Strutting its stuff

摘要

In the sci-fi classic War of the Worlds, HG Wells conjured up tripods that could conquer the world. While his Martian war-machines are impractical as transport (highly impressive to look at, but too unstable), a similar solution could be about to make major inroads into the machine tool market. Many engineering sectors, particularly the tool, die and aerospace industries, need high-precision machining, and all of them place a premium on speed. But there's usually a trade-off between the two — the faster you work, the less precise you are. Engineers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, have devised their own tripod in the form of a piece of mounting equipment, which could get around this problem.