We continue to explore how fibers can get into the computer-controlled fabrication process. 3D printing takes the spotlight, but each year about 10x more sewing machines are sold in the US than desktop 3D printers worldwide. If we can combine some of their capabilities with 3D printing, a lot of exciting materials can join the party – whether …
Category Archives: Lab News
3 great papers from 2016
Three papers that inspired our group in 2016 are connected by the theme of fluid-driven robotics. Whether the fluid is a gas or a liquid, these robotic systems need a way to (1) move the fluid around, and (2) get feedback on how much it moved, because the amount of motion depends on what the …
Pumping water with no electric field (on average)
Alternating Current Electro-Osmotic Pumping at Asymmetrically Metallized Porous Membranes from Jasmin Beharic Here are the slides from Jaz’s presentation at the fall AIChE meeting earlier this month. We are putting electric fields across thin porous membranes to pump water. The unusual thing about our work is the time-averaged amplitude of the electric field is 0. …
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lasers in space
It’s not really lasers in space, but now we have a laser feeding into the vacuum of the electron microscope. This is great for viewing how microelectromechanical (MEMS) structures respond to infrared light (915 nm). The problem with viewing our strain-engineered MEMS structures on the workbench with an optical microscope, is that they move in …
3D Plots: MATLAB tutorial
I’m getting questions about MATLAB plots. Maybe it’s project time. Although I am busy learning Python and matplotlib, I won’t hate on MATLAB–here is my tutorial on plotting your data in 3D using 3 kinds of MATLAB plots. This time of year brings questions on which software is best for all kinds of topics. Common topics for …