ASME TechCast

As vice president at HearstLab Lisa Burton O’Toole, evaluates and invests in women-led startups and strongly believes that we need diverse teams working on technical problems. Burton is passionate about promoting entrepreneurship among technically minded women. In this episode of ASME TechCast, Burton discusses why mentoring is valuable for women and shares advice on how to find a mentor. In 2020, Burton received ASME’s Kate Gleason Award honoring women entrepreneurs who make a significant...

Additive manufacturing has long been a tool used by the aerospace industry to manufacture parts. The latest advancements within AM are now shifting production toward end-use parts. There are still many challenges including quality, productivity, repeatability, and materials availability. Hauke Schultz, the Additive Manufacturing Roadmap leader at Airbus, is building a vision and roadmap to enhance AM technologies and applications within its three business units: Airbus Commercial,...

One of the best places to build railways and highways is underground, away from people on the surface. But tunneling is a costly process that involves small armies of workers and giant tunnel boring machines. But a contractor working on a subway project in Kuala Lumpur has devised a system for self-driving tunneling that could revolutionize the industry. Mechanical Engineering magazine editor in chief Jeffrey Winters asked senior editor John Kosowatz to explain how the system works....

Digital manufacturing is an ever-growing, expanding world that is leaving the world of design and permeating into the world of manufacturing. Fictiv’s platform introduces a digital ecosystem that directly connects designers and makers with manufacturing facilities, eliminating the traditional back and forth of production quotes, lengthy design iterations, and long lead times. In the last seven years, Fictiv has manufactured over 12 million parts for some of the world’s most innovative...

As Joe Biden becomes the 46th President of the United States, his administration promises big changes in policies affecting science, energy, environment, trade, and more. He will have to work with the new 117th Congress, which also brings new faces as the Democrats take control of the Senate by the slimmest of margins. The House of Representatives continues to be led by Democrats but their majority has been greatly reduced. Paul Fakes, ASME's senior manager of government relations, talks...

Artificial intelligence has seen a rapid implementation in several industries. When talking about AI in automotive engineering, the first thought that comes to mind is autonomous vehicles. What role do mechanical engineers play in this intersection of AI and autonomy and what are the opportunities for them? What skills will become increasingly valued in automotive companies with the advancement of AI? Dragos Maciuca, executive technical director at Ford’s Research and Innovation Center,...

The editors of Mechanical Engineering magazine tried something different this year with the annual Emerging Technology Awards. Listen as editor in chief Jeffrey Winters talks with editors John Kosowatz and Carlos González about five innovations that are taking on COVID-19.

The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s new report shows offshore wind generation growing in the U.S. and globally. Turbines are getting larger and developers want to site them in ever deeper water. Design of floating foundations has advanced to where deepwater sites are feasible, while fixed foundations may prove more economical in deeper water. NREL’s Walt Musial, principal engineer and offshore wind lead, talks about the offshore market and what can be expected...

Technology writer Jean Thilmany has followed software-enabled engineering for decades. In this episode of ASME TechCast, Thilmany talks with Jeffrey Winters, editor in chief of Mechanical Engineering magazine, about how digital engineering is expanding into the manufacturing sector.

The CEO of Protolabs, Vicki Holt, has almost 40 years of experience in world-class manufacturing companies in various executive roles. In this episode of ASME TechCast, she provides insights into the digital trends shaping manufacturing and how companies can prepare the current and future workforce for this rapid transition accelerated by the pandemic.

Lockheed Martin designed and built the new OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft. The spacecraft will collect samples from the asteroid Bennu which may provide insight into our solar system’s early formation. To help construct the spacecraft, Lockheed Martin Space utilized the power of the digital twin. Lockheed’s journey with the digital twin can serve as an example of how other organizations can adopt the digital twin...

The term "fluid power" was adopted more than sixty years ago to describe hydraulic and pneumatic systems for transmitting power. Often, engineers learn about mechanical and electric power transmission as part of their formal education. Unfortunately, most engineering schools in North America do not fully cover the capabilities and strengths of fluid power. Fluid power is a versatile method of transmitting power, capable of moving satellite dishes and heavy construction equipment, and...

A collaboration between Cornell and Penn Engineering has resulted in the first microscopic robots that incorporate semiconductor components, allowing them to be controlled—and made to walk—with standard electronic signals. In future, these microbots could be injected into human blood for medical treatments. In this podcast, Itai Cohen, professor of physics, who is leading the research at Cornell, discusses the cross-disciplinary research that led to this breakthrough.

Chinese factories produce a huge chunk of the world’s manufactured goods. Recently, global companies have begun to reconsider their dependence on China. Some have looked at bringing critical manufacturing to the United States, while others have set up factories in Vietnam and Mexico. Mechanical Engineering magazine editor in chief Jeffrey Winters asked senior editor John Kosowatz to explain the issues and whether it was possible for multinational firms to leave the China market.

NASA recently recognized Robo-Glove, a soft robotic exoskeleton for the hand, as its commercial invention of the year. Its original application was meant to assist astronauts by making it easier to perform simple tasks that become more cumbersome in space. Its potential, however, is beginning to be realized in manufacturing and health care. General Motors co-developed the system, now being commercially produced as IronHand by Sweden’s Bioservo. In this episode, Stephen Krajcarski, GM’s...

Chad Huyser is the regional director and North America president of Lely International. Lely was founded in the Netherlands and, for over the last 70 years, has introduced new mechanized methods to help eliminate redundant processes or labor requirements on the farm, particularly in dairy farming. Lely’s latest Astronaut-5 is a milking unit that uses automation and artificial intelligence for cows to feed and milk themselves. Huyser shares his thoughts on automation in farming today, how...

The Chief Executive Officer at Girl Scouts of the USA, Sylvia Acevedo, is a woman engineer, rocket scientist, author, entrepreneur, and more. Since becoming the CEO, she has led the organization’s largest rollout of 125 new Girl Scout badges that include 42 new STEM badges such as cybersecurity, robotics, design thinking, coding, data analytics, and space science. In this episode of ASME TechCast, Acevedo shares her passion for all things engineering and talks about the long-term benefits of...

Metal pipes have dominated the pressure piping market for decades. Today, however, innovations in material science have resulted in companies considering plastic pipes that can support high pressures and temperatures. Many companies have started to shift from metal to plastic for several high-pressure applications across a range of industries. In this podcast, Charles Henley, chief engineer, piping and material applications, Kiewit, talks about ASME’s new standard that could help simplify...

Lisa Seacat DeLuca is a Distinguished Engineer and the director of IBM Watson’s Internet of Things division and one of their most prolific inventors, with more than 500 patents to her name. In this episode, she discusses the future of IBM’s IoT goals, how STEM is vital to the future of engineering, and how her works in children’s literature were inspired by her want to provide STEM awareness to her children.

For decades, utilities have been concerned with reliability, which is a measure of how well the grid can avoid short-term blackouts. But resilience goes deeper and covers multiple, intersecting factors. It’s not just preparing to recover from devastating storms, but also taking steps to avoid a pandemic from incapacitating utility control rooms. To learn more about what companies are doing to build a grid that can bounce back quickly from multiple, unexpected challenges, ASME’s Carlos...