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Quality control for the series production of home appliances at Bosch and Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH (BSH) in Traunreut, Germany, used to be based on coordinate measuring machines (CMMs). Last year, the tactile measuring system was replaced by optical 3-D measuring technology from Steinbichler…
Robert Sanville
Manufacturers realize that feature location in part design and production is crucial. To produce interchangeable parts in a manufacturing environment, the design must be sound enough to allow mating parts to work correctly. Furthermore, the industrial process must be robust enough to produce…
Nikon Metrology Inc.
The EU’s co-funded COMET project, which seeks to improve the efficiency of European industrial manufacturing, is creating a revolutionary solution that enables robots to perform high-end machining. Robots of any brand fitted with the COMET plug-and-produce controller unit successfully respond to…
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The expression “beauty’s only skin-deep” has often been applied to the chemistry of materials because so much action takes place at the surface. However, for many of the materials in today’s high technologies, such as semiconductors and superconductors, once a device is fabricated, it is the…
Bruce McDuffee
“Please tell me how to map this chamber!” This is a plea we hear at every Vaisala current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) seminar. The question deals with environmentally controlled chambers, everything from small refrigerators or freezers, to walk-in chambers or even large warehouses…
Steven Wachs
In order to maximize profitability while complying with government regulations regarding net package contents, food manufacturers and packagers must achieve an optimal balance. Consistent overfilling to minimize risk is inefficient and sacrifices profitability, while aggressive filling…
UC Davis
Scientists can now look deeper into new materials to study their structure and behavior, thanks to work by an international group of researchers led by University of California, Davis, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The team’s work has been published Aug. 14, 2011, in the…
The purpose of this article is to discuss automated analysis and report generation of
key characteristics measurement data. Key
characteristics (KCs) are those features of a
part whose measurements must be kept to
the nominal values through process control
to minimize the "Taguchi Loss…
The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Center for Neutron Research is expanding the number of beamlines for research purposes from seven to 11 beams. The metrology tasks required to perform the installation of the new beamlines include the design and installation of a high-…
Dimensional Control Systems DCS
Engineers across many manufacturing industries are faced with dimensional engineering challenges as their organizations increase the use of automation on the plant floor.
A critical part of the engineers’ dimensional engineering process involves verifying that the parts being produced meet the…
The buzz surrounding the Coordinate Metrology Society’s (CMS) efforts to bring an industry-recognized certification to the profession of portable 3-D metrology was nearly as prevalent as the buzz about the temperature at this year’s Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference (CMSC) in Phoenix. The…
The U.S. Department of Labor reported 13.9 million unemployed Americans in July 2011, and even the creation of 117,000 jobs last month didn’t put a dent in the 9.1-percent unemployment rate. In fact, there has been little change in the unemployment rate since December 2010. So why am I repeating…
NVision Inc.
Engineers from NVision Inc., using the company's HandHeld scanner, were able to quickly reverse engineer a large impeller for a major hydroelectric facility, sparing the facility what would have been an extended shutdown had they needed to produce a replacement impeller from scratch. In less than…
With a heavy focus on research and development, and innovation, Eltek Valere develops and manufactures advanced electronic power supplies. They were the first company to release and manufacture a high-efficiency power rectifier.
Eltek Valere is the world technology leader in energy conversion,…
Mike Richman
From the minute I arrived on site, I knew that this would be a Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference unlike any other. First of all, it was in Phoenix… in July. So, the 100-plus-degree temperature wasn’t unexpected; the humidity, on the other hand, was a bit of a surprise. The evening preceding…
NIST
The electromagnetic force has gotten a little stronger, gravity a little weaker, and the size of the smallest “quantum” of energy is now known a little better. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has posted the latest internationally recommended values of the fundamental…
NIST
Terahertz radiation can penetrate numerous materials—plastic, clothing, paper, and some biological tissues—making it an attractive candidate for applications such as concealed weapons detection, package inspection, and imaging skin tumors. However, to date there is no standard method for…
Tracker Handbook by Art Kietlinski
Despite a laser tracker’s many capabilities, its main function presents some limitations that can make it difficult to measure certain features of a part. Line-of-sight or scanning surfaces with a small radius or contour may be a challenge when using only a laser tracker.
Before other…
FARO
Variation Reduction Solutions Inc. (VRSI) is an independent integrator of machine vision and applied metrology technologies for automated manufacturing. The company focuses on achieving disruptive gains in assembly-process accuracy and efficiency through the innovative application of…
Cognex Corp.
Since 1975, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has required that all prescription tablets or capsules have a unique identification in terms of size, shape, color, and imprint. Drug makers use the imprints both to identify the chemical substance and dosage and for promotional purposes.…
Microscan
Machine vision systems rely on quality images for quality output. High-quality images enable a system to accurately interpret the information extracted from an object under inspection, resulting in reliable, repeatable system performance. The quality of the image acquired in any vision…
NIST
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a tunable superconducting circuit on a chip that can place a single microwave photon (a particle of light) in two frequencies, or colors, at the same time.
This curious “superposition,” a hallmark of the quantum…
Daniel Brown
Traditionally, 3-D dimensional inspection was performed in the quiet, stable, spotless, and controlled environment of quality labs. But during the past few decades, manufacturers have been increasingly interested in measuring devices that are both comprehensive in scope and portable. Nowadays,…
Frost and Sullivan
Since 2009, there has been a recovery in the white-light scanner market, and the manufacturing industry and metrology vendors acknowledge this. However, research indicates that there is still uncertainty among end-user spending.
White-light scanner end-users are increasingly becoming aware and…
GKS Global Services
A Minnesota-based manufacturer of high-quality ATV, snowmobile, and motorcycle parts and accessories had a design and development problem with a snow blade that created a lot of time-consuming rework. Thanks to 3-D scanning from GKS Global Services, the problem was recently solved.
The…