First Time Quality

Because large industrial systems, structures, and components experience shifting stresses and loads throughout service life, risk of fatigue failure is high. Improving fatigue performance in heavy manufacturing is therefore an important priority. The good news is that many specialized methods for slowing crack formation and predicting fatigue failure have been developed in the past decades....

Selecting the right material for a new medical device -- especially when it comes to polymers -- is critical to the success of the product. Material failures are costly and common; more than a third of FDA recalls are due to material problems. Preventing Material Failure in Plastic Products: A Resource for Medical Manufacturers, written...

Ultrasonic wire bonding (UWB), today’s preferred method for joining wires to battery packs in electric vehicles, requires very high surface cleanliness to assure successful bonds. Decontaminating battery terminals, however, can be a very difficult and time-consuming task. EWI has recently completed a study using laser cleaning technology on batteries prior to UWB of aluminum wire...