Matthew Jaster, Senior Editor, has a B.A. in journalism from Columbia College Chicago and has 15+ years of writing and editing experience in automotive, manufacturing, engineering, law and arts and entertainment. He's been with Gear Technology since 2007.
Pi Day took place on March 14, 2024. Our friendly neighborhood constant is used in engineering to determine the dimensions of gears, wheels, and pipes. Pi is also used in computer science to generate random numbers for cryptography, simulation, and gaming. With a tip of the cap to math enthusiasts, we offer a quick cheat sheet to pi and its fascinating history.
I grew up playing video games in the 1980s/1990s. Today, my kids not only play video games, but could discuss coding, designing, and marketing at length on their YouTube channel. This generation is growing up with technology no other generation has ever had.
A deep dive into the world of gear dynamics and gear noise has led many a mechanical engineer to Columbus, OH in search of the methods by which gear noise is measured and predicted as well as the techniques employed in gear noise and vibration reduction. Over the past 40+ years, about 2,550 engineers and technicians from 385+ companies have attended the Gear Dynamics and Gear Noise Short Course at The Ohio State University.
At the Motion + Power Technology Expo in Detroit, I had the privilege to sit and discuss workforce development challenges with Kris Ward, senior director, strategy, and business development at SME, Kika Young, president, Forest City Gear, Mary Ellen Doran, director, emerging technology and executive director for the AGMA Foundation and Megan Schrauben, executive director, MiSTEM Network. The following is an edited transcript of this panel discussion. (Special thanks to Forest City Gear for sponsoring this live event.)
The EV to-do list grows daily. Once the engineer has settled in on solving noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) challenges, they pivot toward energy efficiency. They consider the vehicle’s weight, the tooling needed to manufacture the gears, the skiving needed to make the surface finishes as smooth as possible.
We came across an interesting statistic recently in our normal product coverage for Gear Technology magazine. United Grinding had more than 2,500 remote deployments during the pandemic. Digital assistance systems—big and small—helped machine operators navigate production output in real time during this chaotic work period.
The manufacturing version of Indiana Jones is much more interested in lithium, cobalt, and nickel than arks, grails or “Dials of Destiny.” So much so that the current administration is doing its part to keep up with China in the dramatic supply chain cold war taking place across the globe. We’ve all read and reread the headlines, electrification is imminent for our carbon-neutral future—the path toward electrification, however, is quite complicated.
Can a technophile 3D-print a giant replica from the new Transformers film? Of course—it’s 2023 and additive manufacturing is enabling engineers to test manufacturing material boundaries daily.
Automate 2023 in Detroit featured 757+ exhibits with 30,000+ registrants. The success of the 2022 and 2023 events prompted A3 to continue the show as an annual event moving forward. Historically, the show was biennial until the pandemic changed scheduling.
Range anxiety, infrastructure debates, raw material shortages and unanswered questions shake up automotive’s move toward electrification—the journey won’t be easy, but the industry will push technology until it finds a way.
Range anxiety, infrastructure debates, raw material shortages and unanswered questions shake up automotive’s move toward electrification—the journey won’t be easy, but the industry will push technology until it finds a way.