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Designer's Corner
By John Lewis, Northeast Technical Editor -- Design News, January 5, 1998
Composite-stackup drill
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| With template securely fastened to aircraft component, the self-clamping drill completes precision hole and countersink in one step, without any drill dust, fiber breakage, or operator support. |
A quiet, ergonomic, drilling and countersinking system simplifies drilling through composite stack ups. Air pressure in the cylinder drives a hollow piston forward to lock the expansion bushing to the template. Result: perfect bit alignment, and decreased repetitive-strain injuries.
Not including tooling savings, the system costs 30% less than conventional methods. Easily fabricated templates use composite base and top-layer laminates, intermediate foam layer, and bonded template bushings to save additional weight and cost over metal templates.
A precision collet holds the drill bit in place, and the countersink depth is referenced at the point of contact between the hollow piston and material to provide repeatable, countersink-depth accuracy of 0.0001 inch.
George Bartosch, Intech Corp., 250 Herbert Ave., Closter, NJ 07624, (201) 767-8066.
Hydraulic engine
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| A low-cost power plant for small vehicles, this two-cycle hydraulic motor could eliminate the crankshaft, connecting rods, oil pump, clutch, and transmission, and would require no oil-gas mix. |
This two-cycle hydraulic motor design might provide a lost-cost powerplant design for small cars, earth movers, or golf carts. Savings result by eliminating many mechanical components and systems.
One cylinder fires and forces oil through the hydraulic motor's one-way valve system up to the opposite cylinder. Then that cylinder fires to repeat the process.
Ed Farmer, Box 66, Underhill Ctr., VT 05490, (802) 899-4494.
Agile retainers
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| Hold downs may be located anywhere along the length of the card to clear connectors, LEDs, or other components. |
Add-on cards can become unplugged from the computer's mother board by mechanical accelerations from shock and vibration. That's why many are dead on arrival. This agile mechanical-retention system is low cost and works with disparate card sizes and shapes.
With full mechanical retention, standard off-the-shelf mother boards and add-on cards can meet the same shock and vibration standards as the more expensive, custom backplane units.
David Howard, Digital Dynamics Inc., 5274 Scotts Valley Dr., Scotts Valley, CA 95066, (408) 438-4444.
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