Smart Industry 1/2016

News
Manufacturing & Development
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Fraunhofer Institute FEP
Making a thinner glass
Photo ©: Fraunhofer FEP / Jürgen Lösel
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute FEP are
teaming up with Corning, an American manufacturer
of glass and ceramics, to create ultrathin
glass for sheet-to-sheet and roll-to-roll
processes right through to application in organic
electronics. Ultra-thin glass can be used as a
substrate as well as for encapsulation in many
smart products such as smartphones, curved
displays, OLED light sources and photovoltaics.
Especially appealing is to use ultra-thin glass in
wearable electronics as well as in intelligent micro-optics
and touch-sensors. Moreover, ultrathin
glass has excellent surface properties that
considerably exceed the ones of conventional
plastic films.
University of Illinois
Revving up fiber networks
temperatures is tricky Feng admits. Besides,
cooling systems cost money. Latin
America are squeezing out weaker
players and reducing profit margins of
those that remain.
ases productivity by approximately 12
percent, Liebherr claims. After all, an
autonomous construction vehicle is not
required to take occasional breaks and
can’t call in sick to work. First public field
trials are scheduled for 2018.
Photo ©: L. Brian Stauffer
A team from the University of Illinois
has successfully transmitted errorfree
data at a rate of 57 gigabits per
second (Gbps) through a fiber cable,
thus creating a fast lane on the information
superhighway. According to
professor Milton Feng, the new technology,
which is based on a special
semiconductor laser, can operate at
temperatures of up to 85 degrees, eliminating
the need for additional cooling
in hi-speed fiber networks. As big
data has gotten bigger, the need has
grown for a high-speed data transmission
infrastructure that can accommodate
the ever-growing volume of bits
transferred from one place to another.
Computing components grow warm
over extended operation, as anyone
who has worked on an hot laptop
knows. Achieving high speeds at high
Need for speed
Milton Feng (r.)
and his team
are pushing the
envolpo for fibre
cable
Liebherr
Smart Construction Trucks
Forget self-driving cars: Liebherr, a manufacturer
of heavy-duty construction
vehicles, recently showed of a 320 ton
hauling machine that comes equipped
with sophisticated GPS gear and
sensors that allow it to operate 24/7
without a human in or near it. Instead
they are operated from a control center
which can be a thousand miles away.
Some of the areas that mining companies
have to work in are in hostile or extremely
remote areas, making it difficult
to find qualified professionals to fill the
jobs. The self-driving system also incre-
BigRep
LWorld‘s largest FDM 3D printed
drone
The Berlin technology startup BigRep
has printed the largest FDM 3D printed
drone of the world: Duster. Reinforced
with carbon threads, the two
meter-wide he drone’s copter frame is
designed to accommodate eight electric
motors and carry payloads of up
to 60 kg. Flight time can be between
seven and 40 minutes, but BigRep is
working on new battery technology
that will enable flights of up to 70
minutes. Duster was developed together
with the drone specialists Robert
Reichert of OiC Drones, a full-service
drone provider, and is destined
for use in the industrial sector and in
agriculture.
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