#electronics cooling

[gpstudios]

Celebrating National Thermal Engineering Day: Honoring the Innovators of Heat and Energy

Happy National Thermal Engineering Day! 🔥🔧 Celebrate the vital contributions of thermal engineers who manage heat and energy across industries. Learn, appreciate, and honor these essential professionals. #ThermalEngineeringDay

Introduction Happy National Thermal Engineering Day! 🔥🔧 Celebrated annually on July 24th, this day is dedicated to recognizing the vital contributions of thermal engineers who work tirelessly to manage heat and energy across various industries. From HVAC systems and power plants to electronics and transportation, thermal engineering plays a crucial role in improving efficiency, safety, and…

[reasonsforhope]

"Clothing tags, travel cards, hotel room key cards, parcel labels … a whole host of components in supply chains of everything from cars to clothes. What do they have in common? RFID tags.  

Every RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag contains a microchip and a tiny metal strip of an antenna. A cool 18bn of these are made – and disposed of – each year. And with demands for product traceability increasing, ironically in part because of concerns for the social and environmental health of the supply chain, that’s set to soar. 

And guess where most of these tags end up? Yup, landfill – adding to the burgeoning volumes of e-waste polluting our soils, rivers and skies. It’s a sorry tale, but it’s one in which two young graduates of Imperial College London and Royal College of Art are putting a great big green twist. Under the name of PulpaTronics, Chloe So and Barna Soma Biro reckon they’ve hit on a beguilingly simple sounding solution: make the tags out of paper. No plastic, no chips, no metal strips. Just paper, pure and … simple … ? Well, not quite, as we shall see. 

The apparent simplicity is achieved by some pretty cutting-edge technical innovation, aimed at stripping away both the metal antennae and the chips. If you can get rid of those, as Biro explains, you solve the e-waste problem at a stroke. But getting rid of things isn’t the typical approach to technical solutions, he adds. “I read a paper in Nature that set out how humans have a bias for solving problems through addition – by adding something new, rather than removing complexity, even if that’s the best approach.”   

And adding stuff to a world already stuffed, as it were, can create more problems than it solves. “So that became one of the guiding principles of PulpaTronics”, he says: stripping things down “to the bare minimum, where they are still functional, but have as low an environmental impact as possible”.  

...how did they achieve this magical simplification? The answer lies in lasers: these turn the paper into a conductive material, Biro explains, printing a pattern on the surface that can be ‘read’ by a scanner, rather like a QR code. It sounds like frontier technology, but it works, and PulpaTronics have patents pending to protect it. 

The resulting tag comes in two forms: in one, there is still a microchip, so that it can be read by existing scanners of the sort common within retailers, for example. The more advanced version does away with the chip altogether. This will need a different kind of scanner, currently in development, which PulpaTronics envisages issuing licences for others to manufacture. 

Crucially, the cost of both versions is significantly cheaper than existing RFID kit – making this a highly viable proposition. Then there are the carbon savings: up to 70% for the chipless version – so a no-brainer from a sustainability viewpoint too. All the same, industry interest was slow to start with but when PulpaTronics won a coveted Dezeen magazine award in late 2023, it snowballed, says So. Big brands such as UPS, DHL, Marks & Spencer and Decathlon came calling. “We were just bombarded.” Brands were fascinated by the innovation, she says, but even more by the price point, “because, like any business, they knew that green products can’t come with a premium”."

-via Positive.News, April 29, 2024

--

Note: I know it's still in the very early stages, but this is such a relief to see in the context of the environmental and human rights catastrophes associated with lithium mining and mining for rare earth metals, and the way that EVs and other green infrastructure are massively increasing the demand for those materials.

I'll take a future with paper-based, more humane alternatives for sure! Fingers crossed this keeps developing and develops well (and quickly).

[nyaa]

マジックフィールド / Magic Field

[fabio-27125]

This is my (kinda new 😂) Walkman… And yes: this time I can really call it Walkman, cause this one actually is a Sony!

It‘s a WM 32 from somewhen 1986 and 89, so it‘s the most basic model by Sony, like no Radio, no Auto-Reverse or any other funny extras. But — that‘s still great: cause everything it doesn’t have…. can‘t break, and come on — it just looks great.

It also came with a belt-clip so I can actually wear it as part of my outfit, I’m literally so excited 🤣😁😁

[larabar]

"so, that was fun"

[faggotfungus]

Factory Fan Bass │ 工場扇風機ベース by ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS!

[wackachewbacca]

The historian in me is thinking about how tumblr blog posts might be used as first person sources/accounts for the political decline of the UK/Scottish Independence

There are going to be academic papers addressing the significance of the Star Trek meme and I hope I get to write one of them

[15tarlit5kyline]

[numenrecords]

[lance-thunder-reporting-live]

Hey my guy, I really need to know if the Fentons are driving today? It’s like really important do you know?

NO, SUFFER!

[vintage-tigre]

The legendary Doris Norton, is a pioneer of electronic music and one of Italy's first female producers. In the early 80s Doris collaborated with brands like Apple, IBM and Roland that sponsored her exploration of the bridges between art and technology, music and computers. Her fearless work continues to inspire new generations.

[puppetmaster13u]

Slowly rotating Oracle in the Meat Marionette Au...

Au is a combo of mine & @phoenixcatch7 so go check out their Possessed Doll Au

[daydreamerdrew]

Whiz Comics (1940) #101, cover dated September 1948

[outtawack]

Fu's Repair Shop ♡

Edmonton, AB

[bogkeep]

i am happy with who i am but i am also deeply envious of my eight year old younger brother, who's always had a skill and interest in a thing that's very easy to make a career out of, so he just went straight into the specialized schools straight into a job... and i've kept flopping around like a fish on land with no idea what i'm going to do this whole time. maybe i'm just bitter that i HAVE a skill i'm passionate about and really good at, but there's basically no infrastructure for turning it into a decent, stable job. sighs

[vizreef]

A weird blend of old & new tech on this drawbar controller: Hammond XMc-1 // Digital Organ Expander Module (1997)