The end user pays a monthly fee and owns the lights at the end of the three-year LaaS deal, with an option to start another contract with new luminaires.

Looking for a source of small plastic folding wedges* , I came across an amazing book on the web – the ‘Handbook of damage control‘ on the Historic Naval Ships Association website. About protecting ships, it looks applicable to any situation where a broken big thing has to survive a huge amount of force – …

This story continues at Should you need a very strong repair

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3D printer maker 3D Systems has a nice guide to unusual design solutions for creating 3D printed parts made of nylon by selective laser scintering. This process is a good way to make parts and prototypes that can be handled roughly. Surface finish and mechanical precision is not as good as some of the precision …

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Hampshire-based ioLight has got a patent for its foldable microscope, intended to be used in the field. Starting in 2014, CEOs Andrew Monk and Richard Williams created ioLight and submitted the same year a patent application for a self-contained portable high-resolution microscope with a flat base to provide a stable optical platform. Aiming for a …

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Astute commenter of this parish zeitghost has drawn my attention to a rather neat application note on relay contacts, on the website of TE Connectivity. The wisdom includes: “Transformers can present an unusual trap for an unsuspecting relay user. When power is removed from a transformer, its core may contain remanent magnetism. If power is reapplied …

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Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico has created what it thinks is the most wear-resistant metal. The particular platinum-gold alloy is said to be 100x more durable than high-strength steel, making it the first alloy, or combination of metals, in the same class as diamond and sapphire, nature’s most wear-resistant materials, according to the lab. …

This story continues at Most wear-resistant metal ever, for relay contacts perhaps

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Tech2C has posted a YouTube video on how to adapt a 3D printer to make single-sided pcbs – effectively turning into a CNC milling machine. Loaded with a small-diameter end mill, the system mills away unwanted copper, drills through-holes and routes around the pcb edge to free it from the pcb panel. OK, so single-sided …

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Heat-treating a filament-printed 3D print can make the print stronger by reducing stresses, and increase the operating temperature of the print. The penalty is a few percent shrinkage across the print and some growth in height. For a given batch of print material on a certain printer, these percentages are apparently predictable, allowing them to be …

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For those new to 3D printing, said the person who has never 3D printed anything (yet*), Simplify 3D has put a mini-encyclopedia of fault-finding for filament printing on its website. Extremely usefully, it is indexed by a set of pictures – click on the one that looks most liek your problem and there is a …

This story continues at Detailed fault-finding guide for FDM 3D printing

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Despite its earthquakey nature, Japan’s beautiful wooden pergodas do not fall down. Years ago, I was told it was because there is a central pole within the structure, that acts as a top-suspended momentum damper – just like the one in the Taipei 101 tower, which in that case weights over 600 tonnes (photo below). I …

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