Archive for September, 2009

Steel ‘Velcro’

Need to keep something heavy stuck to a wall? Fire proof Velcro sneakers for Iron Man? Maybe you just want a better way to hang your solid rocket boosters off your space ship. Super industrial strength steel hook and loop to the rescue!

Hook and loop fasteners have become commonplace features of both industry and households. However, they have one snag: they are too weak for many applications. Hook and loop fasteners made of spring steel have now been developed at the Institute of Metal Forming and Casting of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen. These fasteners are resistant to chemicals and can withstand a tensile load of up to 35 tonnes per square meter at temperatures as high as 800°C.

It’s called “Metaklett” if you want to try and find some.

Extreme steel ‘Velcro’ – Physorg

Home page (translated from German by Google)

Air Powered Microprocessor

I seriously doubt that you will be playing Super Mario Brothers on this any time soon but it would be fantastic for a self operating chemical analysis machine.

Each pneumatic valve is operated by changing the air pressure in a small chamber below the air channel, separated from the circuit by a flexible impermeable membrane. When the lower chamber is filled with air the membrane pushes upwards and closes the valve, preventing the binary signal flowing across one of the processor’s junctions.
Sucking out the air from the chamber reopens the valve by forcing the membrane downwards, letting the signal move across the junction.The two researchers used the valve-controlled channels to produce a variety of logic gates, flip-flops and shift registers, which they linked together to create a working 8-bit microprocessor. That means that the longest discrete pieces of data it can handle are eight binary digits long, like the processors used in 1980s consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

New microprocessor runs on thin air

Ancient Dogoo Girl

I’m not sure what comment, if any is appropriate for this Japanese TV show. Wow…

Well, you watch this trailer for The Amazing Dogoo Girl — which is going to be a prime-time Japanese TV show from the makers of The Machine Girl, Ju-On and Tokyo Gore Police — and you tell me. Not only is it primetime, it’s replacing perennial children’s TV classic Ultraman, meaning this is more or less designed for Japanese boys aged 6-11 or so… and yet features a heroine with magic breasts, not to mention the villains with evil breasts (like the bee woman). The show isn’t technically as weird as Robogeisha, but I’d say these circumstances propel it past even the legendary Geisha Chainsaw in terms of total insanity