SIEMENS MADE THE HEADLINES WITH 3D-PRINTED TURBINE BLADES
The world is full of competitors and the tech companies have taken it to another level. We always witness a tussle among the top-rated companies and we are the ones who get the advantage of being a common man. Due to the advanced technologies prevailing in this world, we have been able to lead a more comfortable life. Once we start getting things easily, we don’t really care from where it is coming and how it is happening.
We just enjoy the flow without knowing the nitty gritty. Well, the tech companies are always on the run to develop new gadgets and design something new for the betterment for the lives. Recently, the company Siemen have made a breakthrough in terms of the printing technology by challenging the 3D printed turbine blades.
THE BLADES
The German pioneer Engineering group Siemens has gone ahead and made a breakthrough by testing the 3D printed turbine blades. The technology of the 3D printing is new and it was purchased by them from Material solutions. The 3D printed turbine blades make revolutions of 13000 per minute and that too when the temperature is more than 1250 Celsius. This is certainly incredible. The mechanism has made really breakthrough. The 3D printed turbine blades have a weight more than 180 gm but when the blade rotates it weighs more than 11 tonnes with speed.
THE FACTS
Additive manufacturing is another term of 3D printing. This takes into consideration of adding extra thin layers of materials one after the other. The 3D printed turbine blades were made from a special technology of 3D printing which includes the impact of cooling geometry. A special type of powder made from metals is placed over the layer and the rest is done by the laser.
The parts can be designed and printed using the Auto Cad software which is in high demand for the designing purposes. The fact that is not still clear is that the time duration that the 3D printed turbine blades will take to roll into the market and become available for the common multitude. However, the testing duration is a bit more.
Once it becomes available for the market, it would gain a huge popularity. The scientists are trying their best to bring this into the commercial market. The tests are going on and also they need to check the durability of the material so that once it is rolled into the market, it does not create any sort of mess. The 3D printed turbine blades should be hard and durable in order to make and impact among the other competitors of the turbine blade dealers.
THE MATERIAL
The material is processed by using the process of casting. Well, it is one of the best technology in order to process such kinds of materials. But one thing that will annoy you is the time required for the completing the process. The time can be shortened by using additive manufacturing. The time is cut down to 3 months.
Thunderbolt is a very fresh concept for many people who still associate themselves with the latest trend of technology other than addressing the fact that it is a standardized mode to connect devices. This is the general conception for past few years. The standard of the thunderbolt was upgraded to usher in; a new era of devices that would lead to high-speed interconnectivity, but this facility is restricted only to some renowned Mac users other than being circulated for every product manufacturer in the market.
Many years ago, Intel brought in this notion of support system involving thunderbolt with the USB-C level which would help in mending a systems potentiality, which would in turn enhance the system’s compatibility with the latest and giant USB standard clubbed with a reversible plug support and simultaneously gripping the upgraded bandwith of Thunderbolt 3 i.e. 40Gbit/s.
Intel is on the verge of taking a step further by upgrading the standard of Thunderbolt 3 in terms of making it free of royalty, in order to grasp the attention from the uptaking manufacturers. Intel has incorporated two more enticing elements for the development of Thunderbolt 3. First, Intel will enhance it, so that it could be fed in the upcoming series of CPUs, more like a version of the on-die I/O capability. In this regard the technology would be used to extend further technical features like VR, which has the capability to use the bandwith of Thunderbolt 3, in order to pitch speeds pertaining to high transmission. Intel has not yet revealed anything regarding Thunderbolt 4, but if we consider the fact that any upcoming level of development would incorporate PVle 4.0, then we can expect to see the most reliable platforms coming up in near future which would support Intel’s protocol venturing out as the upcoming generation.
The most striking aspect of Intel’s Thunderbolt 3 version is that it is not fed in to the system as a modern chipset or CPU. Inspite of announcing this several years ago Intel has not yet fed this standardized technology into any laptop or Desktop CPUs, rather Intel is relied on the equipments brought by the consumers using expensive and remunerating controllers, which includes Alpine Ridge.
Thus, it is still difficult to locate Thunderbolt 3 on several devices, it is not at all easy and reasonable. This technology is sure to show its gripping effect in the near future with no barriers regarding royalty. Intel is on the way towards changing their royalty issues and if it happens then the latest specifications of Thunderbolt 3 would be opened to several other companies which intend to build hardware as well, this would mean that all the third-party organization would now be able to stylize their respective Thunderbolt standards of compliant, firms like AMD falls under this regard. This kind of compatibility has led to innovative performance in the competing industrial market. The more innovation towards USB-C will ensure standardized single port to the customers.
The Facebook Inc, a social media giant, which allows its users to connect worldwide by sharing and discovering photos, ideas, videos, files a patent application for digital payment through a messaging application with Indian Patent Office.
This comes at an appropriate time when the Government of India is encouraging digital transaction to accommodate more and more people. There is a huge upsurge noticed in the usage of e wallet after demonetization as around eighty percent of Indian citizens use internet and mobile phones with a rapid increase in the numbers.
Facebook currently allows online payment services through its Messenger application in countries like US. It also owns Whatsapp, which has a huge market in India. According to the company, it will outline a messenger application system which would allow the users to make payment by their credit or debit cards, bank accounts etc. and send it as well as receive payments through this system.
It further clarifies that a client having the application will be able to receive information about the payment through messages like the amount or the method of transaction. If this patent is passed, then it will come to the rescue of the users as people will not have to visit other applications to sending or receiving any kind of electronic payment which will help to form a large base for electronic transactions as it will not confuse people about the complexity of switching apps and will provide a single platform for business.
Another positive side to this proposal is the user will be free to choose whether to accept any kind of payment or not. In other words, a user will be able to deny any kind of transaction if the other person is devoid of the application. It also has the option of paying several people together or in several groups where each amount received by each member can be defined, hence proving to be helpful in business transactions between business groups and business entities.
Facebook presently purveys this method of digital payment in some countries through Messenger, a separate application made out from its parent application Facebook. People just need to add their respective cards which in turn to provide more security creates a pin. If the respective recipient has no debit card, that person has the freedom to decline.
However, there are both advantages and disadvantages of this method of cashless payment in a country where still cash is the king. India serving to be the second largest growing market with millions of users can prove to be pivotal part in the cashless business where these social media apps operating worldwide would take full advantage of the current situation of the country regarding the digitalization.
If you had attended Asus’s press conference last year, all you will remember is the flashing of lights and camera on the special robot called the Zenbo. The smart robotic device which promised to be by your side for acting as smart home assistant, security guard, kids mate or even a photographer. While this was definitely a big change in the technology field, Asus changed its plans this year, decided to skip on anything robotic and went right with Asus super thin laptops!
Asus is today one of the leading IT technology brand with a perfect pairing of technology with the people’s lifestyle. Asus offers its customers the computer and mobile devices at great prices and competitive technology to win their hearts! In a recent press conference held at Taipei, Taiwan the focus was laid on the Asus super thin laptops with its special models added to the collection of ZenBooks – The Zenbook Flip S and The Zenbook Pro UX550. Both the models have been launched with the latest of technology developments and have a classic style. While the ZenBook Flip S is claimed to be the ‘World’s thinnest convertible laptops’ the Zenbook Pro UX550 comes as a gamer’s powerbox!
ZenBook Flip S: This 1.1kg convertible laptop has the power processor from Intel Core i7-7500U in touchscreen display of 4k and flips for a complete 360 degree. The thickness of the Asus ZenBook Flip S is about 10.9mm which was compared to the MacBook Air i.e. 1.35kg of 17mm and HO Spectre x360 i.e. 1.29kg with 13.8mm of thickness. It was found that indeed the Asus super thin laptop is the thinnest convertible laptop.
The ZenBook Flip S comes as a very fast performance laptop with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. The machine can stand by on battery for about 11.5 hours and reaches only 60% in 49 minutes. It uses USB-C port for the peripherals. The ZenBook is said to hit the stores for sale from September at a price starting $1099.
ZenBook Pro UX550: As amazing like its predecessor, the ZenBook Pro UX550 is a smart laptop of 15.6 with 4K touchscreen display which runs on the intel core i7-7700HQ seventh generation quad core processor, which has a 16GB DDR4 RAM, A graphic card and a Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti that makes it interesting device for the gamers. The ZenBook Pro UX550 has a weight of 1.8kg and 18.9 thickness with a slim profile. This model is said to be on the stores starting July at a price of $1299.
Along with these two premium Asus super thin laptops, there was an introduction of a few more models in the show! The list of other new launches included the ZenBook 3 Deluxe that was introduced as a part of CES in January. The VivoBook S with a i7 Core CPU paired up with Nvidia GTX 940MX GPU and the VivoBook which comes with a i7 Core CPU and Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU. The two models are priced at $499 and $799 respectively.
Recently in Denver the ACMCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing took place and similar to last year, hosted some remarkable, unbelievable and absolutely unusual technology demos. The theme for this year is `Explore, Innovate, Inspire’, which tends to provide adequate room for encouraging the weirdness that CHI is famous for. Some of the most amazing 3D printing related stuff are:
FaceDisplay
Fingertip Tangible Devices
CarVR
Ambiotherm
Haptic Walls
FaceDisplay – Supporting Multi-user Interaction for Mobile Virtual Reality
Observing someone while they seem to don a head mounted display, experiencing virtual reality environment would seem to be quite boring. FaceDisplay, a multi-display mobile VRHMD, enabling by-stander to view within the immersed virtual world of the users, permitting them to interact through touch. A prototype is built comprising of three additional screens together with prevailing interaction techniques as well as an example application which tends to power the FaceDisplay design area.
Fingertip Tangible Devices for Virtual Object Operation & Assessment
Often controlling objects in VR has been unproductive and the fact that one does not tend to feel anything when your virtual hand touches a virtual object seems to interrupt you from the experience, making you aware that in the imaginary territory, the object nor the hand tends to actually exist. This crafty glove seems to put force on your fingertips in order that one can grasp something in VR and get a convincing physical feeling of the weight of a virtual object.
The most important obstacle to immersivity at the time of object manipulation in virtual reality is the absence of feedback of realistic haptic. The intention here is to express convincing interactions with virtual objects like grasping, pressing, squeezing, lifting together with stroking without the need of a bulky, world-grounded kinaesthetic feedback device or the utilisation of predetermined passive object. In order to attain this, a pair of finger-mounted haptic feedback device which tends to bend the skin on the fingertips in expressing cutaneous force information from object manipulation is used. It is detected that users appear to see alterations in virtual object weight and they relate to increasing grasp forces while lifting virtual objects as condensed mass in increased.
Besides this, it is also observed that inexperienced users view changes of physical properties of a virtual object when skin deformation in rendering objects with varying mass, friction and stiffness is utilised. The research portrays that fingertip skin deformation devices tend to offer a convincing haptic familiarity adequate for virtual reality scenarios pertaining to object manipulation.
CarVR Empowering In-Car Virtual Reality Entertainment
When cars tend to be driverless, the main issue on road trips would be keeping oneself amused wherein VR tends to be of great support with the exception that the motion of the car would probably be an issue. CarVR on the contrary utilises the motion of the vehicle in improving the VR experience, syncing what tends to happen in VR to what the car seems to be doing in the actual world. This would make the VR much more immersive as well as supportive in alleviating impulsive spewing.
CarVR is a solution permitting VR in moving vehicles by subtracting the rotation of the car and mapping vehicular movements with the visual information. This enables the user to feel the precise kinaesthetic forces at the time of the VR experience. A comparison with CarVR inside a moving vehicle with the baseline of using VR without vehicle movement was made.
It was shown that apparent kinaesthetic forces caused by CarVR increase enjoyment and immersion considerably while simulator sickness is abridged in comparison to a stationary VR experience. Lastly the design space of in-car VR entertainment application utilising actual kinaesthetic forces was explored to develop design considerations for practitioners.
Ambiotherm – Increasing Sense of Existence in Virtual Reality on Simulating Real World Environmental Conditions
To evaluate Ambiotherm, a wearable accessory for head-mounted display is presented which offers thermal as well as wind stimuli in simulating real-world environmental conditions like ambient temperatures together with wind condition to augment the awareness of virtual reality. Ambiotherm comprises of Ambient Temperature Module which is linked to the neck of the user, a Wind Simulation Module directed towards the face of the user together with a control module using Bluetooth communication. A demonstration was conducted on Ambiotherm with two VR environments, a hot desert as well as a snowy mountain to showcase the various kinds of computer-generated environmental conditions. Several researches were also done to address design factors of the system, to evaluate the effects of Ambiotherm on factors connected to the sense of presence of the user. It was discovered that the calculation of wind and thermal stimuli considerably improved sensory and realism aspects contributing to an improved sense of presence in comparison to traditional VR experiences.
Offering Haptic to Walls & Heavy Objects in Virtual Reality through Electrical Muscle Stimulation
A wall is said to be something wherein it tends to be difficult to pass through. To simulate a wall in VR, a system is utilised which uses electrical muscle stimulation in taking-over the muscles in your arm in order that one is physically incapable of passing your arms through a virtual wall. It is somewhat a brute force approach to haptic though apparently is effective but hard to believe that the feeling is mostly pleasant. Other options were considered on how to add haptic to walls together with the other heavy objects in virtual reality. Our systems tends to trigger the user’s shoulder, arm and wrist muscles whenever a user attempts to push such objects, through electrical muscle stimulation, developing a counter force which seems to pull the user’s arm backward. This device has achieved this in wearable form aspect. The repugnance design together with the soft design is said to receive high scores on `prevented me from passing through’ and `realist’. In the second research, the effectiveness of approach was demonstrated, by enabling participants to explore a virtual world wherein all the objects offer haptic EMS effects comprising of walls, gates, boxes, sliders together with projectiles.
