SMS FALAS

Additive Manufacturing

General Electric is making a radical departure from the way it has traditionally manufactured things. Its aviation division, the world’s largest supplier of jet engines, is preparing to produce a fuel nozzle for a new aircraft engine by printing the part with lasers rather than casting and welding the metal. The technique, known as additive manufacturing (because it builds an object by adding ultrathin layers of material one by one), could transform how GE designs and makes many of the complex parts that go into everything from gas turbines to ultrasound machines.
Additive manufacturing—the industrial version of 3-D printing—is already used to make some niche items, such as medical implants, and to produce plastic prototypes for engineers and designers. But the decision to mass-produce a critical metal-alloy part to be used in thousands of jet engines is a significant milestone for the technology. And while 3-D printing for consumers and small entrepreneurs has received a great deal of publicity, it is in manufacturing where the technology could have its most significant commercial impact (see “The Difference Between Makers and Manufacturers,” January/February 2013).
Last fall, GE purchased a pair of companies with know-how in automated precision manufacturing of metals and then folded the technology into the operations of GE Aviation. That group doesn’t have much time to demonstrate that its new technology can work at scale. CFM International, GE’s joint venture with France’s Snecma, will use the 3-D-printed nozzles in its LEAP jet engine, due to go into planes in late 2015 or early 2016 (CFM says it already has commitments of $22 billion). Each engine will use 10 to 20 nozzles; GE needs to make 25,000 of the nozzles annually within three years.
GE chose the additive process for manufacturing the nozzles because it uses less material than conventional techniques. That reduces GE’s production costs and, because it makes the parts lighter, yields significant fuel savings for airlines. Conventional techniques would require welding about 20 small pieces together, a labor-intensive process in which a high percentage of the material ends up being scrapped. Instead, the part will be built from a bed of cobalt-chromium powder. A computer-controlled laser shoots pinpoint beams onto the bed to melt the metal alloy in the desired areas, creating 20-micrometer-­thick layers one by one. The process is a faster way to make complex shapes because the machines can run around the clock. And additive manufacturing in general conserves material because the printer can handle shapes that eliminate unnecessary bulk and create them without the typical waste.

Ultra-Efficient Solar Power

Harry Atwater thinks his lab can make an affordable device that produces more than twice the solar power generated by today’s panels. The feat is possible, says the Caltech professor of materials science and applied physics, because of recent advances in the ability to manipulate light at a very small scale.

Solar panels on the market today consist of cells made from a single semiconducting material, usually silicon. Since the material absorbs only a narrow band of the solar spectrum, much of sunlight’s energy is lost as heat: these panels typically convert less than 20 percent of that energy into electricity. But the device that ­Atwater and his colleagues have in mind would have an efficiency of at least 50 percent. It would use a design that efficiently splits sunlight, as a prism does, into six to eight component wavelengths—each one of which produces a different color of light. Each color would then be dispersed to a cell made of a semiconductor that can absorb it.
Atwater’s team is working on three designs. In one (see illustration), for which the group has made a prototype, sunlight is collected by a reflective metal trough and directed at a specific angle into a structure made of a transparent insulating material. Coating the outside of the transparent structure are multiple solar cells, each made from one of six to eight different semiconductors. Once light enters the material, it encounters a series of thin optical filters. Each one allows a single color to pass through to illuminate a cell that can absorb it; the remaining colors are reflected toward other filters designed to let them through.
Another design would employ nanoscale optical filters that could filter light coming from all angles. And a third would use a hologram instead of filters to split the spectrum. While the designs are different, the basic idea is the same: combine conventionally designed cells with optical techniques to efficiently harness sunlight’s broad spectrum and waste much less of its energy.
It’s not yet clear which design will offer the best performance, says Atwater. But the devices envisioned would be less complex than many electronics on the market today, he says, which makes him confident that once a compelling prototype is fabricated and optimized, it could be commercialized in a practical way.
Achieving ultrahigh efficiency in solar designs should be a primary goal of the industry, argues Atwater, since it’s now “the best lever we have” for reducing the cost of solar power. That’s because prices for solar panels have plummeted over the past few years, so continuing to focus on making them less expensive would have little impact on the overall cost of a solar power system; expenses related to things like wiring, land, permitting, and labor now make up the vast majority of that cost. Making modules more efficient would mean that fewer panels would be needed to produce the same amount of power, so the costs of hardware and installation could be greatly reduced. “Within a few years,” Atwater says, “there won’t be any point to working on technology that has efficiency that’s less than 20 percent.”

Supergrids

High-voltage DC power lines can efficiently transport electricity over thousands of kilometers and for long distances underwater, outperforming the AC lines that dominate transmission grids now. But for a century, AC prevailed because high-voltage DC could be used only for point-to-point transmission, not to form the integrated grid networks needed for a stable electricity system.
The Swiss conglomerate ABB has solved the main technical hurdle to such grids. It has developed a practical high-voltage DC circuit breaker that disconnects parts of the grid that have a problem, allowing the rest to keep working.
DC grids would be more efficient at connecting far-flung sources of renewable energy, allowing utilities to average out local variations in wind and solar power while bringing power to areas without much sunshine or wind. Solar power from the Sahara could power cloudy Germany, and wind power from all over Europe could keep the lights on at night. The result: more reliable renewable energy that can better compete with fossil fuels.

Wii U

Almost everything about Nintendo's Wii U, the Japanese gaming giant's new home console, makes absolutely no sense.

It's a wacky, stream-of-consciousness nostalgia jamboree, and it feels like the handiwork of a distracted inventor who's just spent five sleepless nights drunk out of their mind on honey liqueur in Shibuya.

Its launch line-up is made up of a bizarre grab-bag of retro and AAA games running on previous-generation hardware -- except for a massive touchscreen-controller that looks like a mid-90s concept videophone. It also has no distinct target audience, no exceptional technology and no obvious role in the living room. And it's pretty pricey.

Luckily, the reason you should buy one is very simple: it's fun. It's so fun. It is a toy from another universe. It's like someone Instagrammed an Xbox and hacked it to play Mario.

It's absolutely wonderful. And for gamers of a certain age, it's quite difficult to play without wanting to weep.

Google Glass

This has already gotten into our life in the forms of simulated experiment and education app, but Google is taking it several steps higher with Google glass. Theoretically, with Google Glass, you are able to view social media feeds, text, Google Maps, as well as navigate with GPS and take photos. You will also get the latest updates while you are on the ground.It’s truly what we called vision, and it’s absolutely possible given the fact that the Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin has demo de glass with skydivers and creatives. Currently the device is only available to some developers with the price tag of $1500, but expect other tech companies trying it out and building an affordable consumer version.

The New Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0

Here we’re looking at the Wi-Fi only version of the device, though a 4G version is also available, which brings the device far closer to the Note smartphones thanks to its ability to make and receive calls and texts. That version, though, isn’t yet widely available and the only one we could find was going for a whopping £459.

Back to the Wi-Fi model, it’s still a hefty £339. That’s twice the price of Google’s slightly-smaller 7in Google Nexus 7 and £70 more than even the 7.9in . Of course neither of those devices has a stylus, but with such a high price the Note 8’s penmanship will really need to impress in order to earn our recommendation.
At 340g it’s surprisingly light, even compared to 7in budget models – we had no trouble holding it in one hand without having to give our wrists an occasional rest. The S-pen slots into a holder in the underside of the tablet with a reassuring click, so you can be confident it won’t fall out when on the move. A MicroSD card slot is hidden beneath a (rather flimsy) plastic flap on the left side of the tablet, with both power and volume buttons on the right side. The 3.5mm audio jack sits at the top and the speaker grilles fire downwards from the
base of the tablet.it’s an 8in display based around a 1,280×800 TFT panel.