The Design Technology Blog

Author: 13Kvilladsen

  • Beams

    A beam is a structural element that is capable of withstanding load primarily by resisting bending. The bending force induced into the material of the beam as a result of the external loads, own weight, span and external reactions to these loads is called a bending moment. There are several structures around the world that use beams in their buildings. My favorite use of beams where the rise of the skyscrapers in New York during the depression years, when buildings where being put up faster than ever. The building was put up so fast that it was completed in just 412 days. At one point they where able to complete a story a day and an average of a story every 4 days. Their great speed was done by using metal beams throughout the construction. The beams had the ability to manufactured of the building site thus all they had to do was be bolted in place.

    As the picture shows the work was not for the fainthearted as the workers had little or no protection and 5 workers did end up dying.

    File:Old timer structural worker2.jpg

  • Planned obsolescence in apple products

    Apple have added tamper resistant screws to several of their products such as their mac-book pro. The screws are unique to apple products and have one purpose, to keep users out. Consumers are claiming that this is forcing apple consumers to throw away their products sooner and buying newer ones faster. This forces users to send their laptops to Apple for repairs and upgrades instead of doing it themselves for a fraction of the price. In fact reading through the comments I discovered that their are several things that apple does to encourage buying. Several people complained about their laptop dying literally days after the warranty went off, not being able to replace spare parts such as the battery and the logic board. The logic board is a 5 in 1 board that is inside laptops including all the pieces in a computer. This means that if one piece the whole thing has to be replaced. I find this ridiculous, as I have had my computer for around 5 years, and have simply upgraded it over time for the fraction of the price and with less waste.  If a piece breaks or more likely becomes outdated it is easily replaceable and the old piece can be sold.

    I believe Mac computers should allow their laptops to become more tinker friendly or risk being sued for anti competitive behavior.

    http://www.cultofmac.com/77814/is-apple-guilty-of-planned-obsolescence/

  • Ergonomic mouse

    Technology should change for people’s needs and not the other way around that is what the company Humanscale is trying with their product; the switch mouse. The switch mouse is 30% larger than the typical mouse and is designed to mitigate wrist injuries such as carpal tunnel. They do this by having designed a built in palm rest that encourage arm movements instead of wrist movements.

    The mouse is designed with a v shaped bracket that can tilt in order to keep our hands and wrists straight and can be used by both right and left handed people. The mouse also has the ability to stretch for people with larger hands.

    The company says that it is a product that takes time to break into but will improve our bad mouse habits.

    http://www.ruthtrumpold.id.au/designtech/pmwiki.php

  • Robot builds copies of itself

    Robots-

    Reproduction is no longer unique for biology anymore. US researchers have created robots  that are able to reproduce other other robots out of spare parts. Though simple and toyish in size and function right now this may have a huge impact on several things. The robots will be able to repair each other and thus have several uses in such things as space travel. If a spaceship breaks down now, it is a huge risk to go out and fix the problem without putting astronauts in trouble.

    However, if robots gain the ability to reproduce they become even more like humans and one step further to being able to outnumber humans and take us over and enslave us. Hopefully this will never happen and the robots could even be made microscopic and could repair our innards.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4538547.stm

  • shape memory alloys in Aircrafts

    Shape memory alloys have several uses in today’s world such as being used in eye glasses and the original use of water piping. In today’s world people everywhere use airplanes to travel easily and safely across the world. However flying can be a nuisance as turbulence often annoys and even scares passengers, therefore designers have designed a type of wing which uses shape memory alloys in order to stop the turbulence.

     

    With its unique combination of  titanium, nickel and copper the wing is able to bend in a way so that it does not snap and is able to keep the plane upright much more then traditional wings.

     

    However more importantly Shape memory alloys will be used in a variety of different ways that can benefit humanity. There are examples of SMAs used in safety devices which will save lives in the future. Anti-scalding devices and fire-sprinklers utilizing SMAs are already on the market.

    In conclusion SMAs can be used in a variety of useful ways that can surely benefit mankind.