Bird-B-Gone's new Bird Spider has stainless steel "arms" that move with the wind to keep birds from landing and causing damage to buildings and fences. The arms are attached to a center fixture, allowing them to move about freely and randomly to keep birds away. The Bird Spider comes in four- and eight-foot widths and includes an adaptor to mount the Spider in the desired location. Bird-B-Gone, phone: 949-472-3122, web: www.birdbgone.com

Mobile Warehouse Technology Serves Marines in Iraq

An army travels on its stomach, it's said. Right behind a good meal, a successful military effort needs the right parts at the right time to keep sophisticated weapons and equipment in battle-ready condition.

To ensure they had the right materials to do their jobs in Iraq, the U.S. Marines turned to FKI Logistex White Systems. FKI Logistex White Systems supplied a unique container carousel system that enables quick and orderly dispensing of small maintenance and repair parts. Serving as a "mini-warehouse-in-a-box," the new parts carousel system is being used in conjunction with the USMC's STRATS (storage retrieval automated tracking integration system) material inventory and control system.

Housed in a container for rapid deployment to remote locations, the unit is shipped fully stocked and dropped at the staging location. Once delivered, FKI Logistex White Systems's container carousel system gives the Marines all of the benefits of a horizontal carousel. The system features an automated system of linked bins that travels around an oval track and brings parts to the picker via the shortest route.

"The primary goal of the container carousels is to provide high-density storage and dedicated locations for materials," explained John Molloy, vice president of FKI Logistex White Systems. "We've designed this equipment as a mini-warehouse, able to be shipped, carted, and dropped as a standard ocean-freight container, offering the USMC the capability of storing and accessing their components effectively within a high-density carousel."

Designed to use the entire 388-cubic feet interior of the container for parts storage, the FKI Logistex White Systems carousel saved Marine Corps field personnel precious time by bringing supplies to the operator and providing access to supplies and redundant system control from all four sides of the container.

"We've designed this container carousel system to give the Marines the flexibility and durability they need in storing and retrieving small parts in the field," he added. "These carousels are an excellent way to mobilize inventory for rapid deployment of any material that fits, be it fire-fighting out west or the war in Iraq. Control software can drive the carousels to accomplish almost any distribution need.

"Employees kept asking where they [the carousels] are now and how they are doing," Molloy said. "There was a great sense of pride and patriotism at White resulting from our efforts to supply a state-of-the-art solution to our soldiers." FKI Logistex, phone: 877-935-4564, web: www.fkilogistex.com

Irwin Unibit Saves a "Hole" Bunch of Mechanic Time

Making a hole larger in a metal instrument panel is a lot simpler if you have the right tool. In this particular case, I needed to enlarge a hole to fit a new mixture control cable. I started with a small round file but quickly realized that this was going to take a long, long time, and the resulting hole wouldn't be so pretty. Luckily, IRWIN Industrial Tools had sent one of its Unibit Step Drills, a clever device that can cut holes in metal at various diameters, thanks to the stepped shape of the tool. The Unibit easily cuts through aluminum and made short work of expanding the hole in my instrument panel to the desired 3/4-inch diameter. The only caveat: if the metal is thicker than the shoulder on the Unibit, you might have to drill in from the other side of the piece to carve out the hole uniformly. The Unibit fits in a regular 3/8-inch chuck and is simple to use and effective and comes in various sizes and materials, depending on the application. IRWIN Industrial Tools, web: www.irwin.com