Tech Industry: High-Tech Industrial Science

Tech Industry: High-Tech Industrial Science — page 3
MAKING THINGS Factories have been around for at least 200 years In the past they relied on machinery made with heavy materials such as iron and steel Now there are new tough but lightweight and highly adaptable materials such as graphene Special metal alloys work better than traditional metals They are lighter and do not rust New strong durable and easily recycled plastics can replace many metal parts That saves both money and energy Want to make a model of your own invention There might be a 3-D printer at your town’s library New robot assistants use software to learn how to find items and identify them They learn from experience Miso Robotics has developed Flippy a burger-flipping robot Flippy is already used in a chain of burger restaurants in California Like a human Flippy can learn from its mistakes Even so burger bots cannot do everything yet Human hands still have to deliver the burger to the customer Where robots work alongside regular workers this is called cobotics In the past big machines have been needed to make factory products Three-dimensional 3-D printing is changing the way things are made A 3-D printer takes an image from a computer and turns it into a plastic object Inventors can use 3-D printing to produce and test prototypes or early versions of a product When a 3-D printer can make objects right on-site there is no need for production lines and stores of supplies 6 SMARTER ROBOTS PRINTING PRODUCTS