Computers Today, November 1-15, 1999, Marvels; Made for All Seasons

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November 1-15, 1999 MARVELS

Made for All Seasons

The designer palmtop Radix RX1 is described as a revolution in rugged handheld computing

Made for All Seasons The market for handheld and palmtop computers is highly competitive and features a wide range of products with specialised applications far personal and industrial use. The Radix RX1, a product recently launched by London-based company Frazer Design Consultants, is described as a "revolution in rugged handheld computing technology" for very good reasons.

Designed for use in harsh environmental conditions, the computer incorporates an advanced technology housed in a plastic tubular case that provides robust protection, enabling it to function without problem even after being submerged and subjected to a wide temperature range.

The computer's internal electronics and liquid crystal display are protected against shock damage on three levels. The first level relies on external Hytrel over-mouldings-the same material used for sports shoes-over a core of Xenoy, of which is used for making car bumpers. Similarly, the second two levels use internal damping parts to isolate the electronics from the case and the display from the rest of the circuitry. Shock proofing is verified using laboratory experiments and computer simulations.

The RX1 features include an Intel 486cx processor with built-in PCMCIA and memory expansion capability; an infrared technology that allows high-speed data communication; IBM PC DOS v.7.0 operating system, which optimises use of available memory capacity and a fully customisable detachable keyboard. Moreover, whether used by itself or operated with peripherals and other technologies, the computer operates perfectly.

Bonding Plastics with Laser

Any manufacturer trying to confidently stick two pieces of polypropylene-type material together is faced with using environmentally unfriendly pre-treatments. Some of these pre-treatments are chemical, but all waste time and money. These can now be dispensed with thanks to a novel laser bonding techniques developed by the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick, located in the English Midlands.

Many researchers are investigating how lasers could perhaps be used instead to pre-treat and weld plastics, but they are using complex and expensive lasers. Their techniques also require at least one of the plastic components to be transparent to allow the bonding laser beam to pass through it to the interface between the two components. Researcher Tony Hoult has devised a different approach on the use of lasers to solve plastic-bonding problems. To pursue these techniques, he has obtained a revolutionary compact, very high-powered diode laser made by Rofin Sinar Ltd.

This technique is the first of its kind in the United Kingdom and is several hundred thousand times more powerful than well-known laser pointers. The small size of its laser head allows it to be directly mounted on small, inexpensive assembly line robots.

By close study of the behaviour of the laser beam, combined with research into the joining properties of many plastics, Hoult has devised unconventional but extremely effective techniques that can bond plastic end reinforced engineering plastics without disfiguring pre-treatment.

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