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Medical radiography equipment is highly prone to heat-induced outages and failures, so much so that most high-volume machines today come equipped with onboard active cooling systems. In a recent project, Whitman Controls was engaged by a client seeking automation support for their own line of x-ray tube cooling systems. Thinking about how much time could be saved in radiology waiting rooms everywhere if x-ray machines never overheated, we couldn't help but scrub in!

For those of us who enjoy reading a good hardcopy book, part of the experience is feeling the physical paper in our hands.  We know what "good" book pages feel like - thicker than thin, crisp, with a slightly rough texture that grabs our fingers, and dense enough that it feels like each page deserves to carry the weight of the words printed on it.  For us to enjoy this experience as much as we do, a great many things must happen correctly across the paper manufacturing process.

As the poetic analogy goes, if humans live one breath at a time, international trade lives one cargo ship at a time. Each year, an estimated 11 billion tons of goods make their way over open ocean, dutifully transported by over 100,000 active seafaring freight vessels between ports across the world.

Integrated Circuits (or ICs) are the root of most of the technology we rely on in our daily lives, from mobile phones to internet data center servers to communication satellites in orbit. For commercial and industrial businesses, ICs provide the computational power found in all automated equipment and software systems as well. Manufacturing ICs falls within the domain of the semiconductor industry, where all circuit boards, processing chips, and transistor arrays are produced.

Many of us have been guests at an outdoor event where we might have felt it a little too cold outside, our minds silently urging the happenings along so that we could get back to the warmth indoors. No matter if it’s a wedding, a concert, a community church event, a work social hour, or any other of a thousand different types of entertainment event held outside, we all can appreciate the desire to get out of the elements and back into a nicely conditioned space.

Taking a wetland vehicle out into a marsh can be daunting.  Looking out at miles of open marsh, you get the same feeling as gazing deep into forested mountains or across towering ocean waves – it’s wild country, and making it back safely is solely up to you and the equipment you bring along. No matter what mission you’re on, the vehicle you select is likely the most important decision involved.  Wetland vehicles are a special breed of off-road equipment that must excel in widely varying conditions, all while serving a multitude of challenging functions reliably and safely. 

There are few conversations happening in the public sphere today as loudly as that of sustainability. While we are not looking to exploit an overused buzzword, we do see ample opportunity in supporting our customers as they navigate these conversations occurring within their own organizations. Industrial manufacturing as a market sector falls under considerable scrutiny for its relatively high energy and raw material consumption, but at the same time stands overwhelmingly well poised to make huge, positive impacts.

If readers ever need a reminder that workplace accidents can occur at any time, from any source, without warning, breezing through the OSHA Catastrophic Accident database will surely do the trick. Responding to an uptick in accidents involving compressed gas cylinders, this is exactly what one of our long-time distribution customers did in searching for ways that they could help reduce their end-users’ risk.

Procuring industrial components under a formal purchasing contract historically has not been very common in the United States, but with the supply chain rumblings of the last several years, more and more volume part buyers are exploring contract-like engagements to secure the products they need.

Few topics are as socially charged these days as the debate between electric versus fossil fuel vehicles.  Regardless of where you land on the matter, one point is crystal clear, which is that next generation vehicles of any type will increasingly rely on advanced instrumentation, electronic, and integrated circuit technologies to meet both environmental and consumer experience demands. In this article, we’ll take a look at the role of instrumentation in emerging vehicle technologies beyond just fuel types.