Lasers and High-Performance Cutting
When is a balloon not a balloon? When it's a technical problem, a design challenge, and an inspiration for the development of new and more efficient cutting equipment. EdgeWISE Tools founder Pat Momany ? didn't start out at the high-tech edge of the fabric cutting industry. Problems that need solving get his inventive juices flowing, and his penchant for saying, "Sure, we can do that," before figuring out how, add up to an enterprise that's reinvented itself several times. Now with that trademark inventiveness and can-do attitude, Seattle-based EdgeWISE is pushing the limits of fabric cutting, in a system custom-designed to cut out the huge scientific balloons NASA plans to send to the very edge of Earth's atmosphere.From boats to balloonsIt started with boats. " I was in the printing business in 1985, and met a lady who was putting vinyl names and logos on the sides of boats," Momany relates.
"Gerber had released a 15-inch vinyl text cutter, but she was doing graphics and logos in addition to letters. I wondered if we could somehow melt the vinyl to cut it. We started out with a soldering iron attached to an X-Y plotter." After working through many "thermal issues," midway through 1986 Momany, in partnership with another company that later went out of business, introduced a 36-inch thermal cutter to the sign industry. The following year, "back when 286s were the hot computers," Momany reminisces, he and colleagues at GrafikEdge helped develop Amiable Technologies sign-cutting software, and came very close to perfecting a swivel knife cutter of the sort that's now widely used in the cutting business. "I didn't trust the software engineers," he recalls this near-hit ruefully.
In the late '80s, Momany began teaching himself about lasers, and in 1990 sold GrafikEdge and started EdgeWISE Tools to develop, sell and service cutting tools and systems. EdgeWISE debuted a roll feed laser (RFL?) system at the International Sign Association show in 1992, and received a US patent in November of 1993. For a few years EdgeWISE licensed the technology to another company, but when this route failed to produce the desired growth, EdgeWISE began designing and selling its own RFL product line. According to company literature, RFL technology offers significant advantages over traditional flatbed systems that cut with blades:
- the RFL takes only one-third to one-half the floor space of a flatbed;
- lasers use minimum heat, for less material distortion;
- lasers provide a high degree of accuracy, consistency, control and flexibility;
- the extremely small cut width allows for detailed work and close nesting of components, minimizing waste;
- lasers decrease the risk of injury, com-pared to many mechanical cutting methods.
The Single Direction Cutter (SDC) system was designed to provide precise beam delivery, material handling and motion control, developed to compensate for distortions due to material stretching.The Ultra Long Duration Balloon Project (ULDB), profiled in our October 1999 issue, is NASA's latest development in near-space scientific exploration. The project aims to develop balloon systems capable of supporting scientific observations above 99 percent of the Earth's atmosphere, for durations of approximately 100 days. Innovations in materials and construction?the current design is 600 feet tall and pumpkin shaped, with lobes that increase its strength, and made of a one mil five-layer Mylar-polyethylene-polyester composite that provides a previously unavailable combination of gas barrier, tear resistance and strength?add up to a balloon that can take near-space extremes of temperature and sun exposure, and carry a couple thousand pounds of equipment. "Ron and I discussed those 600-foot lobes, and I said, ?Sure, we can do that,'" Momany says nonchalantly. "Our thinking has always been not-quite-mainstream, and that's me.
I'm a conceptualist; I have engineers to tell me what we can't do." The enormity of the ultra long duration balloon poses huge manufacturing challenges. "The biggest problem was that NASA wanted the lobes to be cut to 600 feet plus or minus a quarter inch," Momany marvels. "These scientists are amazing. You get them in a room together and they have all these ideas, but they're some-times not very realistic about manufacturing reality. We got them to agree to plus or minus three inches; that's a .5 percent margin of error." Momany knew immediately that their RFL system, which moves material backward and forward under stationary cutting heads, wouldn't do the trick; moving the film that Connecticut-based Dimension Polyant had developed for NASA forward 600 feet and then back to cut one gore would inevitably distort the fabric beyond the required accuracy level.
The obvious solution was to develop a system that would move the material in only one direction. Momany is quick to credit engineer Bill Stuart with figuring out how to devise the software controls for EdgeWISE's Single Direction Cutting (SDC) system, which combines state-of-the-art laser beam delivery, material handling and motion control to calculate required material length and digitally compensate for the stretching that occurs during handling.Most cutting systems, Momany says, are driven by Hewlett Packard Graphical Language (HPGL), whose limitations render it unable to handle ULDB-sized projects. "With HPGL, you lose accuracy over long lengths of material?you run out of math; you run out of decimal points," he elaborates. EdgeWISE engineers have developed a new data processing technology that can achieve accuracy out to 16 or more decimal places."And with HPGL, at 3,000 inches, the system would just stop, and you'd have to re-send the images?but it wouldn't have any way of knowing where it had left off," Momany says, noting that 3,000 inches, or 250 feet, is less than one-half the length of a ULDB gore. "Our system can just keep on going."As Momany explains the SDC's advantages for the NASA application, he keeps bumping into his company's own "cutting edge" issues: proprietary technologies, which he doesn't dare explain in excessive detail.
EdgeWISE is currently patenting the SDC system, with between 15 and 20 individual processes listed as claims on the application; this is one of four patent applications the company has going, and Momany expects to initiate another two sometime this year. (The tiny company, by the way, employs three full-time and two part-time workers, and uses five to seven contractors.)As it turned out, EdgeWISE's SDC system was able to come darn close to the original tolerance requirement, at +/- .3 inches; but, as NASA, Dimension Polyant and Raven Industries continue to tinker with the composition of the balloon fabric, new hurdles emerge. Simply cutting one lobe down the middle of the run of fabric results in 40 percent waste, so EdgeWISE designed the system to cut half lobes down each straight edge, to be sewn together afterward, cutting waste down to only 14 percent. This means the system must be able to detect the fabric edge, which was no problem with the earlier translucent material. The most recent version of fabric, however, is transparent, so edge detection becomes a bigger problem.
Performance and perforationMomany suggests that the SDC system would be suitable for a variety of applications with simple cutting patterns requiring high volume throughput, such as automotive air bags. The RFL system is faster than a flatbed, and the SDC is faster yet, able to handle 350 or more linear feet of material per minute. In addition to the advantage of taking up much less floor space than flatbed systems, the roll-feed SDC allows for faster throughput without increasing safety compliance issues or the need for training. "We try to make every machine using a Class One laser beam?as safe as your laser printer," Momany notes. By definition, Class One beams are totally enclosed.
If, for example, the ULDB gores were to be cut with a laser moving over a flatbed, "to move 600 feet, it would have to be a Class Four beam?and everyone in the room would have to be laser-trained and wearing goggles," he explains. Now, EdgeWISE is working on adapting laser cutting technology to perforation applications. "We can take 60-inch-wide material and perforate it with a quarter inch separating the holes in a row, and a quarter inch separating the rows, at 85 feet per minute?that's a half-million holes a minute," Momany says, noting that one client, an aerospace company, uses the resulting perforated material to filter resin evenly onto parts that must be glued together. "The limitation on most perforation operations is mechanical; it's like they're using a rotary pincushion, and the needles break all the time," Momany says. It's not uncommon for needle breakage to occur several times a week, or even daily, resulting in four to eight hours of downtime each time.
"The laser perforation could be used in manufacturing disposable diapers, band-aids, all kinds of geotextiles." While in Momany's view it's EdgeWISE's small size and flexibility that enables it to take on these kinds of problem-solving challenges, he also admits that the aerospace client was originally nervous about the reliability of such a tiny supplier. The ULDB Project provided a needed dose of credibility. "When you say you're working with NASA, that tends to get people's attention," he concludes.www.ewt-inc.comReprinted with permission from Industrial Fabric Products Review April 2000. Copyright ? 2000 by Industrial Fabrics Association International. Industrial Fabric Products Review.
Carolyn Griffith is a freelance writer based in St. Paul, Minn. She also authored the October 1999 article"Near-Space Balloons: NASA?s New Workhorses."
Happy 10th Birthday for Photonic Products Ltd
(ContentDesk) October 2, 2005 -- To celebrate its 10th birthday in October 2005 and the success of its prototyping workshop which was established 2 years ago, Photonic Products has invested in a Citizen M32 CNC sliding head lathe from NC Engineering of Watford, enabling both increased flexibility and fast turnaround from prototype to full production. This investment takes the company to the next level of vertical integration as a successful manufacturer of custom designed electro-optical sub-assemblies and optoelectronic components which deliver performance and manufacturing efficiencies to OEM companies.The Citizen M32 CNC sliding head lathe offers super-efficient economic machining of complex parts up to 32mm in diameter in short cycle times, enabling the company to machine the components used in its' optoelectronic sub-assemblies, such as heat-sinks, clamps and mounts, with accuracy and consistency. Thanks to the unique concept of slant-bed design and the use of state-of-the-art digital...
Happy 10th Birthday for Photonic Products Ltd
Laser printer > Happy 10th Birthday for Photonic Products Ltd
Gimle Announces Ink Jet Proofing Breakthrough Absolute-Proof EXTRACHROME? System Capable of Accurately Simulating Over 90% of PANTONE? Colors
The Printing industry can now finally rely on accurate PANTONE Color representations on affordable ink jet printers. AbsoluteProof's unique Multicolor engine with the Extrachrome? ink set now expands the color gamut and capability of standard Epson Stylus PRO 4000, 7600 or 9600 printers to achieve accurate simulations of over 90% of the PANTONE color library. For the second time AbsoluteProof sets the worldwide industry benchmark. The company developed the world's first practical Hexachrome ink jet proofing solution in 2002.Now they offer the first and only solution to achieve an accurate color representation of over 90% of the PANTONE color library in a proofing workflow."The issue of PANTONE color matching in digital proofing workflows has been a significant hurdle for the printing industry from Day One" said Hugo Kristinsson, CEO of Gimle. "It is evident from the IPA Proofing Roundup earlier this year where 26 proofing systems attempted to match ONLY 11 PANTONE colors, results varied...
Gimle Announces Ink Jet Proofing Breakthrough Absolute-Proof EXTRACHROME? System Capable of Accurately Simulating Over 90% of PANTONE? Colors
Laser printer > Gimle Announces Ink Jet Proofing Breakthrough Absolute-Proof EXTRACHROME? System Capable of Accurately Simulating Over 90% of PANTONE? Colors
Digital Scrapbooking
What is digital scrapbooking?
Well, it is basically taking the art of scrapbooking onto your computer!
There are many things you can't do in traditional scrapbooks that are available to you as a digital scrapbooker.
One of the things you can do is create your own scrapbook paper.
Take any image and turn it into your own patterned paper.
You can make your papers any colors you want to match the photos for your specific layouts!
You can also do some amazing things with your photos when you scrap digitally.
I had a friend create her background paper out of a photo and layer another photo on top of it.
It was amazing!
You can add words and phrases onto your photos, color tint black and white photos, enlarge photos or turn your photos into cartoon drawings, depending on the software.
My personal preference for photo editing software is Adobe Photoshop Elements.
You can make...
Digital Scrapbooking
Laser printer > Digital Scrapbooking
Handheld Pen Scanner From Docupen Handles Full Pages
(ContentDesk) April 3, 2004 -- Look there! Up in your pocket. It's a pen. No it's a laser pointer! No, it's a scanner! But this is not one of those mild-mannered pen scanners that merely scans a word or a line at a time. This is a full page scanner. Yet it's just a smidge bigger than a pen.
The problem with most pen scanners is that they use the tip of the pen as an optical reader. You hold the pen as you would a writing instrument and move the tip of the pen over the lines in a page you wish to scan. Because of the tiny surface area at the tip of the pen, you are limited to scanning in a line at a time at best. But with the DocuPen from Planon System Solutions, the entire length of the pen is the scanning element. And since the length of the pen is 8 inches, you can scan in an entire page with just one top-to-bottom motion.
For full review please go to:http://www.computeramerica.com/content/columns/craig/2004/2004-03-08.htmCraig...
Handheld Pen Scanner From Docupen Handles Full Pages
Laser printer > Handheld Pen Scanner From Docupen Handles Full Pages
Not So Stationary Stationery
The elements and functionality of the basic stationery system is changing. With the advent of email, fax, web and cell phones, stationery systems must be adjusted to meet the needs of today's business.Business CardsThe biggest change by far in business cards is the amount of information they contain. Current cards often juggle multiple phone numbers, email, and web addresses as well as one or more street addresses. Companies are adopting logos with taglines and sometimes sub-taglines. We have even seen mission statements and bullet lists of services and product lines printed on cards.
To corral the potential chaos, think carefully about the purpose of the card and how the end viewer will use it. Secondary information such as alternate addresses can be positioned away from the key content on the back of the card. Web and email addresses are now easily identified and no longer need "http://," "web" and "email." Alternatively, try a mini CD ? a business card sized disk that can contain...
Not So Stationary Stationery
Laser printer > Not So Stationary Stationery
Mens Diamond Rings ? The Ultimate Wedding Ring For The Modern Man.
Mens diamond rings are becoming more and more popular with the modern man. As more men celebrate their marriage by the wearing of a wedding ring, mens diamond rings are fast becoming the new mens fashion.
The wearing of a wedding ring by a man is a reasonably new phenomenon. It is only really since the second world war that the wearing of a wedding ring by a man became common. However it is taking off now, as are diamond mens rings .
And there are different considerations...
Laser printer > Mens Diamond Rings ? The Ultimate Wedding Ring For The Modern Man.
Survey Shows Rising Healthcare Premiums Forcing Employers to Cut Benefits and Pass More Costs to Employees - Trend That Began Several Years Ago Becoming More Prevalent
KANSAS CITY (February 19, 2004) - Rapidly rising healthcare costs are forcing employers across the country to pay double-digit premium increases, and in turn, employers are scaling back benefits and passing a larger share of the rising costs to employees. This is according to Compdata Surveys' latest annual survey of employers' compensation practices, the largest of its kind in the nation with data from nearly 5,000 organizations with more than 4.7 million incumbent workers.As employers struggle...
Lasers and High-Performance Cutting Survey Shows Rising Healthcare Premiums Forcing Employers to Cut Benefits and Pass More Costs to Employees - Trend That Began Several Years Ago Becoming More Prevalent
Laser printer > Survey Shows Rising Healthcare Premiums Forcing Employers to Cut Benefits and Pass More Costs to Employees - Trend That Began Several Years Ago Becoming More Prevalent
The True Cost of your Credit
The current house price boom has perhaps passed its peak as I write this, but that doesn't stop the mortgage companies from offering yet more new and tempting products that look like good deals for a consumer. But be warned - The standard mortgage, running over 25 years is set like that for a reason! When you see companies offering '40 year mortgages' or 'low start' mortgages, or perhaps even 'interest only' mortgages, you should understand these shiny new products may have a nasty sting ion their...
Lasers and High-Performance Cutting mortgages Laser printer
Laser printer > The True Cost of your Credit
Plasma TV Be Aware When Buying Online
A plasma TV may very well be the next step in your home entertainment future and the potential sources for the purchase of a plasma TV have never been better. Because a handful of retailers have jumped on the plasma TV bandwagon and started offering these televisions as part of their home electronics line, the cost of a plasma TV has never been lower. The fact that the technology has become well-established has also helped lower the cost of the plasma TV. So where do you go to find great deals...
Lasers and High-Performance Cutting plasma Laser printer
Laser printer > Plasma TV Be Aware When Buying Online
Laser printer
This page loaded in 0.03475 seconds.