pressure drop filters allow more airflow to help dissipate heat, resulting in the use of smaller cooling fans. Smaller and/or fewer cooling fans equal less money spent on energy to run the fans for equipment cooling.

UAF’s filters also keep dust from accumulating on circuit cards within equipment cooling applications, allowing the product to operate under decreased heat conditions. This enables the system to run at a higher efficiency and therefore extends the life of the product.

Reusable filter frames allow customers to replace only the air filter media rather than the entire air filter assembly. UAF’s clamshell and thin envelope air filter frames can be cleaned and reused to reduce waste as well as lower maintenance costs. These filter frame designs are manufactured to fit in tight spaces less than 6.35 mm or 0.25 inches thick and can be removed for service while continuing to reduce the risk of disturbing dust loaded on the filter. The frames also open for easy access to the media for simple cleaning and substitution. The media is designed to meet NEBS standards, which require a UL Classified framed filter assembly within telecom and/or datacom chassis.

UAF’s Quadrafoam filters lower insurance cost by helping to reduce the chance of requiring extensive product replacement due to smoke and/or fire damage. The flame-resistant Quadrafoam media, which meets UL 94 HF-1, will self-extinguish to minimize fire propagation and help limit and contain flame spread to adjacent equipment.

www.uaf.com

::Design World::

Elastomer Ensures Smooth Operation

Endoscopic surgical instrument insertion and retraction through a seal must feel smooth and easy. The more the material “grabs” and adheres to the shaft of the instrument, the more force it will take to manipulate the instrument (not something you want to experience even if you are under anesthesia). A new process, known as F-treat, promises to reduce friction and deliver a permanent low coefficient of friction surface that will not dissipate with wear. Unlike topical modifications that can be washed or worn away, F-treat is a modification of a compound so that if abrasion or wear occurs, a low friction surface will always be present.

Surgeons report that medical devices such as endoscopes with the F-treated seals respond better to their touch than non-treated elastomer seals. Medical product designers claim custom F-treated seals improve nasal and liposuction canula.

Laboratory studies of a broad range of elastomer materials show the reduction of coefficient of friction of F-treated molded components. Since the modification occurs as a reaction with the polymer, the most dramatic improvement is seen with low hardness, polymer-rich elastomers such as a 55 Shore A compound.

Minnesota Rubber and Plastics
www.mnrubber.com

::Design World::

Designing a Cryogenic Pump Controller

Cryopumps or cold traps are used to condense gases and vapors onto a cold surface. It is reported that they can lower the gas pressure in a space to a near-perfect vacuum more effectively than mechanical roughing pumps. Controlling the pump cycle and regeneration sequence (where the trapped gases are re-evaporated to remove them from the trapping surface) necessitates specific timing and feedback requirements to create an efficient system. Further, it requires input from a number of specialized sensing elements such as silicon diode temperature sensors which are accurate to temperatures below 10° K (-263° C), and thermocouple vacuum sensors which provide measurements for gas pressures to  below 1 micron (1 millitorr).

In addition to the details of high-quality vacuum sensing, larger components such as pump motors and system valves have to be controlled. Safety can be an issue, too. What’s more, subtleties such as timing sequences, general I/O, and communications must be monitored by a microcontroller, and the system must be able to operate reliably in harsh industrial environments.

While many of these functions could be controlled by traditional programmable logic controllers (PLCs), the system would be expensive and complex. Hence, a need arose for a reliable, rugged controller that could be standardized, mass-produced, and be relatively inexpensive.

Our customer needed a working pump controller prototype within eight weeks. The company was using a 20-year old laboratory-grade local continuous replication (LCR) bridge. The design team studied the case and generated a development plan for the product that would modernize the bill of materials (BOM), reduce costs, and improve functionality and operability. However, the mechanics and the user interface had to be backward-compatible with the original design.

Orchid designs cryogenic equipment that monitors and regulates temperatures between 4° and 70° K.

Some of the other design challenges included addressing low-total harmonic distortion precision sine wave generators, phase-balanced analog amplifiers, low-noise power systems, and high-accuracy 18-bit analog-to-digital conversion circuitry. The designers used Windows CE to update the processing power. They worked with DR DOS and MS DOS operating systems to address the backward-compatibility issues.

Designers compacted the discrete logic integrated circuits to a single modern field programmable gate array (FPGA), along with other size-reducing techniques. Then, they reduced the confusion of boards, cables, heat sinks, and standoffs to a concise, easier-to-build, and more reliable product that consisted of a single instrument board. The design team used the board layout and copper pour areas to conduct heat out through the bottom of the board that eliminated the need for the large number of discreet heat sinks and spreaders in the old design. The new cooling system deals with the heat in a more efficient manner.

The team used the digital signal processing (DSP) host port for communication with the CPU. A newly added universal serial bus (USB) runs the original DR DOS and MS DOS operating systems.

Orchid Technologies Engineering & Consulting, Inc.
www.orchid-tech.com

::Design World::

EXAIR Catalog Features Blowoff And Cooling Products

EXAIR’s new Catalog 23 is a full color, technical guide offering solutions to common industrial cooling, drying, conveying, blowoff, cleaning, and static electricity problems.

The expanded 160 page catalog features products that can help companies conserve compressed air and reduce dangerous noise levels. New E-Vac(r) Vacuum Generators, efficient Super Air Knives, Super Air Nozzles, Super Air Wipes, Vortex Tubes and Cold Gun tool coolers are also featured. A detailed technical explanation, performance data, application photos, and dimensional drawings are provided for each product. A price list is also included.

EXAIR Corporation

www.exair.com

::Design World::

Swagelok Introduces Process Specification for Photovoltaics

Swagelok Company unveiled a new process
specification designed to meet the needs of the photovoltaic (PV) market, aimed at
helping ensure quality and reduce cost of ownership for the growing industry. The Swagelok
Photovoltaic Process Specification (SC-06) outlines testing, cleaning, and packaging steps for
stainless steel components for use in PV applications. The specification illustrates the
company’s continued leadership in process-specific cleaning, which began in the 1980s with
ultrahigh-purity components.

The baseline requirements include specifying the high-quality surface finish, visual
inspection criteria and particle counts the PV industry needs to maintain reliability and process
control for improved uptime, while identifying areas (such as work area classification, analytics,
and packaging) where costs can be contained.

Swagelok® products are designed to provide reliable, leak-tight performance in critical PV
manufacturing processes, such as Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD)
and diffusion. These and other processes require low leak rates for safety, control of process
gas purity, as well as precise delivery of gases to maintain cell integrity and reduce scrap.

The Swagelok Photovoltaic Process Specification (SC-06) is an available option for many
Swagelok high-purity products, in place of the company’s other specifications: SC-01
(Ultrahigh-purity Process), SC-10 (Standard Cleaning and Packaging), and SC-11 (Special
Cleaning and Packaging).

The products currently available with SC-06 processing include DP and DPH springless
diaphragm valves, HB and BN series bellows valves, CW series check valves, VCR® metal
gasket face seal fittings, and Micro-Fit® miniature tube butt weld fittings. To download the SC-
06 specification, please visit www.swagelok.com/solar.

Swagelok Company

www.swagelok.com

::Design World::

Elektrotechniek a Showcase for BalContact™ Technology

The biggest attraction at the Elektrotechniek exhibition running this week in Utrecht, Netherlands may turn out to be one of the smallest and simplest products: an electrical contact fashioned from a spring.

The BalContact™, an electrically conductive component that employs precision-engineered canted-coil™ spring technology, is being showcased at Elektrotechniek 2009 by U.S-based manufacturer Bal Seal Engineering, Inc. And according to the company, interest in the simple, versatile Bal Contact is expected to be high among engineers and manufacturers who are seeking a simple, flexible solution to high, mid and low current conducting challenges.

“When we demonstrate how the Bal Contact performs, people immediately recognize it as a solution they can apply quickly and easily,” said Josien Suntjens, a Bal Seal Territory Manager working at Elektrotechniek this week. “They’re consistently impressed with its elegance and simplicity, and they like the fact that it can help them lower manufacturing costs and simplify maintenance.”

According to Suntjens, the Bal Contact is available in a wide variety of wire sizes, coil heights and materials. Its spring is designed to maintain a nearly constant force over a
broad range of working deflections, compensating for large mating tolerances and
temperature changes without significant deviation from its initial force. Each coil in the Bal
Contact works independently, maintaining contact with the mating surface and ensuring
maximum conductivity, Suntjens said.

According to Bal Seal, typical applications for the Bal Contact include busbar connections, gas-insulated switchgear contacts, circuit breakers and industrial fuse boxes. In some environments, the Bal Contact can also be used for EMI shielding/grounding purposes.

Elektrotechniek attendees can learn more about the Bal Contact and other conducting, connecting, sealing and shielding solutions by visiting Bal Seal Engineering’s exhibit in Hall 09BV, Stand B060. A photorealistic animation of the Bal Contact at work in three different gas-insulated switchgear applications can be viewed at http://mediaroom.balseal.com/vod2

Bal Seal Engineering, Inc.

www.balseal.com

Elektrotechniek

www.elektrotechniek-online.nl

::Design World::

2009 Single Axis Actuators Catalog from Misumi

Schaumburg, IL – Misumi USA, Inc. announces the imminent publication of its 2009 Single Axis Actuators Catalog, featuring new single axis products and components suitable for a wide range of motion control and assembly machinery and other automation devices.

Featured prominently in the catalog are:

•The new Single Axis Robot RS Series Actuators, which offer superior construction to improve product life span and allow units to be used in harsh industrial environments. All models offer constant load capacity regardless of speed. Clean Room Class 10 versions are also available for specialized applications.

•An expanded line of LX Series Actuators, to include high precision class actuators and actuators with motors. Misumi’s popular LX Series models are available in over 1000 possible configurations. They are also available in standard or cover types, as well as versions with brackets that allow a combination of two units on a different axis.

Those interested in ordering the new MISUMI 2009 Single Axis Actuator Catalog can complete an order form at Misumi’s booth #2817 at the Assembly Technology Expo during Design & Manufacturing Midwest. Or you can order it on line. Visit www.misumiusa.com

Misumi, USA, Inc.

www.misumiusa.com

::Design World::

AutomationDirect adds Pneumatic Cylinder Position Switches

The NITRA™ line of pneumatics products now includes the CPS series of pneumatic position switches and accessories to offer a robust interface between pneumatic actuators and electrical control systems.

The solid-state electronic switches are available in 3-wire DC PNP and NPN normally open and PNP normally closed configurations and can be purchased with an M8 wiring connector or 2-meter cable with wire leads. Five mounting bands with adapters for round body cylinders are available ranging from 5/16” to 2” sizes. Pneumatic cylinder position switches start at $18.75 and are backed with a 3-year warranty.

AutomationDirect

www.automationdirect.com/

::Design World::

Electric Servoactuator

An electric linear servoactuator is an alternative to hydraulic actuation. The design of the ball screw translates rotational motion to linear motion inside the servoactuator, extending its life.  Plus, it draws less power than hydraulic alternatives. 

Three versions are available. The Standard Electric Linear Servoactuator works with most linear actuation applications. Maximum force of 70 kN; rod speeds up to 640 mm/sec; and an absolute encoder transmits position and feedback data.

The Flexible Electric Linear Servoactuator is for higher forces, rod speeds and longer strokes. Maximum force of 115.59 kN; and, rod speeds up to 1,600 mm/sec.

The third version is a pre-engineered package option including the Standard Electric Linear Servoactuation Package and Flexible Electric Linear Servoactuation Package.  Each package includes servoactuator, servodrive and commissioning software.

Moog Industrial Group
http://info.moog.com/servoactuators

::Design World::

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