The Leading Edge previews important technologies and process advances that can be employed by those involved in vacuum, thin film and other technologies. Its purpose is to inform, prompt thought and hopefully guide the reader toward viable solutions to problems.
Vacuum Sintering of 3D-Printed Parts
Application Notes | Goal: Metal 3D printing has completely changed how we think about manufacturing of metal components. While this has simplified the ...
Pressure Drop Testing of a Hose
Application Notes | Goal: Characterization of pneumatic components is a very important part of building any given system and it becomes even more ...
Hydrogen Production From Natural Gas
Application Notes | Goal: This customer manufactures scalable hydrogen generators that can be used on-site hydrogen production. This process is known as "methane ...
Flow Control in an Air Humidification Setup
Application Notes | Goal: The customer, a research group, wants to control the flow of humid air into their DUT. Atmospheric air will ...
Gas flow meters vs. liquid flow meters: What can I flow through my device?
Alicat devices can be customized to flow a wide range of fluids, however each device has its own unique capabilities. Taking a ...
Are Your Hands Tied Because You Can’t Get Vacuum Gauges?
Are you having to wait more than a couple of weeks for a delivery of a catalog standard vacuum gauge? Are you having difficulty ...
Waste to hydrogen: Plasma gasification
Imagine how convenient it would be to convert waste to hydrogen. This might sound too good to be true, but a number ...
What is mass flow?
A common way to measure and control flow is with a mass flow instrument, but what is mass flow? The answer to this can ...
What is carbon capture and storage?
by Chris Stretton | The goal of carbon capture and storage is to reduce carbon emissions. For this to be successful, carbon ...
Alicats in research labs: Pulmonary medicine
University of Oxford: Department of Engineering Science, and Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences Assessment of lung function using a non-invasive oscillating gas-forcing technique Monitoring lung ...
Creating Diamond-like Amorphous Carbon Films
This extensive technical review of various methods of creating DLC films was written several years ago by John Robertson. He was an early adopter ...
Antibacterial Nanostructured Ti Coatings by HIPIMS Magnetron Sputtering
Inhibiting the formation of bacterial biofilm is a crucial step in preventing bone implant rejection. This technical paper details how the use of HIPIMS ...