Designfax weekly eMagazine

Subscribe Today!

Archives

View Archives

Partners

Manufacturing Center
Product Spotlight

Modern Applications News
Metalworking Ideas For
Today's Job Shops

Tooling and Production
Strategies for large
metalworking plants

Metal 3D printing: EOS adds four new materials

Industrial 3D-printing supplier EOS has added four new metal additive manufacturing materials to its portfolio: an iron-nickel alloy that boasts stability under fluctuating temps, a nickel alloy with high strength and extreme corrosion resistance, a low-alloyed steel prized for its high toughness and strength, and an industrial-grade stainless steel. Each has been optimized for EOS Laser Powder Bed Fusion systems.
Get all the details.

Application Note: Disc springs in mechanical braking system

Braking systems for off-highway equipment are commonly designed to be hydraulically actuated, but without an additional fail-safe system, this design alone has limited reliability. If a hydraulic seal is compromised, or the hydraulic cylinder loses pressure for any reason, the brakes fail. One solid mechanical back-up design uses SPIROL disc springs.
Read the full article.

Configurable welding platform for flexible manufacturing

Emerson's new Branson Polaris Ultrasonic Welding Platform offers a highly configurable, smart solution for advanced manufacturing. It features secure connectivity and real-time control to join diverse materials, from medical devices to food packaging. With adaptable power supplies and actuators, the system scales from benchtop lab trials to fully automated production lines, optimizing footprint and data storage to meet complex application needs.
Learn more.

SPIROL receives 2025 Supplier Excellence Recognition Award from Caterpillar

Kudos to SPIROL! The engineered fasteners manufacturer has received the 2025 Supplier Excellence Recognition Award from Caterpillar Inc. This prestigious award recognizes suppliers who demonstrate world-class performance and a sustained commitment to quality, delivery, and operational excellence.
Read the full article.

Eliminate cotters, bolts, nuts with SLIC Pin^®

The SLIC Pin (Self-Locking Implanted Cotter Pin) from Pivot Point is a pin and cotter all in one. This one-piece locking clevis pin is cost saving, fast, and secure. It functions as a quick locking pin wherever you need a fast-lock function. It features a spring-loaded plunger that functions as an easy insertion ramp. This revolutionary fastening pin is very popular and used successfully in a wide range of applications.
Learn more.

Tech Tip: How to install sleeve bearings

According to the engineering experts over at PBC Linear, "Installing Simplicity Sleeve Bearings can be tricky due to the thin aluminum outer shell." Learn the basic procedures that can be followed to install the aluminum-backed Simplicity Sleeve and Flange Bearings -- each comes with its own unique challenges.
Read the PBC Linear blog.

Hold any shape with ID and OD Form Holding Clamps

These simple OD and ID clamping solutions from Fixtureworks clamp onto your part in one easy operation, eliminating the need for custom fixtures. They allow users to clamp onto the inner or outer diameter of small-size, irregularly shaped work parts fast. Lots of options.
Learn more.

Engineer's Toolbox: The basics of pressure regulators

Pressure regulators are found in many common home and industrial applications. Learn all about their functions, selection criteria, installation, and more in this in-depth article from Beswick Engineering.
Read the full article.

3M Friction Shims -- Why have more than 300 million been sold?

3M Friction Shims are small, thin steel shims with a big impact. They can increase maximum load and peak torque in bolted connections without additional fasteners or redesigns. What else makes them so popular -- and so useful?
Learn more from 3M.

Couplings for extended-length motion systems

Zero-Max's new ServoClass^® Floating Shaft Couplings deliver high torsional stiffness and misalignment capacity for extended-length motion systems. Ideal for X-Y positioning systems, X-Y-Z gantry systems, line-shafted equipment, connecting two adjacent linear actuators or screw jacks, and more. They offer a higher-performance alternative to jaw-and-spider designs. Quick-ship DBSEs to 48 in. Clear anodized aluminum construction and stainless steel disc packs ensure strength, corrosion resistance, and precise mechanical synchronization.
Learn more.

New Folding T-Handle Compression Latch

Southco has launched the new N5 Lift-and-Turn Compression Latch, featuring strong sealing action for doors and a broad, ergonomic T-handle in a single compact piece of hardware. The N5 Compression Latch is designed for ergonomic operation, even under harsh conditions. The folding T-Handle is easy to grip and actuate, even with a gloved hand, so operators can prioritize their safety and still work efficiently. When not in use, the handle folds neatly into the latch housing. Locking and non-locking options.
Learn more.

FlexiSan modular spray system for mobile and efficient equipment and plant sanitation

BETE's FlexiSan™ Modular Spraying System offers a portable, cost-effective spray solution that enables mobility and effective cleaning and sanitization across a wide range of industrial applications. Engineered for flexibility and performance, the FlexiSan system allows operators to quickly rinse and apply cleaning and sanitizing agents to a variety of equipment, including conveyors, hoppers, bins, and mixers, as well as other critical process areas. Handles everything from light washdowns to heavy cleanups.
Learn more.

In-wheel motors: New sealing options promote higher speed, less friction

Freudenberg Sealing Technologies has developed two new, significant seal designs for in-wheel motors, expertly bridging the gap between the requirements for high sealing performance and low friction losses.
Read the full article.

Best-seller: Copper filament for 3D printing

Virtual Foundry, the company that brought us 3D-printable lunar regolith simulant, says Copper Filamet™ (not a typo) is its best-selling metal filament. This material is compatible with any open-architecture FDM/FFF 3D printer. After sintering, final parts are 100% pure copper. The company says this is one of the easiest materials to print and sinter. Stainless steel, porcelain, aluminum, and titanium available too.
Learn more and get all the specs.

5 practical tips for plastic part designers: Design for Manufacturability

Manufactur-ability is an integral part of the design process. By aligning structural design principles with the realities of molding and tooling, engineers can reduce rework, improve dimensional stability, and ensure consistent part quality. Engineers from Kemal Precision Manufacturing share their 5 Top Tips for Designing for Manufacturability. Very good info here.
Read the full article.

Caltech scientists engineer nanoscale 3D metallic parts with surprising strength

Scientists at Caltech have figured out how to precisely engineer tiny three-dimensional metallic pieces with nanoscale dimensions. The process can work with any metal or metal alloy and yields components of surprising strength despite having a porous and defect-ridden microstructure, making it potentially useful in a wide range of applications including medical devices, computer chips, and equipment needed for space missions.

The scientists describe their method in a paper that appears in the journal Nature Communications. The work was completed in the lab of Julia R. Greer, the Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics, and Medical Engineering at Caltech, and Huajian Gao of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The researchers use a technique called two-photon lithography that allows them to sequentially build an object of a desired size and shape by carefully controlling the geometry at the level of individual voxels, the smallest distinguishable volumes, or features, in a 3D image. Beginning with a light-sensitive liquid, the scientists use a tightly focused femtosecond laser beam -- a femtosecond is one-quadrillionth of a second -- to build a desired shape out of a gel-like material called a hydrogel. After infusing the miniature hydrogel sculpture with metallic salts, such as copper nitrate or nickel nitrate, they heat the structure twice in a specialized furnace to produce a shrunken metallic replica of the original shape.

This is a scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of a cross-section of a nickel octahedral nano-lattice generated using Caltech's new additive technique. The scale bar here is 5 microns. Yellow arrows indicate large voids in the structure. The zoomed-in view (right) highlights a few nodes with concentrated porosity. Despite these defects, the nano-achitected materials show surprising strength. [Credit: Image courtesy of Greer Lab/Caltech]

That's where the magic happens," says Greer, who is also the executive officer for applied physics and materials science at Caltech. First, the scientists burn off all the organic compounds present in the hydrogel, leaving a metal oxide such as nickel oxide or iron oxide. Sometimes, as when they are creating lenses or other optical elements, the desired product is complete after this first thermal step. For other materials, the researchers conduct a second thermal step using a different set of gases in the furnace to remove oxygen by reducing the metal oxide, leaving only the desired metal structure.

"Because of this thermal process, there's a tremendous amount of shrinkage," Greer says. In fact, the process can reduce the preheated volume by as much as 90%, yielding tiny lattices or heat exchangers, for example, with overall dimensions smaller than 50 microns and building blocks measured in nanometers.

Building reliable models
Greer's team can also dissect these miniature structures, revealing every defect present. In fact, the team discovered that these nanostructures are far from perfect -- they contain numerous flaws, such as pores, grain boundaries, and even inclusions or impurities. If these kinds of microstructures were found in macro-sized metallic parts, the materials would likely be disqualified because they would be weak and susceptible to failure.

However, when the scientists incorporated the microstructural details of their tiny 3D pieces into models, they found that they predict realistic strengths that are as much as 50 times greater than those that would be expected from the same metals with larger dimensions and similar microstructures. Things simply work differently at the nanoscale where there is a known "smaller is different" size effect.

This is an SEM image of another nickel nano-architecture fabricated by the Greer lab (scale bar = 5 microns). This example is a spinodal-like nano-architecture. Box I shows a zoomed in view of the 2 micron x 2 micron dashed area in H. Box J features a CAD model based on the SEM image. [Credit: Image courtesy of Greer Lab/Caltech]

Greer stresses that, unlike other models of structural parts that either treat materials as ideal or do not accurately account for defects, the models her collaborators at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed are physically relevant and reliable.

"We put exactly the microstructure we uncovered into the models. It's not an inference. It's not representative. It's the actual microstructure that we made," Greer explains. As a result, for the first time, the models predict the correct, observed strengths of the fabricated parts.

"I think this work basically shows that in the future, even when we 'nano-architect' our world with custom parts, we'll be able to reliably predict their properties, something society hasn't been able to accomplish yet," Greer says. "We don't have to disqualify a part simply because it contains defects."

Source: California Institute of Technology

Published April 2026

Rate this article