Cobham Technical Services has extended the capabilities of its Opera-3D finite element software for electromagnetic design, by adding a new solver that can analyse natural vibration modes. The tool is expected to be particularly useful for developers of electrical machines, who can use it to investigate and minimise forces that might cause oscillations close to a machine’s natural frequencies. They can thus avoid excessive vibrations or collisions between rotating and stationary parts.

Yaskawa says it has developed an electric vehicle (EV) motor that avoids the need for neodymium magnets, using much cheaper and easier-to-obtain ferrite magnets instead. The development is intended to reduce the company’s dependence on rare-earth materials, such as neodymium and dysprosium, whose prices have fluctuated widely in recent years, with China dominating and controlling their supply.

Autodesk, the company behind AutoCAD, has joined forces with Lego to provide 3D interactive building instructions for a new generation of Lego’s Mindstorms robot-assembly kits, due to be released later this year. 

Mitsubishi Electric has developed an ultra-high-resolution 3D technology for representing the shapes of machined surfaces for numerically controlled (NC) machine tools. The technology provides detailed representations of surfaces at resolutions down to 1µm, which machine operators can use to evaluate surface textures without needing to perform trial cutting. They can, for example, check for over- or under-processing marks and for scratches.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered that robots can operate more effectively if their training includes swapping roles with humans working alongside them.