Think Like An Engineer: Linear Guide Technologies

Is your brain in motion? Today is the first Monday of February, so let us help jump start your brain and get those wheels turning with one of our "Think Like an Engineer" game posts.

In this week's edition, we're featuring a linear guide technology matching game — great for educators to share in the classroom, FIRST robotics students, and anyone else looking to brush up on all things related to linear motion.

In today's game, we're asking you to match up the following terms with the appropriate images: cam follower, plain bearing, profile rail, and profile guide wheel.

[ DOWNLOAD ] the game and get started — good luck! You can check out other fun games like word search and crosswords for engineers on our website.

"Manufacturing Grows Our Economy" #MotionMonday

MANUFACTURING GROWTH — Since the early 2000s, California has seen a steady decline in manufacturing jobs — a loss of 79,000 between 2003 and 2007 alone, according to the California Manufacturing and Technology Association. Could heavy regulations be to blame? A report paid for by CMTA and released by the Milken Institute concludes exactly that, saying California's stringent rules force manufacturers to set up shop elsewhere.

Click here for the full image

During that same 2003-2007 time span when California shed massive amounts of manufacturing jobs, seven comparable states added some 62,000, the report continues. So how can California make itself more supportive of the industry that pays its workers an average annual salary of $66,000?

Part of what makes manufacturing in this state difficult is the quick changeover of labor laws, which makes it tough for companies to plan, the report says. Also, the fact that companies need approval from a complicated web of jurisdictions, which slows progress and could make a plan OK'd on the state level canceled by regional rules. Tax increases, investment losses and diminished credits and incentives add to the damage, the institute maintains.

If California had kept as many manufacturing jobs as it had in 2000, it would have seen 1.6 million more jobs and experienced $101 billion more in output by 2007, according to the report. That would translate into $75 billion more in wages than experienced in '07 and $5 billion more in income tax revenue. Obviously, the jobs exodus is nothing to sneeze at, and so the question remains: How to stop it?

STOPPING THE JOB DRAIN — Thankfully for the industry all about making things, some federal initiatives are in the works that aim to promote manufacturing across the nation. California manufacturing advocates are hoping it gives the Golden State an extra push to invest in its own companies.

President Obama unveiled a blueprint to promote domestic manufacturing and encourage companies to "insource" in lieu of "outsource".

• First, the plan proposes removing tax deductions for outsourcing and add incentives to hire here at home. 
• The incentive for insourcing would be targeted at companies that create jobs in the U.S. and the incentive would double for companies involved in advanced manufacturing.
• Establish a tax credit for companies to invest in communities hit hard by the recession and job loss.
• Provide temporary tax credits to green tech companies.
• Reauthorize the right to expense any investment in plants and equipment.
• Close loopholes that reward companies for investing abroad.

And there's more, but we'd like to turn the topic back to you. As a stakeholder in the manufacturing community, what's your assessment of the Milken report? What do you think of the presidential blueprint to support manufacturing as a nation? Do you think California can revive and sustain a thriving manufacturing sector by bringing jobs back home? Tell us in the comment box!

#MotionMonday: Gearing Up For the FIRST Robotics Kick-Off

STEM SUPPORTERS — As strong supporters of STEM initiatives, we are always looking for opportunities where we can encourage our local science, technology, engineering and math students to do great things. One of the many ways we reach out to students is through FIRST, an annual robotics competition founded by Dean Kamen. During the 2013 program we are sponsoring three high school teams as Diamond Suppliers to the kit of parts — The Vacaville Robodogs, the Sacramento Fembots and the Brentwood Patriots.

Look for us in the 2013 program catalog

READY TO RUMBLE? — These teams will take part in a national contest that pits robots they design and build against those of other teams. FIRST robotics, the nonprofit organization that facilitates the months-long competition, aims to promote STEM education and foster future engineers and scientists by making STEM education fun and practical. We contribute guided motion components, financial aid and publicity to support some of our local teams.

This year's FRC kick-off takes place on Saturday January 5, 2013. We'll be covering the event at San Jose State University, where hundreds of students will compete in what marks the start of the design and build season. At the kick-off event students will, "compare notes, get ideas, make friends, find mentoring teams, learn the game, pick up the Kit of Parts and get geared up for the exciting competition seasons." (Credit: USFIRST.org).

VARSITY SPORT FOR THE MIND — The FRC season culminates in an intense competitive event that draws teams from all over the world to compete in large arenas in a competition that requires students' robots to achieve complex tasks. What makes the competition so fierce is that FIRST culls the best and brightest young minds to compete, and then there are the variables on game day: Will the battery run out? Will the machine malfunction? How to tackle those problems on game day while the clock keeps ticking?

The program teaches kids to think on their feet and dream up innovative solutions to immediate problems. That ingenuity lies at the heart of invention and engineering, it provides the foundation for a robust manufacturing sector because it fuels innovation. That's the spirit we aim to foster here. And that's why we support FIRST.

#MotionMonday: Is Manufacturing Dead? Far From It, NAM Says

AN INDUSTRY RENAISSANCE – Companies who make things are what drives a country's economy. It's production that generates jobs and galvanizes the economy so that policymakers can drive down the national debt. Since so much rests on the fate of manufacturing in the United States, lots of ink has been spilled and airtime spent on the subject this year. NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams ran a special earlier this month that addressed what it called a manufacturing renaissance in domestic manufacturing.

"The United States may have shifted to a postindustrial economy," the report begins, "but that does not mean the manufacturing sector is dead. Far from it."

A definite revival is underway, and although we need it, do we have the skilled workforce to take this on?

"From coast to coast, manufacturers are making more products, but with fewer people, as the sector makes an improbable rebound right after a tough recession."

MANUFACTURING HOPE FOR THE FUTURE – The National Association of Manufacturers, NAM, is very passionate about this topic. Chairwoman Mary Andringa also appeared on William's show to talk about the bright future of our industry sector.

"I think it's a time of great opportunity in manufacturing," she tells Williams before enumerating some reasons why. She points out:

• The U.S. output $4.8 trillion of manufactured goods in 2010, up from $4.1 trillion in 2000
• That growth came despite the nation going through two recessions in a decade
• The U.S. remains in the lead by producing 21 percent of the world's manufactured goods, followed by China and Japan

Manufacturing also remains a bright spot in our economic recovery," NAM writes on a recent blog post, "fighting against unprecedented headwinds to hire skilled workers and invest in high tech facilities."

[ NAM published a guide to this manufacturing renaissance here, FREE to download! ]

"There's a renaissance going on," Andringa says.

CHANGES AHEAD – The story reports that it's obvious manufacturing has changed, evolving to become more high-tech. It's grown up in a lot of ways, NAM says, reworking itself to become cleaner, more efficient, more in line with principles of lean manufacturing. And increasingly, it's become a sector on which the public pins a lot of potential, a lot of hope for a better tomorrow.

Veterans Close the Manufacturing Skills Gap #MotionMonday

FIGHTING FOR JOBS — The national conversation about manufacturing always circles back to the skills gap, the disparity between job opportunities in the industry and the number of qualified workers to staff these openings. We hear a lot in the news about efforts being made to interest our future workforce in science, technology, engineering and math careers, so the gap doesn't grow any wider. But what about right now? What can we do in the present to staff our manufacturing workforce? Is there an untapped market of potential employees we're overlooking?

Yes: U.S. military veterans. And a handful of major corporations have made a concerted effort to recruit them into high-paying jobs, accomplishing the twofold aim of beefing up the manufacturing workforce and providing ex-military men and women with great job opportunities. On the tail-end of this Veterans Day weekend, we think it's a fitting time to spotlight that effort.

FROM WAR TO WORK — The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) nonprofit educational branch, the Manufacturing Institute, is spearheading the effort to match up manufacturers with a skilled veteran workforce, according to USA Today. The four companies to so far join in that effort include utility giant General Electric, aluminum makers Alcoa and defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which together plan to hire 15,000 veterans. The goal is to bump that number up to 100,000 if they enlist more support from other companies, the article says.

"The timing is perfect to ... marry those two things together," GE's program manager of veteran initiatives Kris Urbauer tells USA Today. "The opportunity to grow manufacturing in the U.S., with this great talent pool kind of leading the charge, is, I think, the perfect confluence."

The four companies that dove in first with this initiative will match military skills with civilian manufacturing work, train veterans and share ideas about how to best recruit and keep ex-military employees, NAM says.

About 600,000 manufacturing positions in the country remain understaffed  according to NAM. And the typical manufacturing worker's age has shifted up to 50, Mike Haynie, head of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracus, tells USA Today.

Will Crowdsourcing Expedite the Manufacturing Process? #MotionMonday

WORKING TOGETHER — In the 19th Century, Professor James Murray struck up a literary project that required tens of thousands of volunteers to help him complete. His mailbox got bombarded with six million letters over the next several years from strangers documenting the definitions and origins of virtually every English word. It took seven decades to finish the first Oxford English Dictionary, the first crowdsourced collection of knowledge in known history.

Since that first manifestation of crowdsourcing, years before the term was coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, companies, government agencies and other entities have reverted to crowdsourcing to gather new ideas.

MANUFACTURING CHANGE — Could the crowdsourcing model fast-forward innovation in the manufacturing sector? The Pentagon thinks so. Earlier this year, the agency responsible for military funding created a crowdsourcing effort called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which aims to slash the design-to-production cycle by two to four years through offering prize incentives for design ideas, according to a New York Times article published in April. Since researching, developing and building U.S. military assets is a famously time-consuming and pricey ordeal, it normally takes anywhere from a decade or two to manufacture a new tank, the article says.

The defense research project will use a software platform called VehicleFORGE, a portal for the exchange of ideas. The online format makes sense, considering that crowdsourcing is nothing new to the software industry. Crowdsourcing is what spawned programs like Linux and Apache.

What's unique about this recent military effort to crowdsource vehicle design is how well it fits into other fields of manufacturing. An M.I.T. professor explains to the New York Times:

Teaming up with academic institutions could expand crowdsourcing possibilities even more. How much R&D time do you think a submission like that would save the pentagon? Or even a private company? Think of how much more can be accomplished if many more minds could tackle a project together.

"Sometimes the best and brightest ideas come from the most unlikely or unheralded sources," Associate Editor Mike Schmidt wrote for Manufacturing.net a couple months ago.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?  —  How could the practice of crowdsourcing change manufacturing? The good and the bad? Some commentators tout the practice as the "Holy Grail" of innovation, but what are some of the risks? Do the risks outweigh the benefits of diversifying your company's talent pool?

We Jet to the Chrysler HQ and a Motion Industries Vendor Expo

Welcome to yet another #MotionMonday, our last before it's officially autumn, if you can believe it! We're in the full swing of things, having attended last week a networking event in Seattle for woman-owned businesses and now we're looking at a new week with two events in the Midwest this time. We also just got back from IWF in August and now we're gearing up for Pack Expo in October.

On the itinerary this month? The 13th Annual Matchmaker event hosted by Chrysler Group LLC followed by a Motion Industries Vendor Expo.

Credit: Chrysler

As members of the Astra Women's Business Alliance, it's been a great pleasure networking with many corporate supplier diversity types. Through Astra there are many great matchmaker events, and we look forward to the Chrysler event which takes place Wednesday in Chicago.

On Thursday, we'll be at a Motion Industry hosted event in the Detroit area where we will talk with distributors as well as other industry reps looking for guided motion components. If you happen to be attending this event, too, we suggest you check out Motion's website. You can also download an app to help you navigate through the trade show. For more info on the fair, click here.

[ For more info on upcoming events/trade shows we're attending, click here ]

#MotionMonday Scenes From the Manufacturing Floor: Metal Bits, Wood Chips and Plastic Shavings

Metal, cement, wood, plastic, glass — it's all extremely abrasive when you grind it up. We know these harsh application environments well! Some of our signature linear guide products are based on our DualVee Motion Technology because many of our customers operate machines in these types of rough conditions. What makes DualVee different? The 90-degree vee-edge creates a natural sweeping action so you've got unstoppable motion — that means a lot less downtime.

[ HOW? ]

Since the wheel's inner diameter travels at a lesser velocity than the outer, contaminants get naturally swept out and away. Basically, the velocity gradient makes a continuous sweeping motion, which keeps those tracks clean and free of gunk.

For this week's #MotionMonday post, we ventured out to our own manufacturing floor here at our San Francisco Bay Area facility to find photographic examples of the types of debris DualVee's famously known to kick to the curb. We found quite a few examples, like metal chips, plastic shavings, sawdust and wood debris ... but the list goes on. We even ran into Alex at the packaging station, where he assembles custom wood crates for shipment, and he gave us a quick tour of his workstation speckled with all kinds of wood shavings. No matter how much wood he saws up for crates, those DualVee wheels moving back and fourth on the saw never jam up.

We posted the following photos on our Instagram feed, which you can find on your mobile device. Just look for us under the handle @bishopwisecarver to see these instasnaps as we post them in real-time. Any ideas for the next edition of Motion Monday? We'd love to hear your ideas!

How Do We Revitalize California's Workforce?

Better late than never! Here's to a Tuesday edition of Motion Monday...

ON THE AIR If you're anywhere with a set of speakers, a computer, cell phone or radio at 6:20 a.m. (PST) Friday, tune in to KCBS 740 AM or 106.9 FM to hear an interview with Bishop-Wisecarver President Pamela Kan, who's scheduled to discuss the state of California's job force and her recent appointment to the state's Workforce Investment Board. Exciting stuff!

The California Workforce Investment Board was founded in 1998 to advise the governor in workforce policy and development. We were happy to hear last week that Gov. Jerry Brown handpicked  Kan to this year's advisory board along with 29 other private sector members.

The board's role is seen as very important, especially since California struggles with a 10.7 percent unemployment rate and even higher rate of underemployed residents. Kan's experience in the manufacturing sector will help in advising Brown on new workforce development initiatives, the board says.

Some of the group's goals this years, according to its website, include: 

• Grow industry sectors with the highest potential for good jobs
• Create career pathways for the people who need it most
• Combine resources from multiple partners

Those goals are outlined in a document called the Strategic Workforce Investment Plan, which spells out the five-year vision for the California economy. The strategy articulates a goal of blending several education, training and employment funding sources. The goal comes from much discussion, some of which was facilitated through several regional meetings held earlier this year in various parts of the state.

If you'd like to learn more, you can see all the documents and meeting minutes from the board's activities on the Regional Focus Group page on the CWIB website.

[ CLICK HERE to view our earlier announcement of the radio interview ]

Linear Motion, Rotary Guides and Why We'll be at IWF Atlanta: Our Motion Monday Update

WORKING THE WOODWORKING SHOW Happy #MotionMonday, everyone! As we type this, a bunch of Bishop-Wisecarver people are packing their bags and hopping on planes to jet off to Georgia, where from Tuesday through Saturday this week we'll exhibit at the largest woodworking trade show in North America: The International Woodworking Fair in Atlanta.

More than 11,000 people will join us to walk the floor of the Georgia World Conference Center to peruse the latest wood processing technologies, including state-of-the-art CNC machinery, robots, guided motion components and systems and many others.

WHY WE'RE GOING Our many durable products, including DualVee Motion Technology, which has countless uses in the woodworking and wood processing field. The 90-degree velocity gradient of the DualVee guide wheel brush away virtually any type of debris, particularly those generated in an industry like woodworking, where machines are exposed to metal chips, wood chips, sawdust, glass dust and any number of other contaminants.

[ Want to learn more about our capabilities in the woodworking industry? Click here ]

STOP BY, SAY 'HI' As we mentioned, a bunch of us will attend this show — engineers, sales reps, marketing folks and even BWC President Pamela Kan. We'll keep booth #4412 staffed with experts to answer your linear and rotary motion-related questions and brainstorm solutions for your engineering challenges.

We'll "walk" the virtual show floor, too, via Twitter and other social media channels. Find us at @BWCnews on Twitter, on Facebook or right here on our company blog, where we'll post updates throughout the week. Consider us one of your IWF trade show correspondents!

[ Our Twitter tags: #IWFatlanta #IWF2012 #woodworking #MFG and #manufacturing ]

[ To see some of our past IWF Atlanta-related coverage, click here ]

WIN A PRIZE Of course, there's some immediate reward for linking up with us while you're there! All you have to do is opt in for our monthly newsletter to join our daily raffle for a chance to win a $50 gift card to Amazon.com!

Motion Monday: Linear Slide and Rotary Guides on Instagram

When you see the same things day in and day out, it's easy to sort of tune out your surroundings. We feel it's important to sometimes stop and take in the sights, the details of your little spot in the universe, the things you normally just walk right by. Maybe take a new route to work or use the back door to view sights and greet people you may not have seen in a while.

That's part of the reason we're excited to be on Instagram — a mobile app that allows us to share snapshots of our linear motion manufacturing floor with neat retro filters. It gives us a fresh look at some of the things we see every day around the manufacturing floor here. Things like an old workbench, a dusty DualVee linear guide wheel (because they're so good in dirty environments, of course) or a close-up of bundled up chains.

Are you on Instagram? Find us under the username "bishopwisecarver" — And look for our posts under the following hashtags: #MotionMonday #MFG #engineering #manufacturing and #machineshop, to name just a few. Every once in a while, we'll repost a snapshot of YOURS on our blog if it's labeled with one of the above tags, so get your camera's ready! We'd love to get a glimpse of your workplace, whether it's an office or a machine shop. Here's to seeing the world through a new lens!

This week's shots (from top left to right then bottom left to right) show a vintage workbench, some debris-laden DualVee double row angular contact ball bearings, a couple chains stashed away, and a heap of steel rollers and spare track bits.

Five Forums for Engineers — Motion Monday

If the first day of the work week were riding on the wheel plate of a linear actuator, what's your guess on the actuation type? Monday sneaks up so quickly and quietly no matter the weekend debris! But just as the day arrives so quickly, it zips away in a flash.

How do you get up to speed every Monday? Among many online resources, we like forums! Do you have a favorite? Let's share — we'll go first! Here's five our favorites:

1. Engineering.com ASK@ — for a little bit of everything (chemical/material engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil/structural engineering)
2. CNCZone.com — great dialogue for DIY CNC machinists
3. Eng-Tips.com — for almost any engineer in any field
4. PracticalMachinist.com — the largest manufacturing technology forum on the web
5. EngineeringExchange.com — very social media friendly conversations

Motion Monday: Unwind with Your Favorite Linear Guide Manufacturer

 

The day is almost over here on the West Coast, and we're thinking it's time for a little fun! With all the trade show planning for IWF in August and Pack Expo in October, our minds are feeling a bit mixed up — wait, how about a word scramble? Unwind with us by tackling these five word challenges, and the first five people  to send us the answers via email to jenniferw@bwc.com will win some BWC swag. Good luck!

1. narile otimno
2. ytaorr sdiueg
3. otnipailpac neeghllca
4. tmhccnisoaer
5. hispbo rrveeacswi 

Our Second Year as a Certified Woman-Owned Business

SECOND CERTIFICATION In June, Bishop-Wisecarver celebrated another milestone by becoming a certified woman-owned business for the second year running. Pamela Kan, the company's president, first achieved the certification last year from the Women's Business Enterprise National Council.

The manufacturer of linear and rotary guided motion technologies earned its first WBENC certification in 2011. Bishop-Wisecarver President Pamela Kan is the second-generation family member at the helm of the Bay Area-based business — her father Bud Wisecarver opened his first machine shop more than 60 years ago and is the original inventor DualVee Motion Technology® (guide wheels and track).

“Being WBENC certified gives us a leg up in the marketplace because the organization is one of the leading advocates for and authorities on woman-owned businesses as suppliers to corporations,” Kan told us.

Bishop-Wisecarver President Pamela Kan

A WOMAN'S WORLD Kan attended the organization’s June National Conference and Business Fair in Orlando, FL, where she networked with other WBENC members. The network of woman-owned businesses was so impressive, that Kan said she plans to go to the next major WBENC event as a vendor — and to next year’s national conference as well.

Our next WBENC event, however, comes a lot sooner than that! We'll be exhibiting at the Sept. 13 Astra's Matchmaker & Expo in Seattle, WA, to team up with other woman-owner business entities and explore more about what WBENC has to offer and where we fit in as a woman-owned manufacturer — a rarity in the industry.

THE CHALLENGE To mix it up a little, we created a jigsaw for you to finish. Once you do, let us know and we'll send you some free BWC swag for your efforts! Got a question? Email us at jenniferw@bwc.com. We're here to help! View the [ PUZZLE HERE ] Pst! Works with the most updated version of JAVA.

Motion Monday: Sparks Fly in This Welding Application

We're still riding high on the excitement of Independence Day, with all its explosions in the sky and other festive firecrackers. To keep the sparks flying, we'll make this week's #MotionMonday challenge fiery, too, but spotlighting an welding application that's set in motion with our linear bearings and matching track.

CHALLENGE Welding heads on most machines need to be easily removed to service and maintain them. In this specific case, the linear motion parts on this machine needed to be strong enough to support loads of up to 150 pounds. They needed to travel at about a quarter-inch per second and withstand an extremely harsh environment contaminated by alloy steel weld splatter.

APPLICATION The customer who used our linear bearings and track designs and builds special machines that get used in refurbishing boilers in power generation, chemical, pulp and paper mills. These machines are placed inside large boilers, which lay down rows of weld bead onto the boiler wall, building up the wall thickness. They are various applications for rack and gear driven weld torches with wire feeders.

SOLUTION DualVee Linear Guide Wheels allowed for quick removal and will last much longer than comparable Bishop-Wisecarver’s stainless steel version was used for enhanced corrosion resistance.

PRODUCTS USED This manufacturer chose our stainless steel DualVee wheels with matching track to guide the welding heads. DualVees come in six sizes and get mounted with our own journals and bushings.

YOUR CHALLENGE From that little application spotlight, we've picked up some keywords and turned them into a word search. The first handful of people to complete it correctly and send the answers back to us get some free BWC swag. Need an answer key? Email us at jenniferw@bwc.com. Have fun!

[ Click here to download the word search ]

Motion's the Best Medicine: Linear Bearings, Guides and Slides in the Medical Device Industry

MOVING MEDICAL RESEARCH Our linear and rotary motion control products move things from one point to another — a simple task. Yet, you'll find them in some of the most complex and cutting-edge medical devices in the industry. Here are a few ways some engineers and researchers used our products ...

VASCULAR GRAFTING A design engineer faced the challenge of building a linear actuator setup that could wind vascular grafting material within extremely precise specifications. Exactness was important here because the material had to last and function after surgery. Our linear guide technology fit this bill.

STAINING Our linear guides were needed to support the parallel workflow processing of walk-away lab analysis automation to improve lab efficiency and staining quality. LoPro linear actuators made the machine in this application faster and more efficient.

VERTICAL MOTION A contract manufacturer of custom high-value medical carts, consoles and tables needed our vertically mounted linear guides to easily raise and lower a support shelf on a card designed for a portable device. The solution needed to be cost-efficient and provide smoother operation and stability when the cart was in the fully raised position.

THE CHALLENGE And now to test your reading retention! Every week we have a #MotionMonday challenge and this one tests your word search skills. Still need some help? Email us at jenniferw@bwc.com for an answer key. All the best!

[ Click here to download this week's puzzle for a chance to win a prize! ]

Motion Monday: This Double Acting Profile Driven Unit is a Linear Guide Secret Weapon

Click on the image to see a larger view

THE LOWDOWN This linear actuator is one of our best kept secrets... the [ HepcoMotion DAPDU2 ] is a double-acting profile driven unit that's built on a robust aluminum beam with two or more carriages running along the inside. The carriages use the same Herculane wheels you'll find in the popular Hepco PDU2 unit, and provide great load capacity and durability while running quietly. The underside of the profile was designed open, so no debris accumulates and jams it up. A strong, accurate toothed belt drives the carriages symmetrically. These units work well with HepcoMotion [ MCS framework ] components as well as with our other drive products, like the [ PDU2 ].

APPLICATION EXAMPLE The DAPDU2 is an ideal linear guide for the doors of an automatic spray booth. In this example, the unit has a total of four carriages — two moving right and the other two left. They fit each carriage with an angled plate and suspended a door in-between each set of carriages. The application also utilized some HepcoMotion track rollers (which you can learn more about in our GV3 catalog) that were fixed to the bottom of each door to control movement away from the wall. Last but not least, a DC motor was used to move the DAPDU2 unit by a right-angled planetary gearbox, which you can find in our PDU2 literature.

THE #MOTIONMONDAY CHALLENGE Ready to put that new-found knowledge to the test? Just [ download ] our word search, complete it and send in your answers to jenniferw@bwc.com for your chance to win a cool prize! Good luck!

Motion Monday: Radial Wheels, Our Newest Product

READY, SET, LAUNCH! Today's a big day for us here at Bishop-Wisecarver — we just welcomed the newest addition to the MadeWell product line, the Radial Wheel®, a vee-edge linear bearing was designed to support applications with specified radial loading conditions.

These radial wheels are all about simplicity, about streamlining the purpose of a component and making it more economical at the same time. When a machine supports the center of a moving mass closer to the heart of the guide wheel, the load weight is mostly radial. There's basically no need for much of an axial load capacity. So, to buy a wheel with equal axial and radial load capacities in cases like that would be wasteful. 

A MORE SPECIFIC PURPOSE That narrower focus of this brand of linear bearing makes it an ideal solution for the design engineer who knows the purpose of the application is primarily to move a radial payload, like say for a heavy duty door, sliding wall panel or museum display. The possibilities are unlimited and we're eager to see what uses people come up with for our newest offering.

[ To read some comments about this wheel from our engineering team, click here ] 

ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES What industries will you find the MadeWell Radial Wheel? That's really an open-ended question. But customers from a variety of industries we already work with have expressed a need for a linear guide wheel like this. Below is a sampling of industries that benefit from this type of wheel:

• Industrial machinery manufacturing
• Machine shops
• Metalworking manufacturing
• Engineering services
• Computer and electronic part manufacturing
• Motor vehicle manufacturing
• Medical equipment and supplies manufacturing
• Navigational, measuring, electro-medical and control instruments manufacturing

FINALLY, THE CHALLENGE OK, ready to win a prize? Then give this week's word search a whirl for a chance to win some swag. If you need an answer key, or if you just want to show us your filled-out puzzle to claim your prize, email us at jenniferw@bwc.com. Best of luck!

[ Click here to download the puzzle PDF ]

Motion Monday: The 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire

It's that time of the week! Monday is here and we hope your brain is already in motion. In case you need an extra jolt, check out today's jigsaw puzzle. In honor of the upcoming Bay Area Maker Faire this weekend in San Mateo (May 19th and 20th), we put together a collage of photographs we took at last year's event. Part of the Bishop-Wisecarver team will be there, so look for us!

We will be taking pictures again this year and will post to our Flickr gallery. Check it out here. How fast can you solve the puzzle? Post your time below in the comments section!

Instructions: Just use your mouse to pick up and move all pieces.

Supersize Me: FIRST Robotics [ INFOGRAPHIC ] Edition

SUPERSIZE ME This is exactly what we had in mind when we started making our infographics for engineers back in January of this year — that others on the web would find value in our informative graphics, worthy of a share! So, when we logged into our Facebook account this morning, we were thrilled to see a photo posted online by the Los Angeles FIRST Robotics of our recent infographic blown up into a supersized poster. We're honored it was blown up so big!

LA FIRST Robotics

SHARING IS CARING When we designed this poster, we made it with students and educators in mind. We wanted it to visually lay out some of the key reasons the FIRST program is so important — how many students the program affects, how many go on to pursue a higher education, and even a glimpse into the organization's future impact.

When we found out that the LA FIRST Robotics — the body that organizes all LA-area FIRST event — shared our infographic at a Los Angeles Unified School District Family Summit over the weekend, we were thrilled! They told us that more than 4,000 students attended the event held at the University of Southern California, which aimed to get students interested in careers that focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Sounds like a cool event!

"The FIRST booth was definitely a show stopper," a LA FIRST rep told us via email. "Three FIRST Robotics Challenge students were there to share their FIRST experience ... a fantastic day for sure."

MOTION MONDAY CHALLENGE Of course, given the day, we have to turn this post into what we call our #MotionMonday challenge — a start-of-the-work week game designed to get you ready and mentally engaged in the week ahead. So [ download our word search ] and have a crack at our next challenge. If you get it right, email us the results to win a prize. If you need some help, email us for an answer key. All the best and happy #MotionMonday, friends!