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THE LATEST RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT NEWS IN MANUFACTURING AND TECHNOLOGY
New Conductive Polymer Nanocomposites
Hold Promise for Portable Devices
R
esearchers at Drexel University (Philadelphia) have
The flexible new material, called a conductive polymer
developed a strong, flexible, electrically conductive
nanocomposite, is the latest in ongoing research in Drexel’s
nanocomposite material that could be used to power
Department of Materials Science and Engineering on a fam-
future wearable energy storage devices.
ily of composite two-dimensional materials called MXenes.
The conductive MXene-polymer nanocomposite material,
The development was the result of a collaboration between
created by researchers in Drexel’s Department of Materials
research groups of Yury Gogotsi, Distinguished University
Science and Engineering in collaboration with scientists at
and Trustee Chair professor in the College of Engineering at
Dalian University of Technology in China, is very flexible yet
Drexel, and Jieshan Qiu, vice dean for research of the School
has the strength to support many times its own weight. The
of Chemical Engineering at Dalian University of Technology
researchers see potential for the material
to improve electrical energy storage, water
filtration and radio-frequency shielding in
technologies ranging from portable electronics to coaxial cables.
Creating thin materials that can hold
and disburse an electric charge while
being contorted into a variety of shapes
is a rarity in the field of materials science,
the researchers noted. In addition, tensile
Photo courtesy Drexel University
strength, the strength of the material when
it is stretched, and compressive strength—
its ability to support weight—are valuable
characteristics for these materials that are
just a few atoms thick.
“Take the electrode of the small lithiumion battery that powers your watch, for
example. Ideally the conductive material
The flexible, conductive MXene-polymer nanocomposites created by Drexel
University engineers could find uses in wearable energy storage devices.
in that electrode would be very small—so you don’t have
in China. Zheng Ling, a doctoral student from Dalian, spent
a bulky watch strapped to your wrist—and hold enough
a year at Drexel, spearheading the research that led to the
energy to run your watch for a long period of time,” said
first MXene-polymer composites. The research at Drexel
Michel Barsoum, Distinguished Professor in the College of
was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation
Engineering. “But what if we wanted to make the watch’s
(NSF) and the US Department of Energy.
wristband into the battery? Then we’d still want to use a
“The uniqueness of MXenes comes from the fact that their
conductive material that is very thin and can store energy,
surface is full of functional groups, such as hydroxyl, leading
but it would also need to be flexible enough to bend around
to a tight bonding between the MXene flakes and polymer
your wrist. As you can see, just by changing one physical
molecules, while preserving the metallic conductivity of
property of the material—flexibility or tensile strength—we
nanometer-thin carbide layers,” Gogotsi said. “This leads to a
open a new world of possibilities.”
nanocomposite with a unique combination of properties.”
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tech front
Drexel researchers have been examining MXenes
for some time, and the engineers invented the layered
carbide material in 2011. The team’s most recent
work on MXenes was recently published in a paper,
“Flexible and conductive MXene films and nanocomposites with high capacitance,” in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers
reported that the material exhibits increased ability to
store charge over the original MXene and 300-400%
improvement in strength. To view an abstract of the
Photo courtesy Aaron Bestick, UC Berkeley
paper, see http://tinyurl.com/olaah4g.
Research for Collaborative Robots
A
s demand rises for collaborative robots that can
work very closely with humans, more research
is being allocated to scientists developing robots
capable of handling tasks ranging from disaster
recovery to health care and assembly-line work. The
The Baxter robot hands off a cable to a human collaborator—
an example of a co-robot in action.
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January 2015
tech front
National Science Foundation, in partnership with the National
understanding of robotic sensing, motion, computer vision,
Institutes of Health, US Department of Agriculture and NASA,
machine learning and human-computer interaction. The
on Nov. 19 announced $31.5 million in new awards to spur
awards include efforts to develop soft robots that are safer
the development and use of co-robots—robots that work
for human interaction, determine how humans can lead
cooperatively with people.
teams of robots in recovery situations and design robots that
The awards are the third round of funding made through
can check aging infrastructure and map remote geographic
the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), a multi-agency pro-
areas. A full listing of the NRI investments made by NSF is
gram launched in September 2012 as part of the Advanced
available on NSF’s NRI Program page.
Manufacturing Partnership Initiative, with NSF as the lead
federal agency.
“Robots and robotic systems have the potential to augment human abilities, improve our quality of life and perform
dangerous tasks unsuitable for people,” said Suzi Iacono, acting assistant director of the Computer and Information Science
and Engineering Directorate at NSF. “Working with our federal
Optical Precision for
Measurement and Inspection
“F
rom the time that Eli Whitney first made the many parts
of his gun interchangeable… we note an increase in
the precision of measurements,” stated Lewis V. Judson,
partners in NRI has spurred new research directions that
a physicist in the Office of Weights and Measures at the
weren’t previously possible without these collaborations.”
National Bureau of Standards (now NIST; Gaithersburg, MD)
Ranging from $300,000 to $1.8 million over one to four
years, these 52 new research awards advance fundamental
in SME Technical Paper TP60PUB1. “Measurement is the life
line of progress.”
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The fact that “a ray of light is an excellent straight line”
(TP60PUB135) brought optical methods to popularity in
place of mechanical measurements by surface tables, height
gages, knee blocks or micrometers (TP63PUB40). TP60PUB135’s four articles from The Tool Engineer magazine
include case studies on increasing the inspection rate of
complex ammunition components by several hundred percent and optical trueing of large lathes in less than an hour.
Digitized data for an optimum milling strategy
(K. Galanulis and J. Tyson, TP08PUB22).
Early Devices
Four unusual optical measuring instruments developed
functions of the human eye and brain combination. Electronic
by Itek Corp., a former defense contractor, are described in
image motion stabilization permitted stabilizing an image for
TP67PUB150. A digital microinch measuring machine was
photography in the presence of rapid relative angular motion
developed to measure and guide the final polishing (figur-
between the object and camera.
ing) of the irregular surface of nonspherical (aspheric) lenses.
A portable instrument with lighting and optics developed
A ranging optical probe using modulated light focused to a
at NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville,
minute spot was used in applications where an electronic
AL) aided product control of separable tube connections,
probe stylus was unsuitable. An electronic eye device pro-
where leaks can be life threatening and expensive. The flared
vided, in a limited manner, the visualization and correlation
tubes typically produced at Marshall relate to space vehicles,
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tech front
but tubing connections are an issue in many other applications in the military, aerospace, marine and machinery
industries (TP67PUB153).
“Automatic inspection of manufactured materials is no
longer a dream or ideal of cost conscious management,
but is in fact a reality. It is also apparent that the human eye
and brain is not as consistent or reliable as what we would
like to see reflected in our final product quality,” stated the
author of TP70PUB7. Several applications of electro-optical
techniques for in-process inspection are described, including the unique capabilities of scanning electron microscopes,
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milling cutters
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Mill-Thread cutters offers:
rotating mirrors and fiber optic bundles. Other papers detail
automated optical inspection of small bore surfaces in an
automotive brake system valve body (TP72PUB128), inspection and sorting of precision springs (TP79PUB125) and
automatic optical inspection of printed circuit boards before
solder (TP87PUB487).
Call It Machine Vision
Electro-optical sensing for part inspection was well established by the time the term “machine vision” was heavily
publicized as a crucial contribution to robotics. As explained
in TP82PUB185, most inspection applications require highresolution sensors relative to existing gages or visual inspectors, while robot guidance for simple tasks needs considerably lower resolution.
• The Carmex “Helical Advantage™” for better
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• Reduced cycle time
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A robust, flexible optical feature extractor system for
machine vision high-speed inspection applications is summarized in TP87PUB167, and TP89PUB313 describes the
application of machine vision in the form of three identical
laser gaging systems in a flexible manufacturing cell.
Papers dealing with many techniques for inspection were
presented at SME events such as Vision, Precision Metrology with CMMs, MicroManufacturing and North American
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Hydroforming. Topics include selection and application of
noncontact optical probes on coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) in TP99PUB152, processing of micromold
cavity flow images with a transparent mold and high-speed
camera system (TP07PUB140) and digitizing and analyzing
the dimensional, forming and material property aspects of
metal sheet parts and tools (TP08PUB22).
TechFront is edited by Senior Editors Patrick Waurzyniak,
pwaurzyniak@sme.org, and Ellen Kehoe, ekehoe@sme.org.
SME Technical Papers (coded as TP…PUB…) and search options
for the collection are available at http://tinyurl.com/SearchTPs.
January 2015
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AdvancedManufacturing.org
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262-628-5030 or 888-628-5030
sales@carmexusa.com
www.carmexusa.com