Alex

April 25, 2022 Leave a Comment Additive manufacturing offers a number of benefits to those wishing to develop antennas in various non-traditional geometries, and a team of researchers in the US have recently test-flown a drone with a printed antenna to demonstrate those benefits. Ohio-based drone company Event38 have been working with local partners (Ohio Federal Research Network (OFRN), Kent State University, Youngstown State University, and Youngstown Business Incubator (YBI)) to upgrade their E400 mapping drone with a new hybrid antenna/nose cone. The part was printed with a combination of metal and polymer printing, and was presumably assembled afterwards into a single unit. E400 drone. (Image credit: Event38) Typically antennas need to be conductive, but as we have seen in previous articles, it is perfectly possible to print complex geometries in plastics and apply conductive materials to them after printing. This is a lot more cost effective than simply printing…    read more 

April 26, 2022 Leave a Comment Oh, how times change! If you had tried to make a small plastic electric vehicle 35 years ago, you would have been pilloried and mocked relentlessly. Just ask home computer pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair, who in 1985 released his Sinclair C5 e-trike and got that exact same response. It seemed that some folks had issues with sitting in a battery/pedal powered recumbent tricycle with truck wheels roaring by at mere inches from their petrified heads… While the C5 debacle buried the idea of actually useful urban EV products for decades, the idea of small, fuel efficient concepts has been kept alive and kicking in the Shell Eco-marathon. The marathon has been running for many years now and has been used as a platform for student teams to push the envelope in terms of fuel economy, and this year a team from Saskatchewan Polytechnic has…    read more