End of the Line

Technical innovation in NASCAR has been a feature of the sport since its inception in 1949. Finding a competitive edge meant pushing rules to their limits and beyond, making mechanics as much the stars of the sport is drivers. 

Today’s next-generation NASCAR cup series cars however, are factory built, largely interchangeable and are no longer fabricated by race teams themselves. Similar cars means very close racing, creating a grand spectacle for fans. For many, putting the sport primarily into the hands of the drivers is a step forward, but for fans that love the engineering side of the sport, something has been lost. 

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

If you follow the electric vehicle market anywhere in the world today, it’s pretty much bad news these days. That’s especially true in America, where slowing production and layoffs at Tesla, Ford and GM are the inevitable result of dramatically softening sales.

The demand for lower-priced vehicles is high, but with current technology, so is the EV MSRP.

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

Everyone wants the universal household robot. According to Jim Anderton, for widespread adoption, they are going to have to have a price point that allows monthly financing or lease payments that are roughly similar to a car, suggesting that manufacturers will need to retail units in the neighbourhood of $ 40,000 to get widescale uptake. 

If designed properly, the machines could be durable enough to carry a residual value, creating a secondary market for used equipment, to allow monthly payments that could be affordable for the majority of households.

To achieve this, the robot makers are going to have to stop thinking like NASA, and rethink things like titanium and carbon fiber. Commodity plastic resins, utility grade aluminum alloys and critically, affordable batteries will be the way forward. 

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

The 20th century was defined by engineering. Mass production of consumer goods, atomic energy, and the development of computer data processing built the world we know today.

In the 21st century, three technologies will define the future: controlled nuclear fusion, artificial intelligence, and a specific class of robot: humanoid, general purpose, electrically actuated robots that operate without code, and function the way humans do.

The impact of these technologies is impossible to predict with certainty, but the latter two innovations, AI and humanoid robotics, will change the nature of work in ways that current makers of industrial SCARA robots can’t imagine.

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

Iran launched a mass drone attack on Israel, with some of the slowest flying offensive aerial vehicles deployed since the Zeppelin raids of World War I.

The result was the loss of the majority of the drones, with very little damage inflicted on targets.

But the attack served a useful political purpose for Tehran, and it suggests that massed attacks of low cost drones against sophisticated defence systems can be stopped, but ironically, may also be useful politically for the attacking nation, even if the attacks fail.

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

A Ukrainian made reduction light sport aircraft, the Aeroprakt A-22, appears to have been the platform for a drone attack on a Russian factory in Tataristan, only 800 miles behind the lines and deep inside Russia. While hardly a high-performance platform for drone conversion, these are light sport aircraft has several advantages.

The aircraft is cheap and simple, and uses mechanical flight controls that are relatively easy to automate. It uses no special materials and a commercially available engine, and in flight, is indistinguishable to radar from aircraft and helicopters. The attack was highly successful, and it’s likely that more will be seen on the battlefield in the future

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

The third test flight of the SpaceX Starship system ended in in the loss of the vehicle as both booster and the orbital vehicle failed. But both booster and space vehicle were far closer to mission success than either of the first two test flights, and changes are underway for flight four.

According to Jim Anderton, the reaction of the engineering team at SpaceX mission control was rather strange. The celebratory atmosphere and cheering make for a stark contrast to the very serious tone of NASA mission control in Houston during Space Shuttle and Apollo Saturn flights.

Is this youthful exuberance, or is there a generational shift in what was once an almost religious reverence for space vehicle launch operations?

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

In complex systems, especially in aviation, it’s rarely possible to single out an individual or corporate unit for failures like those seen on Boeing aircraft recently. Several media outlets have been talking about a “bad week for Boeing” with Boeing aircraft losing wheels, experiencing engine fires and dropping vertically while in cruising flight, causing passenger injuries.

On the heels of the Alaska Airlines door plug incident, the optics are bad — but the simple fact is, these incidents involve completely different aircraft models, built over a span of decades. With different failures, and different failure modes, it’s unlikely that Boeing is the sole cause of each one. 

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

A recent CNN story about a former Boeing employee who refuses to fly on the Boeing 737 Max went viral, throwing fuel on the fire over quality issues at the company.

For manufacturing professionals, missing bolts — although serious — are not especially surprising. It’s not widely understood, but it is true that even 100% human visual inspection of a specification or attribute will not even come close to achieving zero-defect production.

Part of the reason is because of the natural limitations in human inspection, but a major issue is that inspectors are subject to the same personal issues that degrade their performance as any other employee. Legal and illegal substance use and abuse, physical illness, mental health issues and physical disability can all play a part.

How a corporation deals with underperforming quality control personnel is another factor. Automation of inspection processes will help, but can sometimes introduce a new level of uncertainty in quality assurance processes. Perfection will always be elusive, but statistically, the accident rate for air travel is at historic lows.

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

Kei cars are cute, fun, affordable and not available in America. 

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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.