Gas Compression Magazine: Illustrated Online Database Of Rotating Machinery Terms. “More than 2500 words and 200+ illustrations make [Kane’s Rotating Machinery Dictionary] one of the most comprehensive digital resources for students and experts alike to gain a better understanding of the products, practices, and technologies utilized in the rotating machinery industry.” Free to access, surprisingly.
EurekAlert: Human fondness, faith in machines grows during pandemic. “People are not very nice to machines. The disdain goes beyond the slot machine that emptied your wallet, a dispenser that failed to deliver a Coke or a navigation system that took you on an unwanted detour. Yet USC researchers report that people affected by COVID-19 are showing more goodwill — to humans and to human-like autonomous machines.”
From the LumberJocks forum: New Database of Woodworking Machines. ” own a few vintage Inca machines that I really enjoy for their precision and craftsmanship. As I started acquiring and repairing more machines, I kept running into the problem that it can be quite difficult to find information about these machines. Often you will have to spend a lot of time browsing different forums to find that bit of information you were looking for. That’s why I came up with the idea to create a simple database of woodworking machines (mostly vintage ones initially), where information is centralized.” There are about a hundred machines here currently, with a focus on European machines.
Warwick Post (Rhode Island): Steamship Authority Raises $60,000 for Interactive Web Archive. “The Steamship Historical Society of America (SSHSA), dedicated to the history of engine-powered ships, raised $60,000 at its April 8 Titanic Dinner, which, combined with a grant, will fund an interactive web archive of the Warwick based non-profit’s extensive records.” The new archive is expected to take about a year.
A wonderful man in Ireland has built up a huge Flickr archive of farm machinery pictures. Like, 11,000 images. “For anyone with a keen interest in machinery, it provides an opportunity to see an incredibly wide and diverse range of tractors and machinery working in Irish fields – against the backdrop of uniquely-Irish landscapes. There are thousands of high-quality pictures of modern machines tackling tillage tasks and grappling with grassland activities. There are also vast swaths of shots of ‘classic’ tractors, combines and even loading shovels, busy toiling away at all manner of jobs.”
Wolfram Blog: How to Use Your Smartphone for Vibration Analysis, Part 2: The Wolfram Cloud. “Vibration measurement is an important tool for fault detection in rotating machinery. In a previous post, ‘How to Use Your Smartphone for Vibration Analysis, Part 1: The Wolfram Language,’ I described how you can perform a vibration analysis with a smartphone and Mathematica. Here, I will show how this technique can be improved upon using the Wolfram Cloud. One advantage with this is that I don’t need to bring my laptop.”
Now available in the UK: a database of stolen fork lifts. “The Stolen Truck Database is believed to the first of its kind in the UK. Through it, anyone who has had a truck stolen can report the theft and the details of the truck including make, model, power source and serial number. This is then added to a central database. Similarly, anyone being offered a used truck can access the database to check whether it has been reported as stolen.” Don’t laugh. When you need a forklift you NEED A FORKLIFT, and you can’t just run over and borrow your neighbor’s. And they’re incredibly expensive to rent. Do not ask me how I know this.
The ResearchBuzz Firehose is regular RB content presented as individual posts.
For digest-type posts a couple of times a day, please visit ResearchBuzz.
Want to know how to best use the Firehose for content discovery?
Check out this handy article.