Stories of using 3D printing to respond to the pandemic throw a spotlight on additive manufacturing and its potential for fast, flexible production of critically needed parts. Whether it was face shields, nasopharyngeal swabs, or respiratory masks, additive manufacturing rose to the challenge to fill in the gap caused by a disrupted supply chain. Now, some industry observers are starting to ask whether 3D printing could be the future of manufacturing.

NASA is engaged in a new program to send astronauts back to the lunar surface. Some elements of the new program, called Artemis, will seem like carbon copies of the 1960s roadmap to the Moon. Bu the effort will take advantage of computers, design tools, and materials that are radically more advanced than they were for the Apollo program.

To meet the ambitious targets ahead of us, all possible processes and technologies must be considered to ensure end-of-life plastics are not disposed in landfills. Chemical recycling can repurpose used plastics into new products, including new plastics, industrial products, and transportation fuels. In addition to creating new products, these technologies keep these plastic materials circulating within the existing infrastructure and economy.

The importance of manufacturing to national security is recognized by defense professionals across the political spectrum. And yet, investments in American manufacturing infrastructure have fallen behind other nations, exacerbating security concerns. As a new administration sets its course for both economic and security policy, there is an opportunity for new investments in infrastructure, education, and research and development to support advanced manufacturing that can enhance the national defense.

Workers recently finished the last piece of tunnel for Kuala Lumpur’s second metro line, capping a program where autonomous tunneling machines have been operating remotely since 2016. Getting to that point took a poke by a seasoned tunneling director and TBM manager who found an unlikely duo of young, computer savvy, code-writing engineers who brought steering, advancement, excavation, and slurry operations under one operating system.

Large nuclear power plants are becoming increasingly difficult to site and build. The solution, say some nuclear advocates, is to give up on gigawatt-scale, bespoke plants and—following in the footsteps of other energy system—go small and modular. Small modular reactors (SMRs), which would generate tens or a few hundreds of mega-watts, would have a lower price tag and could prove to be safer.

New artificial intelligence and machine learning applications are found in many popular CAD platforms today and will be even more capable in the near future. As AI/ML solutions become more pervasive in different areas of the mechanical engineering arena, many design engineers are asking how these new tools will change the engineering profession.

When offices and workplaces reopen, HVAC systems will be the first line of defense against spread of viruses like the coronavirus. The technology to provide defense against microbes already exists. Unfortunately, the urgency to deploy these systems has not existed before now.

A new HVAC filter, developed through a collaboration of Houston-based medical real estate developer Medistar and researchers at the University of Houston and Texas A&M University, uses a heated filter made of nickel foam that traps and kills 99.8 percent of the virus.

In the spring, when the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic finally sank in, people realized that interactions as benign as accepting a delivered pizza could carry the risk of virus transmission. Enter the delivery robot.

The efficient natural gas Combined Cycle Power Plant (CCPP) has driven a substantial reduction in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, while gas turbine peaking plants also provide backup for variable renewable resources. As more wind and solar generation is added to grids around the world, there is a need for more flexible CCPPs with faster startup and ramping capability, storage of increasingly over-abundant renewable energy, and lower GHG emissions from dispatchable power plants. Novel integration of energy storage with the CCPP can meet these needs at lower cost than alternatives like batteries.

The editors of Mechanical Engineering magazine recognize technologists who developed a robot that can sterilize hospital rooms, a filter that can kill microbes in HVAC systems, an autonomous droid that delivers food, a lobby kiosk that can check for masks and fevers, and an open-source design for a face shield that anyone can 3D print. These are just a few of the many ways engineers responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in China in early 2020, the autonomous disinfecting robots from UVD Robots saw massive interest from companies looking to sanitize and sterilize their places of business.

After seeing a number of projects trying to help frontline workers, Josef Průša decided to produce face shields with both 3D printed and laser-cut plastic components.

To keep symptomatic workers from infecting entire businesses, employers are resorting to temperature screenings in the front lobby. Mechanical engineer Howard Horn realized it would be faster and safer for building owners to automate the process.

An engineer with more than 45 years’ experience on efficiency claims takes a look at whether electric vehicles are much more efficient than conventional cars powered by internal combustion engines. He found that EVs are marginally more efficient than the technology they are positioned to replace. A lot of the potential for improvement is, however, contingent on where the electricity comes from and how the vehicles are charged.

In the last 10 years the growth of America’s natural gas fueled, gas turbine power plants have flourished in its lower 48 states. They are replacing older coal-fueled steam turbine power plants, ending a century’s-old dominance of King Coal, for the nation’s electricity production.

When the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic caused schools across the country to close their classrooms, colleges and universities shifted to online education. Just as many professional spaces had to adjust to working from home, so did students and professors. Many higher education institutions had to find novel solutions to tackle the challenge of hands-on education and rethink what the classroom could be in a virtual and digital environment.

Fluid power technology uses a pump to deliver pressurized fluid to a cylinder, motor, or rotary actuator. Output speed and direction is controlled by varying flow rate from the pump or through valves within the fluid power circuit. Likewise, output force and torque are regulated by controlling pressure within the circuit. Engineers should understand what the possibility of using fluid power can bring.

There were two breakthroughs that led to a veritable revolution in photovoltaic prices. The commonly told story is that China started manufacturing lower-quality panels and dumped them on the world market at prices near (or even below) the cost of production. The truth is more complicated. Chinese manufacturing at scale played a part, but so did German industrial policy and a focus on improving the complete power system, not just the PV cells.