Machine Design Blogs

ell, so much for the idea that fewer and fewer students are studying math and the sciences. The National Center for Education Statistics compared surveys of high school seniors in 1972, 1980, 1982, 1992, and 2004. One result:

The percentage of seniors enrolling in calculus during their senior year grew from 6 percent to 13 percent between 1982 and 2004. The percentage of seniors taking no mathematics courses during their senior year declined from 57 percent to 34 percent over this time period. Seniors increased their senior-year enrollment in advanced science courses (chemistry II, physics II, and advanced biology) from 12 percent in 1982 to 25 percent in 2004.

Here is the link for the complete report, which is free:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008320

Here’s a news flash: People who take higher level math courses tend to make more money than those who do not, regardless of what they majored in. As reported in the blogs of the Chronicle of Higher Education,

In raw terms, the two scholars found the usual salary disparities: Nursing and social-work majors earn $48,900 per year, on average, while engineering majors bring home an average of $102,290. But Mr. Hamermesh and Mr. Donald found that …………………regardless of their choice of major and regardless of their mathematics SAT scores — students earn significantly more money if they take more upper-level math and science courses.

Here is the link:

http://chronicle.com/news/article/4656/major-in-business-make-a-bundle-its-not-quite-so-simple?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

For just writing a $10,000 check for a conversion kit, you, too, can have a plug-in hybrid. Oh, and if you drive 40 miles daily, you’ll break even on your investment after about eight years:

http://www.forbesautos.com/news/features/2008/plug-in-electric-vehicles-story.html

Avatars or online alter-egos can help individuals with Asperger syndrome deal with frustration in a computer-simulated environment to better cope in the real world, say researchers at the Univ. of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain­Health. Asperger syndrome is a form of autism that does not completely isolate people from the real world. But having the disease makes it hard to understand non-verbal cues such as facial expressions. A program at the university lets patients use avatars in a simulated world to learn how to negotiate with a difficult manager, practice dealing with customers on the job, and interact with people in general.

At the AUVSI unmanned systems show earlier this week, it was interesting to note all the interest in engine technology for UAVs. The image most people have of the typical UAV powerplant is something pulled out of an RC plane and tweaked for military use. Not anymore. Perhaps the most interesting development at the show was a super compact but powerful gas turbine from Hamilton Sundstrand that company officials wouldn’t discuss with us, even though an example was on display at the booth. It was small enough to hold in your hands.

Another theme: There is a lot of work among both piston engine and gas turbine suppliers toward making these things operate from heavy fuel — that’s ordinary kerosene-like jet fuel to for the uninitiated. The key seems to be in atomizing the fuel adequately so it will burn more efficiently. That lets the military use one kind of fuel for all its vehicles and simplifies logistics immensely.

Finally, another interesting development came from Frontline Aerospace, Inc. with its V-Star UAV. The V-Star employs morphing wing technology in the form of extensions at the end of its wings that flip up to handle slow flight conditions. So far the craft is only a concept, and there is some pooh-poohing about it from the aviation press because the company is a start-up:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a54bc4110-8356-43c5-9876-ff8dd5578ede

But there is a 50% scale demonstrator under construction that should be ready next year.

You may remember from your calculus classes that symmetry can sometimes be used to solve equations that at first look daunting. But some symmetries are so complicated that they are tough to spot, even for a computer. University of Michigan researchers recently reported a breakthrough in this area. From the release:

In less than a half-second, the new software captured 1083,687 different symmetries in an Internet connectivity graph of routers around the world. A symmetry in this graph signifies a way the routers could be shuffled that wouldn’t change the operation.

Previous methods timed out in the 30 minutes they were given to generate results in these experiments. Darga said it would take these older programs days to solve such a complicated problem. In searching for symmetries in the road networks between cities and towns in Illinois, the new algorithm captured the 104,843 symmetries in less than a half-second, whereas the most robust previous algorithm took 16 minutes.

They are even giving the software away. You can request a copy here:

http://vlsicad.eecs.umich.edu/BK/SAUCY/

This sort of makes you wonder about other inventors who might have been buried in what they invented:

Associated Press

June 3, 2008 - Cincinnati–The man who designed the Pringles potato crisp packaging system was so proud of his accomplishment that a portion of his ashes has been buried in one of the iconic cans.

Fredric J. Baur, of Cincinnati, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice in Cincinnati, his family said. He was 89.

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Baur’s children said they honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave in suburban Springfield Township. The rest of his remains were placed in an urn buried along with the can, with some placed in another urn and given to a grandson, said Baur’s daughter, Linda Baur of Diamondhead, Miss.

Baur requested the burial arrangement because he was proud of his design of the Pringles container, a son, Lawrence Baur of Stevensville, Mich., said Monday.

Baur was an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co.

Baur filed for a patent for the tubular Pringles container and for the method of packaging the curved, stacked chips in the container in 1966, and it was granted in 1970, P&G archivist Ed Rider said.

Baur retired from P&G in the early 1980s.

Unfortunately, I can only attend one day of PTC’s three-day Global Media Event, being held in Long Beach, Calif. This morning’s presentations covered the business side of things. It was said that 2,046 registrants from some 24 countries attended the conference. First to speak was the President of PTC’s World User group Dan Glenn. He says there are plenty of active user portals and technical communities. The company has restructured the regional user groups — only active members are now represented.

Customers of PTC include ABB, Seimens, Boeing, HP, Rolex, Motorola, Harley Davidson, Dell, and Liz Clairborn. PTC is opening a new development center in China to take advantage of that new consumer base.

“How are companies to succeed?” asks the second speaker. By using technology that supports ROI. In other words, each of the six product families: Windchill, Pro/E, CoCreate, Arbotext, MathCAD, and ProductView.

For customer satisfaction, the company has been rated by an independant firm at 7.0 out of a possible 10 — “right in the middle of the pack for technology companies.” Globally, there are 800,000 seats of Windchill and 1.5 M users. Revenue growth has been 14% over the last 3 years.

PTC practices what it preaches in terms of the globalization of product development — it has 1,700 engineers in India, Asia, and China, and other countries overseas, and is focusing on IT consolidation so global interaction is better.

Two new products were announced:

Windchill ProductPoint, which sits inside Microsoft SharePoint. ProductPoint 1.0 Beta in Aug 2008.

Windows SharePoint Services a technology suite that was not good for understanding CAD files structures. But a lot of companies use it to share documents. Sharepoint now understands what CAD is saying:

Windchill ProductPoint Server:

Windows SharePoint Services, a portal, can share documents,

Windchill adds tab for products where you can see thumbnails of files

Filters to find files

Embedded visualization

Can see assembly structures “under the hood” Wildfire 4.0 is integrated with it, so you can quickly search and find assembly components.

Windchill PDMLink, Windchill ProductPoint, Windchill PLM Connector: PLM solutions for varying size companies.

ProductPoint — simple, general purpose, standalone and integral (the pieces are made to work together). It does not replace Pro/Intralink, PDMLink, ProjectLink

And:

ProductView 9.1

View, markup tool, MCAD, ECAD, document formats.

Standalone, integral with Windchill, and 2.5 GByte file in ProductView gets compressed to a few MBytes.

Is easy to run queries and the software color-codes model based on the query. For example, all parts that are behind schedule turn red.

500,000 components can run in one session!

ProductView is in Windchill 9.1 — mouse-over icons and see what part it is, where it is used, all its children, can drag columns to increase their size.

Lastly, enhancements for Pro/Engineer : flexible modeling for Wildfire 6.0. will allow freeform sculpting or conceptualizing the shape as you go. What is created is not an STL or a faceted model — it is Pro/E surfaces from which you can make a solid model.