Gary Bell
It is all too common in the industry: A part design is created and sent out for production only to hit repeated snags as questions arise about datums, locators, symbols, and values. Even simple...
Mike Richman
One of the highlights on our calendar each year is the first Friday in October, which is Manufacturing Day here in the United States. This event offers us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
During the past five to 10 years, the United States has seen more industry and academic institutions embrace apprenticeship programs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2013 to 2017,...
Mike Richman
IMTS was a blast, but it was great to be back home in lovely Northern California this week. On this episode of QDL, we covered the skills that workers need and the innovations that organizations want...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
We’re almost done with another great IMTS, and we had a ball seeing old friends and meeting new ones while bringing you all the action right here on QDL. In this, our final episode from Chicago, we...
Mike Richman
With more than 110,000 expected attendees, IMTS is Chicago’s hottest suburb this week. (I like to refer to it as “Manufactureville.”) Here’s what we covered during our second show of the week, from...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
We arrived in Chicago over the weekend to luxuriously appointed accommodations and much fanfare (that’s how it is when you’re the cast and crew of the No. 1 talk show in the quality industry). In our...
Mike Richman
IMTS is almost here, so we previewed the show, considered an important industry-academia partnership within manufacturing, and asked serious questions about the nature of motivation. Let’s take a...
Mike Richman
This week’s show contained a range of fun and interesting content from some of our favorite corners of the world of quality. Here’s what we covered:
“More Unidentified Museum Objects”
The...
Jason Stoughton
The underground storage shelves of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Museum are filled with loads of charmingly weird objects accrued throughout more than a century of...
Richard Wilkinson
Whether it’s the effort to redefine the kilogram or researching the Harry Potter realm of quantum mechanics where things can somehow be in two or more places at one time, quite a bit of the...
Henry Zumbrun
Load cells are a combination of metal, strain gauges, glue, and more. Over time, fatigue ensures that there will be some instability in the system. Load cell stability or drift is usually assumed to...
Guangnan Meng
Modern 3D laser confocal scanning microscopes can resolve fine surface topography detail as minute as a few nanometers, quickly and easily. It’s the solution that advanced manufacturing industries...
Ryan E. Day
Factory and industrial inspections are the backbones of robust quality assurance programs. Inspection is also an integral part of machine system installation and maintenance, as well as in-situ...
Andrew Nobleman
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has campuses in Maryland, Colorado, South Carolina, and Hawaii. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Hawaiian campus? How do I get a job at...
Nikon Metrology Inc.
A recent interview with Tadashi Nakayama, Nikon’s corporate vice president, provides insight into the strategy of the firm’s Industrial Metrology Business Unit, of which he is deputy general manager...
Carl Zeiss IMT
The Hintsteiner Group in Austria inspects its customers’ complex components with the ZEISS COMET L3D. The company enjoys a global reputation, and designs and manufactures niche products for the...
Amanda Hunt
Tensile testing of materials is critical to a wide array of industries, which means preparing specimens for testing is equally important. If a specimen is not prepared correctly, the test results...
Ryan E. Day
First article inspection (FAI) is that critical step between design and production which verifies that the factory’s production line can manufacture a part on a mass scale. Aerospace, automotive...
NIST
Story update 7/13/2018: This story was updated with a link to the released version of standard E3125–17.
Large-volume 3D laser scanners play an essential role in manufacturing large products (e.g.,...
