Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1424540
NOVEMBER 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 61 Moll: Right. For example, someone who might be running three of these older machines can re- place them with one or two machines, so they don't need to buy one for one. Johnson: at certainly helps overall, with every- thing from footprint to throughput, from capac- ity to investment, and operating costs. Moll: e operating costs would be less in one big respect: you're not paying a yearly license fee for your soware updates. Viscom soware up- dates are free for life. If it's an upgrade where we must replace some hardware, a frame grabber, or something else to take advantage of the soware update, you must pay for the hardware. But the soware update itself is free and with those older machines, they were charging quite a substantial licensing fee every year and expensive mainte- nance contracts. Now with these new machines, we can offer maintenance contracts, but there's certainly no reason that an owner of the equip- ment can't maintain it himself. It's not that hard. Johnson: One of the things that I'm hearing as a common theme is that test and inspection is a necessary evil. It's something that they do be- cause their customers demand it of them. ey increase their investment or put in new equip- ment because they have customers who expect them to do a more thorough job in some way. What is your take? Moll: Well, how do you put a price tag on making your customer happy? What is that worth? I re- alize that there are many who say testing doesn't add any value. However, what does it cost if you have a field return or a field failure where that an- tilock brake didn't work because you didn't do your inspection properly? How do you put a price tag on that? From our point of view, there's a lot of value add, but I do know that some people feel it's just a necessary evil. I strongly disagree. Johnson: Ed, thank you very much. I appreciate this. SMT007 Climate protection means increasingly turn- ing to renewable energies. But in order to store the energy produced by solar, wind and other regenerative processes, sophisticated systems are required. Today's storage options are still too expensive and hardly or even im- possible to recycle. Scientists at HZDR's In- stitute of Fluid Dynamics have been working on liquid metal batteries for several years and are now in the European vanguard. Together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technolo- gy (MIT), HZDR's scientist Dr. Norbert Weber has managed to decisively optimize a novel lithium lead battery. Thanks to an improved electrolyte formulation, the team was able to increase the power efficiency to nearly 100% and the energy density by 45% at the same time. The batteries are exposed to a working tem- perature of more than 400° C so that the met- als are present in liquid form. Lithium, which is located at the top of the battery is separat- ed from the heavy lead on the bottom by a molten salt layer. The membrane functions as a kind of additional, second dividing wall be- tween the metals lithium and lead and thus re- inforces the molten salt by preventing unwant- ed chemical processes that would irreversibly damage the battery. (Source: HZDR) International Team Improves Efficiency of Liquid Metal Batteries