Bionic Power’s PowerWalk knee brace provides wearable electric generator for gadget-laden soldiers.

A B.C.-based company has developed a device that harnesses the marching power of soldiers to operate night vision goggles, radios, navigation gear and other battlefield equipment. The lightweight, mechanical PowerWalk brace recharges equipment batteries carried by soldiers as they walk and is designed to overcome problems using other “energy harvesting” devices now in use, such as hand-operated cranks.

“It’s very difficult for anybody to crank long enough to produce an appreciable amount of power,” says Bionic Power CEO Yad Garcha. “Our device is on the knee and as long as you’re walking, you can be producing power.”

Garcha says the “elegance” of the PowerWalk system stems from its use of the negative energy that occurs in the hamstring as the human leg decelerates or brakes. Instead of dissipating into heat, that negative energy is turned into electric power—as much as 12 watts of electricity on average, or enough to power four cell phones. He adds that military users are increasingly turning to ways of recharging a single large battery rather than forcing soldiers “to carry umpteen kinds of different batteries that are not rechargeable.”

With a targeted design weight of 800 grams, PowerWalk will also be lighter than the five to seven kilograms of Double A batteries that Canadian soldiers currently carry during a mission. To accomplish this, Bionic Power is re-engineering the brace’s gear box to reduce its width, which will also make it smaller and less cumbersome.

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Wohlers report says U.S. leads world additive manufacturing users but international competition gaining.

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NX CAM delivers a complete and proven solution for machine tool programming that enables companies to maximize the throughput of their most advanced machine tools.

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Originally developed solely for the company’s internal use and provided as a “black-box” on prototype control applications, the chain has impressed customers so much that they have asked to buy similar systems.
The tool set operates on a Vocis TMS20 prototype transmission control unit (TCU), a device sufficiently compact and robust to permit engine bay mounting, thereby closer to a production installation than many prototype systems.
Vocis provides a library of low-level software to interface the TCU to customer high-level Simulink models. “Providing the low-level drivers eliminates a major element of the software cost and speeds up the transition from prototype to production code,” explains Vocis managing director Mike Everitt. “Customers only need to concern themselves with developing the high-level control methods and getting the calibration right”.
The Vocis low-level software library consists of two parts. First, the suite of functions allowing high-level software to access TCU hardware and key microprocessor features, and second an operating system to schedule software to run at the correct time. Customers select either a Vocis in-house task scheduler or the RTA-OSEK®operating system from ETASTM.
The Vocis option provides a cost-effective approach for prototypes while RTA-OSEK offers the appropriate level of validation for production. Users have a choice of code generator between Simulink coder/embedded coder and TargetLink. Vocis also provides a build tool to configure and control the creation of the final executable software.
This tool allows easy linking of existing customer models to the low-level drivers developed by Vocis. “Using the build tool requires only a few mouse clicks from the engineer,” says Everitt. “We provide all the necessary scripts and a GUI that guides the user through the complete build process.”

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Lectra, a leader in integrated technology solutions for industries using soft materials such as apparel fabrics, technical textiles and composite materials has announced the success of its early-adopter program for its Modaris 3D system.

For the past 18 months, Lectra has been running an early-adopter program to monitor this radical new way of working with a targeted group of approximately 40 fashion companies in seven countries. The goal was to implement and validate, from proof of concept to production, 3D technology throughout the complete collection development process with multi- disciplinary teams from design to product development to subcontractors and producers.

The program included a cross section of different types of clothing, price points and markets ranging from luxury to ready-to-wear to technical sportswear, to children’s, women’s and men’s markets.

Each project included one or more season’s worth of collections from the concept to production phase to ensure complete mastery of this new process and a robust solution. “3D technology is a real revolution for product development. By providing a common visual language for everyone involved in the process-from design to pattern-making to marketing to suppliers-Lectra’s 3D solutions build bridges between departments and offer a new way of working that is faster and delivers far more consistent fit and reduced time to market,” says Anastasia Charbin, Fashion Marketing Director, Lectra.

Single solution for flat pattern-making and 3D prototyping

“Lectra combines the best of pattern-making, draping, and virtual sampling all in one seamless digital process and has set the industry standard for product development solutions. We are thrilled at how the fashion industry has embraced this new, modern way of working,” says Daniel Harari, Lectra CEO.

Lectra’s 3D technology represents the culmination of several years of R&D development and close collaboration with early-adopter customers. The company says the results are obvious in the solution’s improved usability.

“Five years ago in another role earlier in my career, I used Lectra’s 3D technology. The solution has come a long way and I am impressed by how quickly you can now work,” says Nicolas Boucaud, Pattern-Maker at Christian Dior Homme Prêt-à-Porter.

“Lectra quickly understood our process and was able to adapt to our needs. They took a real interest in the way we work, which I found very professional,” says Patrice Marie-Alphonsine, Head of Pattern Development at Christian Dior Homme Prêt-à- Porter.

Lectra’s virtual fitting room has been developed to be as accurate as a live fit session and practical for both designers and pattern-makers. The ability to work with flat patterns and 3D simulations at the same time contributes to more accurate finished patterns, which preserve style and fit decisions made throughout the development process.

“With the 3D solution we have managed to eliminate various prototyping phases. Now all the departments involved in making a product can work closely together from the first simulation,” explains Amedeo Iossa, Product Manager at the Italian sportswear company Macron.

Fewer physical prototypes

Prototyping is one of the most expensive and time-consuming phases of product development and traditionally, three, four or even more prototypes were needed to validate style and fit. With Lectra, that number can be easily reduced by half, the company claims. Lectra eliminates intermediary paper and fabric prototypes, saving a physical prototype for final validation, where it is needed most.

“Our objective in adopting Lectra’s 3D technology was to ease communication, reduce misunderstanding and errors and decrease the number of physical samples from two or three to a single prototype,” says Simone Mayer, Managing Director at Maier Sports, a German sportswear company.

“Our Lectra solutions work well between Germany and China and we are now looking to expand them to our production facilities in Turkey. We are convinced that 3D is the future of our industry and we are happy that we found the right partner to accompany us.”

With 3D prototyping, pattern-makers can also visualize entire size ranges on screen, which makes controlling quality from the smallest to largest sizes-and not just a base size-possible. This is particularly impactful for companies that cater to consumers with diverse morphologies. Cordeiro Campos, a Portuguese family-owned textile company that produces 300,000 garments a year, believes the benefits of reduced time to market and prototyping costs made possible with 3D have helped them maintain strong business growth despite a difficult economy.

“We were recently named one of the best small- to medium-sized businesses in Portugal for the second year in a row. We believe our choice to partner with Lectra has allowed us to stay competitive and expand our business,” says José Augusto Santos, Shareholder and Manager at Cordeiro Campos.

By creating opportunities to see and modify style decisions early in the development process, 3D technology has reinforced links between departments and enabled companies to make profound changes in their product development process. The result is more collaboration between internal teams, but also with external suppliers and sub-contractors. For this reason, Lectra partners closely with every customer that embarks on a 3D project, in order to understand each one’s unique needs and ensure rapid mastery of the solution.

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A group of Rice University mechanical engineering students are getting a charge out of having the coolest new shoes on campus.

As their capstone project that is required for graduation, four seniors created a way to extract and store energy with every step. Their PediPower shoes turn motion into juice for portable electronics and, perhaps someday, for life-preserving medical devices.

Cameron, a Houston-based international company, approached the Rice engineering students with the project. The company primarily works on the macroscale as a provider of flow equipment, systems and services for the oil, gas and process industries, but it asked the students to look toward microscale green energy technologies.

Julian Castro models the PediPower, an energy-producing prototype to run small electronics. It was invented by senior engineering students at Rice University. Photo by Jeff Fitlow.

The Agitation Squad – Carlos Armada, Julian Castro, David Morilla and Tyler Wiest – decided last fall to focus their attention on where the rubber meets the road to create a shoe-mounted generator. Another device to draw energy from the motion of the knee had already been developed and patented and led them to analyze other sources of energy.

Working with the Motion Analysis Laboratory at Shriners Hospital for Children in Houston, the team determined the force at the heel delivered far more potential for power than any other part of the foot.

“We went to the lab and saw the force distribution across the bottom of your foot, to see where the most force is felt,” Morilla said. “We found it would be at the heel and at the balls of your toes, as you push off. We went with the heel because, unless you’re sprinting, you’re letting gravity do the work.”

Their devices as currently designed are admittedly too big for day-to-day wear, but the prototypes developed at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen with the team’s advisers, David McStravick and Omar Kabir, meet the benchmarks set by the company. McStravick is a professor in the practice of mechanical engineering and materials science; Kabir is a senior principle research engineer in corporate technology at Cameron.

The prototypes deliver an average of 400 milliwatts, enough to charge a battery, in benchtop tests (and a little less in walking tests, where the moving parts don’t move as far). They send energy through wires to a belt-mounted battery pack. A voltage regulator keeps it flowing steadily to the battery.

Rice University senior engineering students were charged with creating a source of green energy from human motion. The team — from left, Tyler Wiest, Carlos Armada, Julian Castro and David Morilla — created prototype generators mounted to shoes. Photo by Jeff Fitlow.

The PediPower hits the ground before any other part of the prototype shoe. A lever arm strikes first. It is attached to a gearbox that replaces much of the shoe’s sole and turns the gears a little with each step. The gears drive a motor mounted on the outside of the shoe that generates electricity to send up to the battery.

“It may be worth looking into having both the heel and the ball of the foot produce power, especially if this shoe could be used while running,” Armada said.

The students expect the project to be picked up by another team at Rice in the fall, with the hope they can refine the materials, shrink the size and boost the power output, all of which will get PediPower closer to being a commercial product.

“If we could prove that we could produce some usable power, store it in a battery and discharge that battery on a mobile device or an MP3 player, then we could prove this device works,” Armada said. “Now the next team can come in and make it smaller and lighter without sacrificing power.”

Tyler Wiest attaches a PediPower to a shoe for a demonstration of its power-generating capabilities at Rice University. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

For now, the team would like to provide enough dependable power for cellphones and other portable electronics. But they’re aware that Cameron has partnered with the Texas Heart Institute to apply its expertise in moving fluids to a new generation of artificial heart pumps, and the students hope their work will contribute to that goal.

“Just the fact that you’re relying on human movement to power something that’s critical to your life is a little bit scary,” Armada said. “You sleep for eight hours a day and you’re not moving. You want to make sure you’re making enough power during the day to last. Realistically, this might be more of a device to charge your phone.

“Theoretically it would be something you just wear, and you don’t notice it,” he said. “That’s the end goal. If you showed someone the shoe while you’re standing still, they wouldn’t even see the device.”

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