On 4 April 2017, Festo South Africa hosted a seminar at which its global Industry 4.0 campaign head, Eberhard Klotz, demystified the concepts and introduced the key opportunities. Introducing Klotz at the start of the seminar, Festo South Africa’s Russell Schwultz said that, while Industry 4.0 is much spoken about, “it doesn’t seem real yet". "In South Africa, we need to demystify the concepts and make them more practical. Globally, unlike many other companies, Festo is able to back the ...

You may have seen a lot more people checking in at emergency departments or taking selfies from their hospital bed recently. It’s not that all your Facebook friends have suddenly been under the weather, it’s just that hospital patients and visitors are now allowed to use mobile phones on site without fear of interfering with medical equipment. However, hospitals still have a long way to go to reduce power quality issues. Power quality problems can be just as severe in medical environments ...

Upright walking on two legs is a defining trait in humans, enabling them to move very efficiently throughout their environment. This can all change in the blink of an eye when a stroke occurs. In about 80 per cent of patients post-stroke, it is typical that one limb loses its ability to function normally – a clinical phenomenon called hemiparesis. Even patients who recover walking mobility during rehabilitation retain abnormalities in their gait that hinder them from participating in many ...

The new Hybrid Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratory at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin is the only fully equipped paediatric cardiology service on the island of Ireland to treat young children with heart defects. It is a new design build project by Clancy Construction delivered on time and within budget in 2016 through the use of building information modelling (BIM) by an interdisciplinary project team including RPS as mechanical and electrical consulting engineers. The project was ...

In Canada, University of Alberta mechanical engineering professors Pierre Mertiny and Marc Secanell are looking to make an old technology new again and save some money for transit train operators such as the Edmonton light rail transit (LRT) while they do it. "The flywheel is an old technology, but that's partly what makes it so sensible," said Mertiny. "Fundamentally, it's a really simple technology. We already have everything we need." The two recently calculated that the use of ...

Mechanical engineering has always had a strong hold among all engineering disciplines over many decades, even in the face of vastly changing technological scenarios. To safeguard its pristine position, mechanical engineers must look beyond and make a landscape for sustaining their future technological careers for the coming decades. This article looks at the development of new courses that aim to cultivate desirable skill sets for mechanical engineers of the future. Specialised courses ...