Ultra-precision surface finish of the hardened stainless mold steel using vibration-assisted ball polishing process

A vibration-assisted spherical polishing system driven by a piezoelectric actuator has been newly developed on a machining center to improve the burnished surface roughness of hardened STAVAX plastic mold stainless steel and to reduce the volumetric wear of the polishing ball. The optimal plane surface ball burnishing and vibration-assisted spherical polishing parameters of the specimens have been determined after conducting the Taguchi's L₉ and L₁₈ matrix experiments, respectively. The surface roughness R_a=0.10 μm, on average, of the burnished specimens can be improved to R_a=0.036 μm (R_max=0.380 μm) using the optimal plane surface vibration-assisted spherical polishing process. The improvement of volumetric wear of the polishing ball was about 72% using the vibration-assisted polishing process compared with the non-vibrated polishing process. A simplified kinetic model of the vibration-assisted spherical polishing system for the burnished surface profile was also derived in this study. Applying the optimal plane surface ball burnishing and vibrated spherical polishing parameters sequentially to a fine-milled freeform surface carrier of an F-theta scan lens, the surface roughness of R_a=0.045 μm (R_y=0.65 μm), on average, within the measuring range of 149 μm×112 μm on the freeform surface, was obtainable.     

Automated surface finishing of plastic injection mold steel with spherical grinding and ball burnishing processes

This study investigates the possibilities of automated spherical grinding and ball burnishing surface finishing processes in a freeform surface plastic injection mold steel PDS5 on a CNC machining center. The design and manufacture of a grinding tool holder has been accomplished in this study. The optimal surface grinding parameters were determined using Taguchi’s orthogonal array method for plastic injection molding steel PDS5 on a machining center. The optimal surface grinding parameters for the plastic injection mold steel PDS5 were the combination of an abrasive material of PA Al₂O₃, a grinding speed of 18000 rpm, a grinding depth of 20 μm, and a feed of 50 mm/min. The surface roughness R_a of the specimen can be improved from about 1.60 μm to 0.35 μm by using the optimal parameters for surface grinding. Surface roughness R_a can be further improved from about 0.343 μm to 0.06 μm by using the ball burnishing process with the optimal burnishing parameters. Applying the optimal surface grinding and burnishing parameters sequentially to a fine-milled freeform surface mold insert, the surface roughness R_a of freeform surface region on the tested part can be improved from about 2.15 μm to 0.07 μm.     

Automated optical inspection for the runout tolerance of circular saw blades

Additive manufacturing allows close-to unrestrained geometrical freedom in part design. The ability to manufacture geometries of such complexity is however limited by the difficulty of verifying the tolerances of these parts. Tolerances of features that are inaccessible with traditional measuring equipment such as coordinate measuring machines cannot be verified easily. This problem is addressed by developing an in-line reverse engineering and 3D reconstruction method that allows a true-to-scale reconstruction of a part being additively manufactured. In earlier works (Pedersen et al. 2010; Hansen et al. 2011), this method has shown its potential with 3D printing (3DP) and selective laser sintering additive manufacturing processes, where it is possible to directly capture the geometrical features of each individual layer during a build job using a digital camera. When considering the process of direct light projection (DLP), the possibility of directly capturing the geometrical features of the object during a build job is limited by the specific machine design and the fact that photoactivated monomers often do not change optical characteristics in the polymerization process. Therefore, a variant of the previously tested and verified method has been implemented on DLP machine, where instead of capturing the geometrical features of the produced objects during the build job directly, these features are captured indirectly by capturing the reflection of the projected light projected during the build job. Test series were made, and a reconstruction of two octave spheres were produced and compared with the input CAD file and scans of the produced objects. The comparison showed a good correlation between the reconstructions and the scans considering the resolution of the images used for the reconstruction, and it was thereby concluded that the method has a promising potential as a verification method for DLP machines.     

Targeting of Mcl-1 Expression by MiRNA-3614-5p Promotes Cell Apoptosis of Human Prostate Cancer Cells

MicroRNA (miRNA) acts as a critical regulator of growth in various human malignancies. However, the role of miRNA-3614 in the progression of human prostate cancer remains unknown. In this study, our results demonstrated that miRNA-3614-5p exerts a significant inhibitory effect on cell viability and colony formation and induces sub-G1 cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in human prostate cancer cells. Myeloid cell leukemia-1 (Mcl-1) acts as a master regulator of cell survival. Using the miRNA databases, miRNA-3614-5p was found to regulate Mcl-1 expression by targeting positions of the Mcl-1-3′ UTR. The reduction of Mcl-1 expression by miRNA-3614-5p was further confirmed using an immunoblotting assay. Pro-apoptotic caspase-3 and poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) were significantly activated by miRNA-3614-5p to generate cleaved caspase-3 (active caspase-3) and cleaved PARP (active PARP), accompanied by the inhibited Mcl-1 expression. These findings were the first to demonstrate the anti-growth effects of miRNA-3614-5p through downregulating Mcl-1 expression in human prostate cancer cells.     

Intermittent process hybrid measurement system on the machining centre

This study introduces the development of a hybrid measurement system integrated on a machining centre to carry out the possible intermittent measurement of a workpiece. The developed hybrid measurement system principally consists of a MP10 touch trigger probe system, a circular triangulation laser probe system, and the measurement software. The touch trigger probe system was primarily used to measure the regular geometric features, whereas the circular triangulation laser probe system was adopted to inspect the freeform surface part of a test carrier with the help of the developed measurement software. An adjustment device consisting mainly of an adjustment unit, a joint unit, and an assembly unit, was designed and manufactured to minimize the cosine error caused by the assembly inaccuracy for the laser probe. The measuring uncertainty analysis experiments for both the touch trigger probe system and the non-contact laser probe system were investigated by using a calibrated standard sphere and the HP5529A laser interferometer system, respectively. The information in the whole measuring system – which comprised a personal computer, a CNC machining centre controller, a Renishaw MP10 touch probe system, and the controller of a Wolf & Back OTM3A20 circular triangulation laser probe system – was integrated technically. The measurement software was also developed to simulate the measuring path, prevent collision, and generate the corresponding measuring NC codes. The developed system can also be used to digitize the data points of a 3D small complex workpiece, such as a tooth model and an IC part. A carrier, combined with free form surface and regular geometric feature referred to in the ISO 10791-7 cutting test standard, was designed, manufactured and inspected in order to evaluate the performance of the developed hybrid measuring system. The measurement results of this carrier were verified through a CNC coordinate measuring machine, with satisfactory consistency. According to the measuring results, the developed hybrid measuring system was successfully and effectively used to carry out the intermittent measurement.     

A leakage reduction via balanced circuit and masking noise design against the differential power analysis

Abstract

In implementing the cryptographic algorithm for a cryptographic system, since not all the side channels can be taken into account, there is always a leakage of information, and the resulting system is deemed vulnerable to hostile attack. To reduce the leakage, a compensation circuit is introduced to combine with the original circuit into a balanced configuration. The reduced leakage signal can be further masked by the addition of a noise source.     

Rapid and direct quantitative analysis of positional fatty acids in triacylglycerols using 13C NMR

There is increasing evidence that the positional fatty acid composition (FAC) of TAG is more important than total FAC with regard to nutrition values of edible oils and fats. A rapid and direct regiospecific analysis of positional fatty acids in TAG using ¹³C NMR was developed to overcome the tedious conventional methods which involve enzymatic hydrolysis, Grignard chemical degradation, and chromatography analysis. A set of NMR data acquisition parameters and processing methods had proven their excellent versatility and applicability on various types of oils and fats, with systematic error of 1.0 mol%. It was found that there are discrepancies between the regiospecific analysis results obtained by the current method and by conventional methods. Probable acyl migration occurring in the hydrolysis process in conventional methods is a noted problem. As the current ¹³C NMR method is a direct measurement and no hydrolysis of the sample is needed, acyl migration during the analysis is eliminated. As a result, the saturation level is always higher at sn‐1, 3 positions and lower at sn‐2 position in TAG structure of oils in the regiospecific data obtained from the current ¹³C NMR than that from conventional methods. In the absence of laborious chemical derivatization, this method is simple, accurate, and user‐friendly for researchers, especially for nutritionists to support their nutritional studies from the perspective of positional FAC of edible oils and fats.     

Low temperature sintering and crystallisation behaviour of low loss anorthite-based glass-ceramics

Anorthite-based glass-ceramics including TiO₂ as nucleating agent were melted and quenched in this study. The effect of particle size on the sintering behaviour of glass powders was investigated in order to obtain low-temperature sintered glass-ceramics. Anorthite glass-ceramic starts to densify at the transition temperature of glass (T _g = 770°C) and is fully sintered before the crystallisation occurrence (880°C). Therefore, a dense and low-loss glass-ceramic with predominant crystal phase of anorthite is achieved by using fine glass powders (D ₅₀ = 0.45 m) fired at 900°C. The as-sintered density approaches 99% theoretical density and the apparent porosity is as low as 0.05 Vol%. The dense and crystallized anorthite-based glass-ceramic exhibits a fairly low dielectric loss of 4 × 10^–4 at 1 MHz and a thermal expansion coefficient of 4.5 × 10^–6°C^–1. Furthermore, the microwave characteristics were measured at 10 GHz with the results of K = 9.8, Q _f = 2250, and temperature coefficient of resonant frequency _f = –30 ppm/°C.     

TRASS: A transmission rate‐adapted streaming server in a wireless environment

The video streaming quality in a wireless communication network environment is largely affected by various network characteristics, such as a limited channel bandwidth and a variant transmission rate. The playback quality of User Equipments (UEs) may not be smooth when the service is delivered via a wireless environment. From the viewpoints of most video receivers, a smooth playback with a lower video quality may be more significant than a lagged or distorted playback with a higher video quality as the transmission rate degrades. Based on the above, we sketch an adaptation agent—Transmission‐Rate Adapted Streaming Server (TRASS), which is located between the original video server and UEs, to adaptively transform the streaming video based on the real transmission rate. In our proposed scheme, UEs would feedback their network access statuses to TRASS and then TRASS would deliver adaptive quality of video streams to UEs according to their feedbacks. The theoretical analysis and simulations using different video tracks encoded in MPEG‐4 and H.264/AVC formats show that TRASS can help wireless streaming users to get a smooth playback quality with a lower packet failure rate. With a low probability of receiving a worse quality of video, users' Quality of Experience can subsequently be raised. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multifunctional Yolk‐in‐Shell Nanoparticles for pH‐triggered Drug Release and Imaging

Multifunctional nanoparticles are synthesized for both pH‐triggered drug release and imaging with radioluminescence, upconversion luminescent, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The particles have a yolk‐in‐shell morphology, with a radioluminescent core, an upconverting shell, and a hollow region between the core and shell for loading drugs. They are synthesized by controlled encapsulation of a radioluminescent nanophosphor yolk in a silica shell, partial etching of the yolk in acid, and encapsulation of the silica with an upconverting luminescent shell. Metroxantrone, a chemotherapy drug, was loaded into the hollow space between X‐ray phosphor yolk and up‐conversion phosphor shell through pores in the shell. To encapsulate the drug and control the release rate, the nanoparticles are coated with pH‐responsive biocompatible polyelectrolyte layers of charged hyaluronic acid sodium salt and chitosan. The nanophosphors display bright luminescence under X‐ray, blue light (480 nm), and near infrared light (980 nm). They also served as T₁ and T₂ MRI contrast agents with relaxivities of 3.5 mM^?1 s^?1 (r₁) and 64 mM^?1s^?1 (r₂). These multifunctional nanocapsules have applications in controlled drug delivery and multimodal imaging.