06/11/2009
The Government has thrown its weight behind an all electric car that will be designed and developed solely in the UK.
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02/11/2009
I failed to get the September blog together in good time, and Nick Chapman is not pleased again – we're into November, and here's the October report!
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22/10/2009
Delivering the Hinton Lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering earlier this week, industry secretary Lord Mandelson called for more 'real engineering'.
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16/10/2009
We had an exceptional good meeting with Hisko Baas from www.iq-systemhaus.com, part of www.iq-wireless.com, and the UK mast manufacturer CU Phosco.
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24/09/2009
After a recent trip to the Motek automation show in Stuttgart, one thing was apparent. While figures may suggest that the German economy is through the recession, it was hard to find exhibitors that shared the optimism. Things are still tough and are likely to remain so for some time.
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17/09/2009
While there are endless acres of information about the likely impact of global warming, and equally large areas of information about alternative sources of energy that will not wreck the planet, the big question is whether we have the collective will to address the problems in time.
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03/09/2009
Now here's an idea, why not design your promotional and technical literature and your product in conjunction with end users?
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01/09/2009
The end of September is, I hope, going to be a huge waypoint for BLOODHOUND; hopefully JP and the design team will have made their decision on the final external layout of BLOODHOUND SSC and reached what we call Aero Solution. Over in the US, Daniel Jubb and his team will have successfully fired the full-scale hybrid rocket. Can we achieve all this? – I am beginning to learn that we have a really outstanding series of teams here and I reckon it can be done.
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27/08/2009
Another land speed record for the UK. This time, it's the record for steam driven vehicles and one which has stood since 1906.
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09/08/2009
My apologies- this is late again! Nick Chapman asked for this update in July, but the pace and demands of the project are so great that I have to give precedence to activities that make money, structure the programme and help the rest of the team achieve their objectives. The project is moving very very fast now on a very wide front and it's doing really well.
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20/07/2009
The good news that Nissan is investing in its plant near Sunderland to manufacture batteries for new electric cars should be tempered by the fact that China, which announced a move to go electric a few months ago, is already heavily into the production of such vehicles.
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09/07/2009
I don't know if this is going to be a trend in marketing desirable green leading edge cars, but drivers that want to be the first to get behind the wheel of the new electric Mini, The Mini E, will be able to apply for them later this year.
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23/06/2009
Engineers have long known the basics of the energy saving potential of variable speed inverter drives. For 20 years they have been promoting their uptake, either as energy efficiency improvers or simply as good practise. Each case needs to be looked at individually, but as a rule of thumb we can say that a drive will payback its capital cost in 12-18 months, then continue saving energy – and therefore money and carbon – for the remaining 5-10 years of its working life. It total, there will have been a substantial saving in both financial costs and carbon emissions.
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18/06/2009
Rapid prototyping has been used to make Gömböcs, which are solid shapes that have only one stable and one unstable position of equilibrium.
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12/06/2009
A series of recent lectures given by some of the UK's leading scientists under the auspices of the Institute of Physics have all mentioned the fact that around 75 per cent of equivalent mass of the universe is made up of "Dark Energy", and that this energy is almost certainly what some call, "The energy of the vacuum field" or "Zero point energy" and dropping hints that it is worth investigating further just in case we can use it.
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11/06/2009
The engineer's problem solving forum, formerly known as "Design Dilemma", is, by popular request, once more to grace the pages of Eureka.
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02/06/2009
According to a GfK NOP survey for the RAC foundation, some 6.75million motorists are thinking about purchasing a vehicle powered only by batteries.
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01/06/2009
Apologies - my update is late yet again, but I need to explain what is going on!
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29/05/2009
I am an ancient multi-disciplined engineer and have worked in a number of areas including tool making, railway signalling, Controls and instrumentation and latterly what we call the defence industry
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29/05/2009
An overseas moulder explains how he has adapted to the crisis in the automotive business in order to flourish
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26/05/2009
CERN has been investing billions of euros/pounds in the Large Hadron Collider – the UK contributed 186 million Swiss Francs in 2008, second only to Germany. Unfortunately this mega investment project failed in less than a month's time, and is now consuming yet more cash. What do British tax payers get out of it?
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26/05/2009
Beware of dodgy imported safety equipment
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14/05/2009
A recent survey has suggested that women need to think like men to get ahead in a career. But I think that is cobblers.
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14/05/2009
I have in the past written about a number of clever ways of achieving very large gear reductions in a single stage, but what about going the other way?
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14/05/2009
Someone said to me today, 'financial directors spend money, engineers invest it.'
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