No More Cords

Finally, according to Boston.com, another genius out of MIT is going to make the world a little more bearable.  A man named Marin Soljacic has found a logical and useful way to deliver electrical power without using cords.  I know batteries have been around for decades but they either need to be recharged or replaced.  Mr. Giler, WiTricity chief executive, where they were giving a demonstration of the technology, said Mr. Soljacic has found a way to harness electricity and send it through the air to power your t.v., laptop, or to charge the batteries in your cell phone.  I am not even talking about putting them directly on a mat that will charge the batteries of your MP3 player.  Boston.com quoted Giler saying;

“It’s not electricity going through the air; it’s actually a magnetic field.”

This magnetic field is basically the same as the earth’s and is somehow manipulated to be able to do this.  Since I do not know much about magnetic fields I am not sure how it works.  But clearly this has the possibility revolutionize a lot of things.  The article tells how the tecnhology was able to power a t.v. and play a documentary without any cords.  This technology also has the ability to transmit a signal to your t.v. in high definition without any coaxial cable, or any other kind of cable for that matter.

The other possibilities for this technology that the article mentioned was that it could power an electrical car without plugging it in.  You could place a mat on the garage floor and just drive on to it.  This could possibly meld into parking your electric car in a parking garage that is equipped with this technology and while you are at a baseball game your car is getting charged.  I think the possibilities for this technology are exciting.  Maybe besides batteries running a cordless drill it will be powered by your house or some other device that you will have on a construction site.

Mr. Giler believes that this technology will be commonplace in most homes in the next five years.  They are already developing the technology for businesses to be used by the end of this year.  I believe that this is the kind of technology that makes sense.  It is reasonably easy to use, though manipulating a magnetic field was probably no small feat, and it will be easy to adapt to.

Stone Industry Tech

The technology in the stone industry has developed rapidly in the last ten years.  The industry has really taken off in the last 15 years due to the housing boom.  Now with the bust it has been harder for the industry to keep growing.  There are more fabricators going out of business than ever before because the market has gotten so small.

The future in the stone industry will see a lot more automation.  In the past decade CADCAM machines have entered the industry and have sped up production for all fabricators.  Companies, such as Northwoods and Park Industries, have introduced these machines and have been fine tuning them by adding updates to the software and adding more capabilities to the machines themselves.  These machines had been adapted from other industries and have been restructured in order to be used in the stone industry.  These machines are taking the place of hand polishing workers.  They are capable of mostly finishing the product without any worker touching it.  Of course there still is finishing work that a hand fabricator must do before the product goes out the door.  A new development in the industry is the sawjet.  This machine has software to layout the raw material and can be programmed to cut it.  This will also speed up production by allowing the fabricator have the sawjet cut the raw material while they are able to program the machine to cut the next project. The sawjet uses a combination of a waterjet, to cut out corners, and a regular saw to cut straight lengths on the material. This machine also helps the fabricator save 35% his material.  These machines are a costly investment to any company with the CADCAM machine pricing around $265,000, and the sawjet pricing around $365,000.  With more production and the need for less workers the prices machines can potentially pay for themselves, in a good economic environment.

Technology in the industry between wholesalers and fabricators is moving rather slowly.  With a natural raw material every piece or slab is unique.  I do believe that the wholesalers need to make their inventory more available, through the use of technology, for the fabricator.  This allows the fabricator the ability to show a slab of material to a customer without having to go to the wholesaler and physically see it.  Some wholesalers have started to do this but the quality of the representation of the material is poor.  I think new developments are necessary to be able to better service the customer.

I believe the future of the stone industry will focus more on making the process of design and material selection easier for the customer.  Software, such as the Slabsmith, will become more the norm and will allow for a smoother process.  With new and changing material being quarried out of the ground everyday the slabs are constantly changing.  So being able to keep up with all of the new material that comes to market will be essential to everyone in the process.  Each fabricator will have to jockey for position with new technology because, with all new technology, there will be kinks to be worked out.  Adapting new technology to the stone industry has historically been hard and will continue to because of the uniqueness of each piece.  But with every expanding industry the things are bound to happen.

This post is more interesting than my first post.

This post is more interesting than my first post.

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