In addition to being the largest commercial aircraft in the world, the recently unveiled double-deck A380 from Airbus (Toulouse, France) is incorporating a number of innovative assembly technologies.
North American manufacturing companies purchased 14,838 robots valued at nearly $1 billion in 2004, a 20 percent increase in units over 2003 and the industry's second best unit total ever, according to a report from the Robotic Industries Association (RIA).
Charles R. McClinton, technology manager for the Hyper-X Program at NASA's Langley Research Center (Hampton, VA) will present the keynote address, "Breaking the Hypersonic Barrier," at the NEPCON East/Electro and Assembly East manufacturing exhibition.
US Endoscopy (Mentor, OH) manufactures accessories for rigid and flexible endoscopes-medical devices that are used for the exploration or biopsy of organs and tissues without performing conventional surgery.
Carbon dioxide found popularity as a refrigerant for comfort cooling in the 1920s, before being replaced by more convenient CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in the 1930s and then HFCs (hydroflurocarbons) in the 1990s. But with the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty requiring industrialized nations to lower their collective greenhouse gases 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, carbon dioxide has come back into the limelight as a hope for a safe and effective refrigerant replacement.