Tiger Stone - Brick Road Laying Machine

Road paving is one of those physically tasking work in which not much could be automated. Or is it? For brick laying in those brick roads though, a Dutch industrial company named Vanku introduced a machine which could save time and transform the back breaking task into one of relative ease.

In comes Tiger Stone, a road-wide brick laying machine that looked nothing like a tiger and more like a film laminating machine. A road as wide as 6 meters could have 400 m² of the road completed within a day as opposed to the 75 - 100 m² completed, assuming that the same amount of people are working on the task, namely 2 operators.

Semiconductor Technology: Moore's Law

Just look at that brick handphone. Does it seem like it was ages ago that telephones started to become mobile? The first hand-held mobile phone is, infact, not even 50 years old yet. First to be introduced in 1973 and commercially available by 1980's to customers who could afford to buy it (costs about USD 4000 back then, which is equivalent to USD 9300 today!) and don't mind carrying a 1 kg extra weight in their briefcase/handbag.

By contrast, today's mobile phones costs and weights only a small fraction of the earliest brick mobile phone and packs more computing power and has more fuctions and capabilities than one could ever imagine back then. All this thanks to Moore's Law.

Windows Shortcut Key that Helps

Computer applications are no longer just a high tech tool but a necessity in the life of an engineer. For those born past the 80's, using Windows is a breeze, but not so for the seniors who have to struggle with the sudden influx of computers into their work life.

Image from DeviantArt's Rehsup.

Bear in mind that although computers seem to be around forever, they were only popularly employed in our work space, especially those of the engineering community, around the turn of the century, and not everyone get the chance to be in front of one as well. Most of my seniors who started working in Malaysia around the turn of the century had to take turns using a workstation which had to be shared among a few engineers. When I was in secondary school, PC was something which not everybody could afford or willing to buy.

What is the cost of...?

The Avengers had assembled, the Dark Knight is rising and Star Wars had ended, but all these doesn't have to be limited to the silver screen. Just as Titanic could be a lesson for an engineer, so could a few other big budget movies.

For one, if you are the project engineer in charge of estimating the cost of engineering such challenging items as those featured in the movie, how much would they cost? Interestingly, I stumbled into a couple of websites which considered those same questions and presented an estimation which was fun to read although their accuracy warrant further corroboration.

Image from Super-Team Family.

Gloss - Measurement of Gloss Part 1

As was established in the previous post, gloss is determined by the amount of light rays being reflected under specular reflection as opposed to diffuse reflection. The more rays reflected through the former method, the glossier the surface is. 

Taktik iPhone case designed by Minimal studio. The surface is described as glossy and although this image is (I suspect) a rendered image, the glossiness of the surface is still conveyed. For quality control, determining the item as meeting the expected gloss level is not acceptable through mere visual inspection (image taken from DesignBoom).

Gloss could be compared qualitatively by comparing reflection of an image off different surfaces. Surface exhibiting sharper reflection will be considered glossier. But this is only useful in a qualitative way, and only if both surface reflections are distinctly different. Different observant will have different sight and recognition capability as well, so this method is physiologically affected. This qualitative method will not suffice as a quality control method.

Gloss - A Perception of Surfaces Part 2

Unlike other physical measurements, gloss measurement is not as straightforward. But it isn't difficult either, once one understood how gloss is perceived and interpreted by the human eye.

Gloss is an aspect of visual perception of objects, and it is an attribute of surfaces. With this in mind, any material could be made to meet the requirement of any gloss level as long as the technology exists and the method economic. 

What in this picture makes you think that the car's exterior is "glossy"? What causes this term to come to mind? (image taken from Ziebart)

Gloss - A Perception of Surfaces Part 1

You take a look at the shiny metallic surface of a sleek sports car and you immediately thought of it as "glossy". You saw another car with a body which reflects none of the ambient lighting, absorbing everything like a black hole, and you think of it as "matte".

The glossy surface of an Audi TT (image taken from DeviantArt).

As easy as the word comes to your mind, how does one define "glossy"? This would be important to an engineer, since there has to be some way to control the quality of a surface, and control will not be possible without measurement, and no measurement without a solid definition.