In Motion Sept 2010

IN MOTION

The official Newsletter...uhhh Blog of

APEX DESIGNS

Up Front
Finally back in front of the keyboard, we know how much you've missed us! Its only been like 11 months since our last published 'quarterly' newsletter. We've been fortunate enough to have been pretty busy with a wide variety of projects over the last year. Unfortunately, from a news standpoint, many of these projects were proprietary in nature and we were not permitted to disclose any details. Its challenging to come up with feature topics for a newsletter when everything you've been working on is off limits. But thats not to say we've not been pecking away elsewhere. In keeping up with the trends, we've establlshed a blog and have published a few technical related articles as a way to wet our feet with blogging. Cant sleep at night? Google search under the name "apexdesignsblog" or "apexdesignsguy". If that doesnt put you to sleep, you are either a certified tech junkie or you may need to seek medical help. - Steve Frank

Relationship Building Thru R&D
Providing solutions to real world problems is one of the more rewarding aspects of engineering. In August, Apex Designs was approached by LW Scientific to assist them in their quest to develop a very lightweight but extremely strong part that could withstand a force of over 2000 times its own weight. LW Scientific of Lawrenceville GA, (www.lwscientific.com) manufactures and supplies centrifuges, microscopes and related lab equipment for a variety of scientific applications. Their centrifuges are capable of rotating at several thousand rpm which can put a lot of stress on the rotating components. In an effort to decrease the cycle time of the centrifuge process, the speed at which the media must rotate has to increase. The challenge they encountered with the higher RPMs is that they were reaching the material strength limits of the rotating components. Apex Designs engineered and manufactured a carbon fiber and aluminum composite part that weighed considerably less than the same size all- aluminum part but offered considerable more strength. The pre-preg carbon parts were designed to mechanically capture a very intricately machined aluminum ring during the layup process which also added the strength of the entire part. The prototypes are undergoing comprehensive evaluation and testing and could prove to be a viable solution to allow LW Scientific to offer much greater centrifuge speeds in the future.