Plant Services - December 2007 - (Page 34)

WEB HUNTER was launched by Sir Richard Branson (of Virgin Airline fame) and Al Gore. e rules and entry forms for the Virgin Earth Challenge are available at www.virginearth.com. If you’re going to get in the game, you’d best do it quickly because the deadline for submitting your entry is February 8, 2010. Forming long-term attachments In the bad old days, when a maintenance guy needed to connect item A to item B, it was likely that some mechanical fastener was involved. Fast forward to better living through chemistry. Now, we’ve dispensed with screws and nails. We simply glue things together. But, with so many materials and surface textures, with so many tubes, bottles and cans of chemical goo available, selecting an appropriate adhesive is more diﬃcult than it used to be. As you’d expect, the Web comes to the rescue with www.thistothat.com, a relatively unpretentious site dedicated to the proposition that one can glue anything to anything else. Use the two drop-down menus to specify the type of material to be bonded, click “Let’s Glue!” and follow the advice it reveals. Before you leave the site, check out the material listed under “Trivia” and under “News” for a quick, interesting read. Pushing backward Bruce Simpson, a resident of New Zealand, has a hobby that should be of interest to anyone with a technical bent and access to some tools. Working with a vertical mill, lathe, drill press, MIG welder, gas welder and air compressor, Simpson builds jet engines that he uses to power go-karts. His Web site has photos that lend credence to his claims of possessing a lot of knowledge about gas turbines, turboshaft engines, pulsejets and valveless pulsejets. e latter class of hardware represents the simplest engine you can imagine – it has no moving parts. It’s basically a large U-tube device into which he dumps relatively large quantities of liquid propane fuel. Simpson gets something on the order of 100 lbs. of thrust out of his models, which is suﬃcient to push a go-kart along at a pretty good clip, and he’s posted videos to prove it. Check it out at http:// aardvark.co.nz/pjet/valveless.htm and 34 .PLANTSERVICES. D http://www.virginearth.com http://www.thistothat.com http://www.advance-us.com http://www.advance-us.com/industrial http://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/valveless.htm http://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/valveless.htm

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Plant Services - December 2007

Plant Services - December 2007 Contents From the Editor: Orange Alert The PS Files: Pressed into Innovation Up and Running What Works: Samuel Adams Facility Refreshed in Cincinnati Energy Expert: Energy's "Perfect Storm" Technology Toolbox: Know Your Position Cover Story: Get a Grip on the Steamer Piping: Outside Looking In Web Hunter: Potpourri X In the Trenches: Making a Big Stink Boiler Room: Getting Educated

Plant Services - December 2007

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