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Mar/Apr 2012  

Market-Reports

Top Features

Pressing On

Company invests in molding equipment, employees to tap new markets

Dynomax Inc. is seeing strong growth in defense and aerospace orders for its micro-injection-molded products. While many companies might be satisfied with that, Dynomax wants more. It has targeted the medical industry for new business.

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One giant leap for microcontrollers

“Oh boy.” That’s what Dr. Sam Beckett usually uttered after leaping into the life of a new host at the end of each episode of “Quantum Leap,” a weekly science fiction TV show that aired in the early 1990s.

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Sensors: wisdom's 'water carriers'

Little things add up. That’s certainly the case when it comes to microsensors. It’s projected that tens of trillions of them will enter service during the next decade.

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Powerful Potential

When it comes to printed electronics, the word of the year—indeed of the decade—has been “potential.” The idea of cheap, abundant printed electronics has been around about as long as the idea of “ubiquitous computing” and the “Internet of Things”—the idea that every object around you will contain components that connect it to the vast electronic infrastructure of our work and personal lives. Yet, something happened along the way to realizing this dream. Or, perhaps, something didn’t happen.

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‘Scary-small’ desktop computers

At 150' wide and labeled with the ENIAC acronym, the world’s first computer hit the stage in 1946 as if straight out of an old black-and-white science fiction movie. Except, as the Public Broadcasting Service aptly noted in its online “Transistorized” report, ENIAC probably “spawned those movies.”

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Cue the $6 Million Dollar Man

Somewhere, Lee Majors must be smiling. Best known for his starring role as Colonel Steve Austin, an ex-astronaut outfitted with bionic implants in the 1970s TV series “The Six Million Dollar Man,” Majors made us all believe that one day humans could be rebuilt joint by joint. Today, most of the key joints in the body can indeed be replaced—hips, knees, ankles, wrists and fingers—all for a lot less than $6 million.

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Top Videos

3-D printing merges with printed electronics

soStratasys, Eden Prairie, Minn., and Optomec Inc., Albuquerque, N.M., have partnered in a joint development project to merge 3-D printing and printed electronics to create what Stratasys is calling the first fully printed hybrid structure, according to a release by Stratasys.

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Racecar sets world speed record

Small Car at Vienna thumbA 285µm-long racecar has been fabricated in record time via ultrahigh-precision 3-D printing at Vienna University of Technology.

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'Fantastic Voyage' moves closer to reality

Stanford University researchers appear to have their sights set on a "Fantastic Voyage." Remember the science-fiction novel that shrunk a handful of scientists and medical personnel and injected them into a person to perform a surgical procedure? If not, don't bother reading the book now because reality is going to be whole lot more interesting.

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Australian researchers produce 'perfect' single-atom transistor

Feb. 20, 2012—The University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia, today announced that researchers at the university's ARC Center for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology successfully created a working transistor the size of one atom.

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Video feed via your contact lens

The digital world is about to get extremely up-close and personal for those who wear the new iOptik contact lens produced by Innovega Inc., Bellevue, Wash. In January, the company announced it intends to accelerate delivery of designs, components and licenses for the technology to selected strategic partners.

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Top Products

Direct part-marking tool designed for medical devices

Roland DGA Corp.

MPX-90M impact printer thumbRoland DGA Corp., Irvine, Calif., this week unveiled a new compact and affordable direct part-marking tool designed specifically for medical devices. Based on the company's micro-percussion direct part-marking technology, the MPX-90M impact printer marks surgical instruments and tools with permanent GS1 DataMatrix barcodes, enabling manufacturers to readily comply with new, stricter supply chain regulations.

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Micromolding co. serves medical, consumer electronics markets

Matrix Plastic Products

Matrix molding thumbMatrix Plastics Products, Wood Dale, Ill., micromolds plastic parts smaller than a pellet of resin with tolerances of 12.7µm or less for the consumer electronics industry, according to the company's Web site.

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Gowanda RF chip inductor series meets DoD specs

Gowanda Electronics

Gowanda RF inductors thumbGowanda Electronics, Gowanda, N.Y., which designs and makes precision electronic components for power and radio frequency (RF) applications, in a news release issued Jan. 9 announced its ML0603 and ML0805 series of RF surface-mount, wirewound-ceramic-core chip inductors are the first to meet the Department of Defense specification for Qualified Product List (QPL) inductors.

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Kionix rolls out trio of MEMS-related products at CES

Kionix Inc.

Kionix Inc., Ithica, N.Y., introduced a trio of new products at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to a company news release issued Jan. 9. A top-three provider of MEMS inertial sensors for consumer products, Kionix rolled out its first 3-axis accelerometer-gyro ‘combo’ device, a low-power 3-axis consumer-grade gyro, and a 9-axis sensor-fusion software solution targeted at the rapidly growing consumer electronics market.

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Oren Elliott Products offers air-dielectric capacitors

Oren Elliott Products Inc.

Nov. 18, 2011—Oren Elliott Products Inc., a manufacturer of air-dielectric variable capacitors based in Edgerton, Ohio, also makes precision-screw-machined and CNC-machined products, custom sub-assemblies, variable inductors and planetary reduction drives.

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