Automotive Ignition Products From ETCO Include Terminals and Rubber Insulator Boots

ETCO Incorporated manufactures a full line of standard OEM spark plug and distributor terminals, including rubber insulation boots, battery terminals (RoHS compliant), or custom fabricated terminals and electrical components for virtually any automotive application.

ETCO Automotive Ignition Products include standard spark plug and distributor terminals, insulated boots, and battery terminals or custom fabricated electrical components manufactured to ISO/TS 16949:2009 quality standards. Designed to simplify automated and manual assembly operations for harness manufacturers, terminals can be supplied in strip form or loose.

Available with compatible wire-attachment equipment and booters, ETCO Automotive Ignition Products can be stamped from brass, tinned steels, stainless steels, beryllium copper, phosphor bronze, and other alloys. Thicknesses can range from 0.15mm to 2.0mm with tolerances to 0.0127mm. ETCO ignition components are used by most NASCAR teams and throughout the high performance world, and the company has an extensive R & D program to produce products that deliver more horsepower.

ETCO Automotive Ignition Products are priced according to terminal type and quantity; with custom quotations provided after receipt of prints. Literature and pricing are available upon request.

About ETCO Incorporated

ETCO Incorporated was founded in 1947 as Electric Terminal Corporation. The original company produced wall plug blades in strip form for attachment by the customer on a patented air operated machine. ETCO still produces wall plug blades, although the production speeds have increased from 175 parts per minute to as fast as 3,000 parts per minute. Today, the company's product line has expanded into thousands of different products; both catalog and custom terminal products designed and tooled for their customer's individual needs.

ETCO's proprietary terminal products now represent about half of their sales and the company is divided into several divisions representing distinct product areas. The reason for this is so that each division can respond to the customer with the care and concern of a small manufacturer while retaining the resources of a larger manufacturer. This formula has worked well and the ETCO philosophy of "old values and customer service" has propelled the company to a position of industry leadership.

Renesas sells U.S. fab to Telefunken

Japan's Renesas Electronics Corp. will sell its semiconductor wafer fabrication facility in Roseville, Calif. to Germany's Telefunken Semiconductors International LLC for approximately $53 million.

Telefunken intends to utilize the 200-mm fab in Roseville to manufacture its own analog/mixed-signal, high-voltage products and the products for its strategic foundry partners.

The company also will enter into a supply agreement with Renesas Electronics for manufacturing services at the Roseville factory. Under this agreement, it will focus on Renesas Electronics' current customers without interruption.

The Roseville fab was once owned by NEC Electronics. Renesas assumed control of the fab when it merged with NEC Electronics.

For the most part, Telefunken was an analog and mixed-signal foundry. Last year, it announced a re-entry into merchant integrated circuits market with a focus on power management and high performance Interface. The newly released products are fabricated at Telefunken's specialty analog fabrication facility in Heilbronn Germany. Proprietary processes such as silicon-on-insulator, a 700 volt high-voltage process and a high-speed silicon-germanium process enable the new devices to meet the highest performance standards at the lowest power consumption.

As reported, Renesas is moving to cut costs. As part of the strategies outlined through its 100-Day Project announced on July 29, 2010, Renesas Electronics ‘'has been considering and implementing various measures to improve manufacturing efficiency by promoting larger wafers, finer process node, and production concentration.'

Renesas planned to cut nearly 10 percent of its  workforce, or about 4,000 jobs, by the end of 2010. It is also moving towards a fab-lite strategy. It will use foundries for devices at 28-nm and below. And it will no longer invest in new fabs.

The quest for new materials: Can any insulator become topological?

Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and the California Institute of

Technology have shown that it may be possible to take a conventional semiconductor

and endow it with topological properties without subjecting the material to extreme

environmental conditions or fundamentally changing its solid state structure. In

their Nature Physics (appeared online March 13, 2011) article titled "Floquet

topological insulator in semiconductor quantum wells", JQI fellow Victor Galitski

with colleagues Netanel Lindner and Gil Refael from Caltech provide theoretical

verification that such a transition exists.

The key to this prediction, which can be experimentally tested, is the application of

microwaves to an otherwise non-topological insulating system. According to the

authors, the material can be transformed into what they call a "Floquet topological

insulator". As described below, topological states have applications in quantum

information science and the new field of spintronics.

One aspect of solid-state physics – the study of solid or crystalline compounds –

is exploring the electrical conduction properties of different materials. Solids are

classified according to their capacity to carry electrical current – that is, to

conduct electrons.

The past is prologue

Iron-based high-temperature superconductors were discovered in January 2008, and they

have arguably been the biggest news in the field of superconductivity since the

appearance of the cuprate superconductors in the late eighties [1]. Although the

cuprates demonstrated that high-temperature superconductivity was possible, the iron

-based materials prove that this phenomenon is not limited to a single class of

compounds.

So far, the story unraveling about the new iron-based superconductors has been quite

rewarding for practitioners. In order to appreciate the relevant timescales, remember

that for the cuprates, nearly ten years passed before a general consensus was reached

on the pairing symmetry, and consider that there still is no agreement on the

underlying mechanism. More in line with the story of superconductivity in MgB2, where

full consensus was achieved within a year, a plausible model was proposed within

weeks after the discovery of iron-based superconductors [2] and gained support from

the majority of researchers in the field. In this model, the calculated and

experimentally confirmed [1] electronic band structure of iron-based superconductors

is semimetallic, consisting of hole and electron Fermi surface pockets, separated by

a (π,π) wave vector in momentum space (see Fig. 1). This suggests the existence of

a spin excitation with the same wave vector, which was indeed found experimentally

[3]. If one considers this spin excitation to be the pairing agent for

superconductivity [1], the resulting order parameters for the holes and for the

electrons will have opposite signs, with the overall angular momentum being L=0 (s-

type); hence the name s±.Early surprises and progress

This simple concept has been questioned on at least two occasions when new iron-based

superconducting materials were discovered. This happened first when two low-Tc

compounds, KFe2As2 and LaFePO, exhibited clear signs of gap nodes [4], which are not

required by symmetry in the s± model. Theoretically, this could still be

rationalized within an s± spin-fluctuation-induced superconductivity model. Indeed,

if there are other competing interactions, e.g., with phonons, or a particularly

strong Coulomb repulsion, a compromise can be found that results in gap nodes.

However, this point of view is substantially based on the fact that both KFe2As2 and

LaFePO have rather low critical temperatures. So, when a third compound was found

clearly exhibiting nodes, this explanation was severely shaken; the compound in

question was phosphorus-doped BaFe2As2, with Tc in excess of 30 K  [4].

Numerous model calculations appeared then, in which the combination of the angular

dependence of the orbital character of electronic bands and a strong Coulomb

repulsion led to patches of the “wrong” sign of the order parameter, and thus to

nodes [5]. Of course, whether this regime is realized or not depends on the material

in question; it is quite normal that some compounds are in the “nodal” region in

the parameter space, while others are not. This explanation, though it seems natural,

is not without problems: Retardation effects (different energy scales for the

superconducting pairing and the static electronic interactions) cause a

renormalization of the Coulomb repulsion; it becomes much less important than that

appearing in the static calculation, if not negligible. Most importantly, such

calculations yield strongly anisotropic gaps in all compounds, whether nodal or not.

However, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) shows uniform gaps

wherever it can map the electronic Fermi surface. Yet there was a feeling in the

community that even though our favorite model may have some quantitative issues, it

was conceptually correct, and had all the necessary potential to overcome its

problems; the quantitative details would eventually be ironed out.

Once again, doubt was cast on this model when another compound was found, Sr2VO3FeAs 

[6], which according to band structure calculations featured vanadium electrons at

the Fermi surface in addition to electrons and holes from iron, completely destroying

the neat dichotomy of the Fermi surfaces into well-separated electron and hole

pockets. However, it was soon discovered that the vanadium electrons, unlike the iron

ones, are strongly correlated in this system, and thus are completely removed from

the Fermi level [7]. This, of course, saves the model.

Thus, barring a few dissenters, towards the end of 2010 there was a general consensus

that even if the s± model may have problems with some measurements, compared to

alternatives it accounts for the entire body of the experiments in a much better way.

March 27: Bottle Show Sunday at American Legion Post 80

1. The  Yankee Pole Cat Insulator Club will hold its annual Antique Insulator, Bottle and Collectibles Show Sunday from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. at the American Legion Post 80, 566 Enfield St. For sale will be antique insulators, old telephones, lightning rods, bottles, flasks, advertising, post cards, railroad items, milk bottles and more.

2. Fishing season opens April 16, and you may get your license online at www.ct.gov/dep.

3. Paul D'Amato, who portrayed Tim "Dr. Hook" McCracken in the classic 1977 Paul Newman hockey movie "Slap Shot", has committed to play in the Enfield Athletic Hall of Fame Celebrity Golf Classic on May 7.

4. Sunday will be sunny, with a high near 43, according to the National Weather Service. Sunday night will be mostly clear, with a low around 21.

5. Find out what's happening right now in your community. Sign up for the daily and weekly newsletter and breaking news alerts on the Enfield Patch home page, and check out the Enfield Patch Facebook page.

Bulk carriers cannot take the strain

Mercury Telluride (HgTe) has an "inverted" band structure, where the valence band rises above the conduction band. As such, it was the first material to be identified as a candidate topological insulator—an exotic insulator that has conducting states along its surface or edge that are unusually robust against defects and scattering.

Since bulk HgTe is a semimetal, the properties of a topological insulator can only be observed by opening up a gap in its band structure. Accordingly, the conducting surface states were first found along the edges of two-dimensional HgTe quantum wells, where the reduced symmetry of the well lifted the semimetallic character of the band structure. Analogously, three-dimensional (3D) topological insulating behavior should be observable in the surface states of bulk HgTe, provided a gap in the bulk electronic structure can be induced.

Now, Christoph Brune and colleagues at Universitat Wurzburg, Germany, and Stanford University, US, report in Physical Review Letters that they have observed quantized Hall conductance on the surface of a 70-nm-thick sample of HgTe—a signature that this sample is a 3D topological insulator. When deposited on CdTe, the lattice mismatch between the HgTe film and substrate creates a strain that opens the necessary band gap. In contrast to more-studied 3D topological insulators, such as Bi2Se3, Sb2Te3, and Bi2Te3, bulk HgTe has a very low background doping, so that the strained bulk layer corresponds to an intrinsic topological insulator.

The next challenge for the group is to observe the exotic effects predicted to show up in the topologiocal surface states, such as quantized topological magnetoelectricity, the existence of magnetic monopoles, and the creation of Majorana bound states.

Cool Off: Methods For Keeping Your Computer Cool

There's a lot of ways you can prevent your computer from going 'boom' as a result of all of

these factors.
Air Cooling

This is probably the most common, most power intensive, and-at least in my opinion- often the

least efficient method of cooling a PC. One to several fans are installed in the motherboard,

and these fans are used as a sort of 'exhaust vent' system. They move the hot air out of the

PC, and bring cooler air in.  It's not that this isn't a good means of cooling a system. I

mean, if it didn't work, it wouldn't be integrated into almost every laptop and PC on the

market, would it?

The thing is, though, is that air cooling simply isn't as effective as the other methods on

this list. Not only does it increase the power draw of the system, but there's also a certain

limit to how much it can do. After all, a fan can only move so much air, if you're

overclocking your system through the roof, the fans might not necessarily be able to keep up.

Granted, there's several different types and sizes of fans you can get- some of them are

actually quite powerful.  Plus, air cooling does help prevent dust buildup on your computer's

inner components.
Heat Sinks

Another method of cooling the computer is to use a heatsink- a piece of metal that absorbs a

lot of the heat generated by the PC. There are three different 'types' of heatsinks. Passive

heatsinks involve simply clamping the piece of metal onto the components to be cooled and

calling it a day. The problem with this one is dust buildup. Since it acts as an insulator,

the effectiveness of the cooling system is gradually reduced.

An active heatsink adds a fan to the mix, constantly blowing over the metal. This

accomplishes two things: first, it helps to prevent dust buildup on the heatsink. Second, it

reduces the overall temperature, therefore increasing the amount of heat the cooling system's

able to dissipate before reaching its limit. \

Finally, there's a nifty little innovation known as thermoelectric cooling.This involves

using the Peltier effect in a cooling system. Basically, the Peltier effect stipulates that

if there are two different metals between which heat is flowing, and the second metal has a

lower capacity for heat absorption from the first, the heat will have to dissipate before

reaching the second. Thus, the side  that absorbs the heat becomes hot, the side that

releases it becomes cold.

The lack of moving parts makes this a pretty nifty means of cooling a system, but as systems

generate more and more heat, it gets harder and harder to find a thermoelectric cooling

system that will work- or at least one that doesn't break the bank.
Liquid Cooling

We're starting to move towards the higher end stuff. Liquid Cooling involves a series of

tubes, a water pump, and a radiator. The water in these tubes absorbs heat from the computer

components, is carried to the radiator, and dissipates that heat. Rinse and repeat. It's

quiet, it's efficient, and it's probably one of the most popular cooling methods. Plus,

unlike some of the other methods, the liquid cooling pipes can run through the whole

computer, whereas with heat sinks and fans, you can usually only focus on the one or two

components that generate the most heat.

A lot of gaming PCs- I'd say the majority of them- utilize this method of cooling. It works.

Just make sure the pipes don't break.
Liquid Submersion

Now we're talking. Liquid submersion is exactly what it sounds like. Basically, you take the

computer's The Reactor X DesktopThe Reactor X Desktopmotherboard, and dunk it in a liquid

that doesn't conduct electricity, such as mineral oil. And then...well, you're pretty much

done. It keeps the computer cool, it doesn't make noise, and there's no risk of a pipe

breaking and your computer short circuiting as a result. I've a friend whose hobby is

building PCs, and he swears by this method.

Another advantage is that this one doesn't have to be cleaned very often, unlike some of the

other components. Dust buildup's an issue with a lot of desktops and cooling systems, but

liquid submersion...kinda circumvents that a bit.

You may need to insulate or otherwise shield some components of the computer, depending what

liquid you're using; and if the liquid isn't sealed in, evaporation could be a concern. Other

than that, though, this one's pretty nice. 

Asbestos Could Still Be in Your Older Home

Many homes up until the past the 1980's were built with asbestos insulation in the walls. But it might also be elsewhere in the home.

March 14, 2011, Birmingham, AL: For almost a century, asbestos was considered an excellent construction material. It was a great insulator against cold and heat, and it was flame retardant. Because of that, not only homes but businesses had asbestos insulation in the walls, in ceilings and stuffed in an around pipes.

It wasn't until the 1980's that researchers began to discover asbestos is also toxic and may contribute to certain types of cancer, especially mesothelioma. Anthony Westbrook, owner of WHI3 Home Inspection Services, explains in one of his blogs, "Asbestos that is disturbed or damaged due to age is known as "friable" asbestos. This is a serious concern because its toxic fibers can easily circulate and become inhaled."

Asbestos can be found anywhere in homes, even some that were built in the early 1990's. A trained certified home inspector knows to look beyond just the insulation in the walls and perhaps attic. Asbestos can also be found in the materials themselves. Roof shingles, pipe coverings, dry wall board, popcorn ceilings, joint compounds can all be made with asbestos. So can older electrical wires, gaskets, furnace cement & fire brick. Why? Because at the time it was considered a safe way to protect the home or business against damage by fire.

"The best advice is to leave any suspected asbestos un-disturbed until evaluated by a professional." Removal is tricky and should be handled only by those who know how to and how to legally dispose of the tainted materials set out as the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) regulations. "Licensed contractors who remove asbestos, will be familiar with the regulations in protecting you and themselves from exposure to asbestos," says Westbrook. This is one project professional builders, and inspectors say should never be a do-it-yourself one.

Gary Bogue: Reader responses to past columns

Regarding birds lined up on power wires (March 10 column), I have also noticed that for many

years in many other places.

Here's my take on it: The birds are usually lined up adjacent to the wire support points,

i.e. the insulators. Since there is no absolutely "perfect" insulator there will be a minute

voltage drop at the attachment. A voltage drop means there will be a minute current, which

results in a bit of heat. The birds are getting their bony feet warm so that the warmth can

travel up their bony legs to keep their bods warm. By the way, I'm not an electrical

engineer, although I have had some E.E. training. (Claude Benedix in cyberspace)

There are many power lines around the county favored by flocks of birds. Magnetic fields flow

around those lines and maybe a bit of vibration and maybe just enough warmth to tickle and

warm their little clawed toes. Just a thought! (Pat Voth, Martinez)

I, too, have taken the Monument offramp many, many times and notice the birds on the lines

and I have never seen them fly off or on. It seems they just sit there all day long
Advertisement
without moving! My guess is that there is some heat from the lines and it keeps their little

footsies warm. (Bill of Orinda)

Any power company engineers out there like to comment on why flocks of birds only like to sit

on certain spots on certain power lines? (Gary)

Cats that don't play

In your column of March 6 (about the cat that runs and hides from its toys), you told Ruby to

try to have her cat play with some cotton string. Please tell her to put the string out of

her cat's reach when she is not playing with it.

Our cat Cougar got hold of some string and decided to eat it. We ended up spending a bundle

(would do it again if ever needed as he was my baby) to have the string removed from his

intestines.

This is just a word of caution so no other animal has to go through what our Cougar kitty

went through.

Thank you, Gary. (Rita and Danny Martinez, Vallejo)

One piece of advice I'll give to anyone who plans to put an open grocery bag on the floor for

kitties to play in: CUT THE HANDLES OFF! Or at least cut them. Once I gave my cats a grocery

bag to play with, and one got his head caught in one of the handles.

It was quite a task to get him to slow down long enough for me to rescue the panicked little

fellow! (Sandy in San Ramon)

Scratching car covers

This is in regard to your reader whose cat likes to claw the car cover (March 3 column).

When I purchased a classic convertible, it came with an expensive thick "waffled" car cover.

My cat immediately climbed on the roof (convertible, remember?) and started digging into the

thick cover. Not wanting the car top to be damaged, I removed the cover and replaced it with

a good quality plain cotton cover. The cat loved it and spent her outdoor time sleeping on

it, not digging! The texture seems to be the problem.

Does your cat like to use your large planter (box or cask) as a bathroom? I cut pieces of

fiberglass screening (from hardware store) and lay them on the dirt in the planter. No more

issues. In fact, I found the cat sleeping on the screening material. (Dave Pastor,

Pleasanton)

Chemically resistant epoxy withstands year in acid

For applications demanding chemical resistance—acids, fuels, and oils—Master Bond has

developed EP21AR, a two-component epoxy that can withstand harsh, acidic environments. The

epoxy can withstand prolonged immersion in 96 to 98% sulfuric acid and 36% hydrochloric acid

for over a year.

With a dielectric strength of 400 volts/mil, EP21AR is a durable and stable epoxy that is

also an electrical insulator. Its coefficient of thermal expansion is 45-55 ppm/°C, and it

is serviceable from -60°F to +275°F. It produces high-strength, abrasion-resistant bonds

with a tensile strength over 10,000 psi, a shear strength exceeding 2,700 psi, and a

compressive strength greater than 14,000 psi at 75°F.

EP21AR is easy to use with a 2 to 1 mix ratio by weight, and a mixed viscosity of 10,000-

15,000 cps. The epoxy isn't reactive with solvents or diluents and can be applied smoothly in

any thickness. This epoxy has a working life of 45 to 55 minutes at ambient temperature for a

200 gram batch, and cures at room temperature. It bonds well to a variety of substrates,

including metals, glass, ceramics, cements, vulcanized rubbers, wood, and plastics.

EP21AR is packaged in pint, quart, gallon, and five gallon container kits. It is used in

industries including: oil and chemical processing, maintenance and repair, optics,

metalworking, appliance, and electrical/electronic.

Ambitious power sector program of the government will boost the insulators demand

Netscribes (India) Pvt. Ltd., launches a report on the Insulators Market in India

2011 as part of Netscribes’ Power Equipment Industry report series.

Mumbai, India – March 7, 2011 – Netscribes (India) Pvt. Ltd., a knowledge

consulting solutions company, announces the launch of its Insulators Market in India

2011 report. Insulators are a part of the Indian transmission line equipment

industry. They have shown rapid growth owing to the increasing capacity in the power

as well as the transmission lines in India. In India, ceramic insulators are most

widely used by utilities. Composite insulators are however finding a huge market now.

Government is providing huge opportunities to the sector and in order to meet its

11th and 12th Plans proposal, huge capacity additions have been planned for power

generation. This move is expected to entail huge investments by various power

utilities (central, state and private) in Transmission and Distribution (“T&D”)

sector which will boost the consumption of insulators as well. Many State

transmission utilities are also increasing their T&D line network capacity and

associated High Voltage (“HV”) and Extra-High Voltage (“EHV”) Sub Stations which

will again boost the need of insulators.



The report begins with an introduction of the insulators market in India. It gives a

clear overview of the equipment and highlights the category it falls in. The types of

insulators prevalent in India on the basis of material have been analyzed and their

differentiation has been provided on various parameters. A brief overview of the

types of insulators on the basis of construction has also been included to highlight

their requirements at different voltage levels. The market overview section provides

an insight into the Insulator market and includes the market size and growth of

insulators on the basis of value. Market segmentation of the transmission line

equipments has been included on the basis of volume as well as value. The import and

export figures of insulators in India and the region-wise breakup of the same has

been provided.

An analysis of the drivers explains the factors for growth of the industry including

growth in transmission sector, growth in power sector, government initiatives, growth

potential of composite insulators and opportunities offered by private sector. The

key challenges include lack of proper testing facilities and competition from Chinese

products.

The competition section provides an overview of the competitive landscape in the

industry. It includes the segmentation of the market on the basis of organized and

unorganized players with respect to the market in value. It includes a brief profile

of the major players in the market including their financials.

How black holes can be used as models for superconductors

Physicists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown how charged black holes can be used to model the behaviour of interacting electrons in unconventional superconductors.

"The context of this problem is high-temperature superconductivity. One of the great unsolved problems in physics is the origin of superconductivity (a conducting state with zero resistance) in the copper oxide ceramics discovered in 1986," said Philip W. Phillips.

Current semiconductors start off their lives as insulators. In this stage, there are plenty of places for the electrons to hop but nonetheless-no current flows. Such a state of matter, known as a Mott insulator arises from the strong repulsions between the electrons.

Phillips and colleagues wondered, "Is it possible to devise a theory of gravity that mimics a Mott insulator?" As it turned out, there is.

The researchers built on Maldacena's mapping and devised a model for electrons moving in a curved spacetime in the presence of a charged black hole that captures two of the striking features of the normal state of high-temperature superconductors: 1) the presence of a barrier for electron motion in the Mott state, and 2) the strange metal regime in which the electrical resistivity scales as a linear function of temperature, as opposed to the quadratic dependence exhibited by standard metals.

The treatment shows that the boundary of the spacetime consisting of a charged black hole and weakly interacting electrons exhibits a barrier for electrons moving in that region, just as in the Mott state.

"The next big question that we must address," said Phillips, "is how does superconductivity emerge from the gravity theory of a Mott insulator?"

The results of research were published online in Physical Review Letters on March 1 and in Physical Review D on February 25. (ANI)