EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. & REHOVOT, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 20, 2024--
Stratasys Ltd. (NASDAQ: SSYS) today announced that Gulf Wind Technology, a company dedicated to advancing rotor design for wind turbines, is using Stratasys additive manufacturing solutions to enhance their ability to test and improve wind turbine models. Gulf Wind Technology’s implementation of Stratasys technologies showcases the unique advantages of additive manufacturing alongside traditional methods, offering significant improvements in design iteration turnaround time and flexibility.
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By adopting Stratasys Neo® stereolithography (SLA) technology, Gulf Wind Technology has dramatically reduced the design and fabrication cycle for wind tunnel models. What previously took 30 to 40 days to iterate and finalize a design can now be completed in just 3 to 4 days. The technology also allows for specialized features such as pressure taps for real-time airflow data, which are difficult or impossible to execute with conventional manufacturing methods.
“By leveraging the Stratasys Neo® SLA system we can generate far more data in a shorter time. This has enabled us to run our design process with more rigor, become more efficient, and take on business that we previously had to turn away,” said James Martin, CEO of Gulf Wind Technology. “Additive manufacturing allows our engineers to design internal structures, and pressure taps directly into our test models, which we couldn’t achieve with traditional methods.”
Rich Garrity, Chief Business Unit Officer at Stratasys, added, “Our work with Gulf Wind Technology demonstrates how manufacturers are adopting additive manufacturing where it makes the most sense for their business. By leveraging its unique advantages, Gulf Wind Technology can rapidly prototype and test complex designs, greatly improving their efficiency and ability to innovate. This is a perfect example of how 3D printing is expanding its place on the manufacturing floor alongside traditional methods.”
The technical capabilities of 3D printing have been essential to Gulf Wind Technology’s rotor design process. Using Stratasys Neo® SLA technology, Gulf Wind Technology can produce models with Somos® PerFORM Reflect™ material, which offers high strength, stiffness, and temperature resistance – critical attributes for wind tunnel testing. Due to the superior attributes of the resin, the printed parts post process and handling is simple and straight forward – from removal of support materials, to cleaning resin from internal channels to placement in a wind tunnel.
Inspired by the use of 3D printing in Formula 1 racing, Gulf Wind Technology’s engineers recognized the potential for rapid iteration and optimization in wind turbine design. With Stratasys' solutions, Gulf Wind Technology can test airfoil shapes and rotor designs faster than ever, allowing them to maximize wind energy efficiency for applications in the Gulf of Mexico.
About Stratasys
Stratasys is leading the global shift to additive manufacturing with innovative 3D printing solutions for industries such as aerospace, automotive, consumer products, and healthcare. Through smart and connected 3D printers, polymer materials, a software ecosystem, and parts on demand, Stratasys solutions deliver competitive advantages at every stage in the product value chain. The world’s leading organizations turn to Stratasys to transform product design, bring agility to manufacturing and supply chains, and improve patient care.
To learn more about Stratasys, visit www.stratasys.com, the Stratasys blog, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook. Stratasys reserves the right to utilize any of the foregoing social media platforms, including Stratasys’ websites, to share material, non-public information pursuant to the SEC’s Regulation FD. To the extent necessary and mandated by applicable law, Stratasys will also include such information in its public disclosure filings.
3D printing helps advance wind tunnel testing and shorten design iteration. Gulf Wind Technology dramatically reduced the design and fabrication cycle for wind tunnel models. What previously took 30 to 40 days to iterate and finalize a design can now be completed in just 3 to 4 days. (Photo: Business Wire)
3D printing helps advance wind tunnel testing and shorten design iteration. Gulf Wind Technology dramatically reduced the design and fabrication cycle for wind tunnel models. What previously took 30 to 40 days to iterate and finalize a design can now be completed in just 3 to 4 days. (Photo: Business Wire)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of killing her two sons by rolling her car into a lake in 1994 with the boys strapped in their seats inside, will ask a parole board for her freedom on Wednesday.
Smith, 53, is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted her of murder but decided not to sentence her to death. Under state law at the time, she is eligible for a parole hearing every two years now that she has spent 30 years behind bars.
Smith will make her case for freedom to the seven-member parole board by video link from prison. Then she will go offline, and her ex-husband and father of the children, as well as the prosecutor at her murder trial, will argue that she remain incarcerated.
Smith killed 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex because a man she was having an affair with suggested the boys were the reason they didn’t have a future together, prosecutors said.
In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show that aired Wednesday, ex-husband David Smith said that 30 years is not enough and that he doesn’t think she will ever be rehabilitated.
“God gives us free will and that was her choice that night — nobody else’s choice. Nobody made it for her,” David Smith said. “She made the choice to murder Michael and Alex.”
A decision to grant parole requires a two-thirds vote of board members present at the hearing, according to the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. Parole in South Carolina is granted only about 8% of the time and is less likely with an inmate’s first appearance before the board, in notorious cases or when prosecutors and the families of victims are opposed.
Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was carjacked late at night near the city of Union and that a man drove away with her sons inside.
For nine days, Smith made numerous and sometimes tearful pleas asking that Michael and Alex be returned safely. The whole time, the boys were in Smith’s car at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake, authorities said.
Investigators said Smith’s story didn’t add up. Carjackers usually just want a vehicle, so investigators asked why would they let Smith out but not her kids. The traffic light where Smith said she had stopped when her car was taken would only be red if another car was waiting to cross, and Smith said no other cars were around. Other bits and pieces of the story did not make sense.
Smith ultimately confessed to letting her car roll down a boat ramp and into the lake. A re-creation by investigators showed it took six minutes for the Mazda to dip below the surface, while cameras inside the vehicle showed water pouring in through the vents and steadily rising. The boys’ bodies were found dangling upside-down in their car seats, one tiny hand pressed against a window,
Prosecutors said Smith was having an affair with the wealthy son of the owner of the business she worked at. He broke it off because she had the two young sons.
Smith’s lawyers said she was remorseful, was suffering a mental breakdown and intended to die alongside her children but left the car at the last moment.
The 1995 trial of the young mother became a national sensation and a true crime touchstone even though it wasn’t televised by a judge who worried about what cameras were doing to the O.J. Simpson murder trial going on at the same time. Her lawyers worked to save her life, noting that Smith's father had killed himself and that her stepfather was having sex with her along with the owner of the business where she worked.
From prison, Smith can make phone calls and answer text messages, many coming from journalists and interested men. Those messages and phone calls were released under South Carolina’s open records act, something Smith didn’t initially realize could happen. She said the invasion of her privacy upset her along with the public revelation that she was juggling conversations about the future with several men.
Some men know why she is famous. Others are more coy. One told her he was going to use the dates of her birthday and those of her dead sons when he played the Powerball lottery. Others chatted about their lives and sports. Many promised her a home on the outside and a happy life.
Smith says in some of the messages she still grieves for her children.
“I am really sad today and just want to hang out in the bed. Today is my youngest son’s birthday, he would have been 30 today. Hard to believe,” Smith wrote in August 2023.
Smith also had sex with guards. And she violated prison policies by giving out contact information for friends, family members and her ex-husband to a documentary producer who discussed paying her for her help, according to former prosecutor Tommy Pope.
“The jury believed she got a life sentence and that’s what she should serve,” Pope said last month shortly after the parole hearing was announced.
This May 24, 2021 mage provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows Susan Smith. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)
FILE - The grave of Michael and Alex Smith at the Bogansville Methodist Church in West Springs, S.C., July 23, 1995. (AP Photo/Ruth Fremson, file)
FILE - In a July 9, 1995 file photo, visitors walk down the ramp where Alex and Michael Smith were drowned in a car in 1994 in Union, S.C., by their mother, Susan Smith. (AP Photo/Lou Krasky, File)
Susan and David Smith address reporters Nov. 2, 1994 during a news conference in Union, S.C. They pleaded for the safe return of their sons, 14-month-old Alex, and Michael, 3, who had been missing since an alleged car-jack-kidnapping over a week earlier. (AP photo/Mary Ann Chastain)
