All Features
Thwing-Albert Instrument Company
Quality control workflows are only as effective as the machinery they rely on. Ensuring functionality requires understanding what to test and how to measure these factors. Consequently, choosing appropriate material testing equipment is a crucial—if overlooked—step in the quality assurance process…
Silke von Gemmingen
In areas such as high-precision metalworking, accuracy is nonnegotiable. This includes the automotive industry and its suppliers, which are in crisis in Germany for several reasons. The industry is under enormous pressure to deliver products of impeccable quality while reducing operating costs (for…
Creaform
Hawthorne High School of Manufacturing & Engineering in Los Angeles is not your typical high school program. Led by program coordinator Lucas Pacheco, it’s a hub where young minds are immersed in advanced manufacturing and engineering design courses. With a hands-on curriculum covering multi-…
Alexander Kramida
Nearly everything we know about the universe comes from light. Cosmologists learn about the universe by studying light from faraway stars and comparing what it shows us to the light of the same atoms here on Earth. Astronomers use this information to study the expansion of the universe after the…
Sabine Terrasi
Today, modern measurement technologies enable high-precision detection of the movement of liquids and gases, providing valuable data for numerous applications. How does air flow around an airplane? How does blood move through our veins? And how can pollutant emissions in combustion processes be…
Krister Shalm
One lecture in an undergraduate quantum physics class changed my life forever.
It was 2001, and the professor introduced the idea that physicists could use quantum particles to build a new kind of superpowerful computer. I was so captivated by the idea that quantum physics could lead to…
Akli Adjaoute
Keeping quality high in today’s fast-moving production world is a big challenge. Traditional quality checks have worked well, but they can be slow, require a lot of work, and are prone to mistakes.
AI could change this by making quality control faster, more accurate, and easier to scale. It could…
Creaform
Clarkson University is a private national research university in upstate New York and a leader in technological education. As one of the many Student Projects for Engineering Experience and Design (SPEED), the Clarkson University Clean Snowmobile Team is a student-led initiative driven by a passion…
Donald J. Wheeler
Outliers are values that don’t “fit in” with the rest of the data. These extreme values are commonly considered a nuisance when we seek to summarize the data with our descriptive statistics. This article will show how to turn these nuisances into useful information.
The earliest statistical tests…
Steven Ouellette
Many industries, from aerospace to medical device manufacturing, are required to show customers, auditors, or regulatory bodies that their measurement devices are acceptable for use. But how do you prove that?
One of my clients needed to show the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development…
IDS Imaging Development Systems
The slit-lamp examination is one of the most important diagnostic techniques in ophthalmology. It enables a detailed examination of the anterior, middle, and posterior segments of the eye. Ophthalmologists can use it to recognize the smallest changes, anomalies, or damage. This procedure is used…
Creaform
Each type of part presents its own set of inspection challenges. This is especially true for sheet metal parts that are made of various entities, each with different positioning and dimensioning tolerances, and variable thickness gauges and sizes. These features can be inherently laborious to…
George Schuetz
Machinists working strictly in metalworking shops don’t have many occasions to gage the thickness of soft materials. But many of our readers work in supporting roles, helping to build or maintain the machines that produce textiles, plastic films, paper, and other products that are compressible.…
Creaform
Maintaining high-quality standards is critical in the heavy equipment industry. Customers rely on manufacturers to deliver products that perform reliably in harsh and demanding operating conditions. The stakes are high. Deviation from quality and overlooked detail can lead to expensive warranty…
Creaform
GKN Aerospace Deutschland is a global tier-one supplier of airframe and engine structures, landing gear, electrical interconnection systems, transparencies, and aftermarket services.
The company has more than 38 manufacturing locations in 12 countries and 17,000 employees worldwide. It…
Sergey Sukhovey
The collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024 was the consequence of a long-standing problem: the fragility of aging infrastructure. As reconstruction gets underway on an estimated four-year timeline, the disaster reflects the urgent need for better bridge inspection nationwide…
Tara Fortier
If you’ve heard or read about quantum mechanics, you may have seen it described as “weird.” Even the great Albert Einstein—one of the founders of quantum mechanics—called certain aspects of the theory “spooky.”
With its wave-like particles and particle-like waves, quantum mechanics certainly…
Creaform
For 185 years, Bharat Forge CDP has been a hallmark of expertise and craftsmanship in metal forging and forming. The German company is known worldwide as an innovative leader and trusted supplier to a wide range of industries, including automotive, rail transportation, and mechanical engineering…
Creaform
Founded in 2007 by three-time World Sportscar Champion Wayne Taylor, Wayne Taylor Racing has quickly become one of the most recognized motor sports brands around the world.
WTR is indeed a powerhouse. It has secured numerous wins across an impressive range of iconic events and race series,…
Siemens USA
Since the early 1980s, the automotive industry has used hydraulically actuated (servo-hydraulic) test systems to simulate operating speeds and road conditions for testing OEM components and fully assembled vehicles. These systems have helped unlock vast improvements in the quality, safety, and…
Yushiro Kato
Artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining momentum across a vast array of fields. Nearly everyone has tried or actively uses a form of AI, whether for personal or professional purposes. Many are finding benefits of the technology in industries that use large amounts of data that must be analyzed,…
Peter Beaucage
Every time you squeeze toothpaste onto your toothbrush, spray perfume on your skin, or swallow a pill, you’re using the result of a carefully crafted recipe made in a lab. These are called formulations.
Formulations aren’t just simple mixtures—they’re complex arrangements of ingredients designed…
Donald J. Wheeler
In last month’s article, “ANOVA and the Process Behavior Chart,” we saw how both techniques use the same basic comparison to answer completely different questions. Here, we’ll look at a case history where both techniques were used.
A physical property of a mass-produced item was important to its…
NIST
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new thermometer using atoms boosted to such high energy levels that they are 1,000 times larger than normal. By monitoring how these giant “Rydberg” atoms interact with heat in their environment, researchers can…
NIST
Without us realizing it, metrology and its associated standards and services play a big role in our daily lives. We buy groceries that are weighed or measured. Prepackaged products are weighed or measured during production. Medicine at the pharmacy is measured to make sure it contains the right…
