SMHOAVKEERRS S&
OMRON APPOINTS
CEO OF INDUSTRIAL
AUTOMATION
BUSINESS EMEA
Seigo Kinugawa has been
appointed as the new CEO
of OMRON’s Industrial
Automation Business
in EMEA, following the
retirement of Hiroyuki Usui.
Kinugawa joined OMRON
30 years ago and recently
served as senior general
manager of the Strategic
Planning Division, Industrial
Automation Business
Company at the OMRON
Corporation’s Headquarters
in Kyoto, Japan.
SENSOR CITY
EXPANDS
ENGINEERING TEAM
Liverpool-based innovation
centre, Sensor City, is
developing its technical
expertise with a host of
new hires to its engineering
team. Daniel Watson has
been appointed to head of
engineering, while James
Nixon joins Sensor City
as prototype engineer. In
addition, eight student
interns have been deployed
to work in the laboratories.
PRESIDENT OF THE
IMECHE APPOINTED
Professor Joe McGeough
has assumed office as the
134th President of the
Institution of Mechanical
Engineers. McGeough,
who has been a Member
of the Institution since
1979, is an Honorary
Professorial Fellow in the
School of Engineering at
the University of Edinburgh.
He has been a long-time
volunteer in the Institution
having served on both the
Trustee Board and Council.
NEWS | EUREKA!
Laser to boost car industry
EUROPEAN SCIENTISTS FROM the
Photonics21 project are developing
a new precision pulse laser looks set
to boost the car industry with a 10%
reduction in waste products, a 5%
reduction in chassis costs, and a twothird
decrease in manufacturing time.
Operating at 1.5 km/sec, the
laser will be powerful enough to cut
the hardest boron steel used in car
construction at 1cm3 per minute –
over a thousand times faster than
existing technology.
Exerting an average power of
2.5kW, or 100kW in a single pulse,
and with repetition rates up to 1GHz
(a thousand times more than the
current 1MHz upper limit), the laser
will have the control and refinement
to etch moulds for vehicle parts at
micron-scale accuracy as well as
micro-weld dissimilar metals for
solar thermal absorbers.
The project has received a
€5million development grant from
the European Commission.
Project coordinator, Dr
Regina Gumenyuk said: “PULSE
is committed to improving
manufacturing, but also reducing
the impact on the environment,
therefore we can confirm that a
10% reduction in waste products is
certainly achievable.”
The system is expected to
improve digital design to lighten
vehicle chassis weight with benefits
to fuel economy and increase the
range of electric vehicles.
The consortium expects a
prototype to be ready by 2021.
TECH BRIEF
LHAASNEDRH SECLADN INMEARG ING
LEICA GEOSYSTEMS, part of Hexagon, has announced the
Leica BLK2GO handheld imaging laser scanner, a first-of-its-kind
mobile scanner.
The BLK2GO is designed to scan complex spaces with
unprecedented efficiency and speed thanks to LiDAR, SLAM
(simultaneous localisation and mapping) and edge computing
technologies, which enables surveyors, professionals and users to
expand their reality capture capabilities.
The wireless handheld imaging laser scanner
captures 3D environments while the user is in
motion, and continuously creates a digital
representation of reality in the form of 3D
point clouds. The BLK2GO’s compact and
handheld design allows a much greater
degree of mobility, as well as access to spaces
and objects that may have been difficult or
impossible to scan before. With simple, onebutton
operation and a lightweight design,
it is easy to use for professional and casual
users alike.
Burkhard Boeckem, CTO Hexagon’s
Geosystems division, said: “The BLK2GO is
a major leap in technology and advances the
powerful yet simple design of the BLK360
and offers much more speed, efficiency and
mobility for users.”
The BLK2GO is expected to be available in
October 2019.
3D VIEWING
UNLIKE TRADITIONAL MONO
digital microscopes, Vision
Engineering’s Deep Reality
Viewer (DRV) creates stereo high
definition 3D images, without
using a monitor or requiring
operators to wear headsets or
specialist glasses. In the DRV-Z1,
images ‘float’ in front of a mirror
which is said to reduce operator
fatigue and improve accuracy,
consistency and productivity.
Vision Engineering anticipates
that this device will be particularly
valuable to organisations that
model and test components
in 3D, as well as facilitating
improvements in manufacturing
processes such as PCB inspection
and reworking.
8 WWW.EUREKAMAGAZINE.CO.UK | JULY 2019
/WWW.EUREKAMAGAZINE.CO.UK