All Features
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
‘Engineering is about building things to help others.”
Before diving into a longer explanation, that’s how Singanallur “Venkat” Venkatakrishnan, an electrical and computer engineer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), described engineering to students at Northwest…
NIST
Unlike diamonds, solar panels are not forever. Ultraviolet rays, gusts of wind, and heavy rain wear away at them over their lifetime.
Manufacturers typically guarantee that panels will endure the elements for at least 25 years before experiencing significant drop-offs in power generation, but…
Kevin Hill
Analytical balance scales are a part of many laboratories. If you use them regularly, you need to keep the analytical scales well-maintained. They are extremely sensitive, and factors like dust, vibration, and air drafts will throw off the accuracy of the scales. This is why it is important to…
Joyce Yeung
Additive manufacturing (AM, aka 3D printing) is increasingly accepted as an end-product manufacturing method, rather than just for prototyping. However, ensuring the final quality of parts for use in critical applications such as medical, and particularly aerospace, can still be a labor- and cost-…
Casandra Robinson
Perhaps for as many as 40,000 years, people have been protecting their feet with some type of covering, initially using animal hides and fur. Today, footwear has become high-tech, sophisticated, and in some cases smart, incorporating sensors that communicate with apps on your phone. Much of the…
Jennifer Lauren Lee
3D printing of metal objects is a booming industry, with the market for products and services worth more than an estimated $2.3 billion in 2015, a nearly fivefold growth since 2010, according to Wohlers Report 2016. For this type of manufacturing, a metal part is built up successively, layer by…
Annalise Suzuki
The argument for moving toward enterprisewide model-based definition is simple: The way we describe products is increasingly digital, not paper-based. The way we optimize and validate products seems almost entirely digital, except for a few remaining destructive tests. The way our production…
Ryan E. Day
With more than 300 employees headquartered in a modern 150,000+ sq ft facility, Plasser American Corp. (PAC) manufactures top-quality, heavy railway construction and maintenance equipment for customers in North America. To stay competitive with international competition, PAC continually looks for…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
What a year.
No matter your job, your industry, or your political beliefs, this year has been a heck of a ride. The (still ongoing) trade war with China, manufacturing gains (and losses), the 737 MAX, Hong Kong riots, North Korea, Brexit, impeachment. What a mixed bag of ups and downs that has…
As usual with Quality Digest’s diverse audience, this year’s top stories covered a wide range of topics applicable to quality professionals. From hardware to software, from standards to risk management, from China trade to FDA regulations. It’s always fun to see what readers gravitate to, and this…
NVision Inc.
It roamed Texas long before the first dinosaurs. Growing to 12 ft in length, with powerful jaws and specialized teeth for stabbing and tearing apart its prey, it was not a creature you’d want to encounter while on a Saturday morning hike. “It” was Dimetrodon limbatus, and a fossilized skeleton of…
Ryan E. Day
Headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Plasan North America (PNA) manufactures metal, composite, and ceramic-composite components for defense and commercial applications. PNA brings decades of process experience to bear in creating the world’s most advanced armor, metal components, and…
Dustin Poppendieck
On August 29, 2005, I was starting my first semester teaching freshman environmental engineering majors at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. At the exact same time, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi with 190 kph (120 mph) winds and a storm surge in excess of 6 meters (…
Ryan E. Day
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Dimensional Engineering was born on the back of a dream, a major contract from an aircraft manufacturer, and a process developed specifically to fulfill that project. Dimensional Engineering has steadily grown to become a full-service team of consulting and field…
NIST
Just as a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, the deformations and fractures that cause catastrophic failure in materials begin with a few molecules torn out of place. This in turn leads to a cascade of damage at increasingly larger scales, culminating in total mechanical breakdown.…
Belinda Jones
TheEndoftheEndGame
It wasn't so long ago that metrology and inspection were reserved for the end of the manufacturing process. Metrologists were often considered to be a necessary evil, a harbinger of bad (or good) news, and in some cases, the unfortunate person who explained after a first article…
Matthew Ilardo
Without question, 2019 has been a great year for all of us at the Coordinate Metrology Society.
First of all, we celebrated our 35th anniversary, and the 10th year of our Measurement Zone. Our annual event, CMSC 2019, was a huge success this summer in Orlando with great new programs, a fantastic…
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is strategically constructed on the summit of Haleakala, 10,023 ft above sea level, which is an ideal vantage point for solar observations. Site construction started in 2012 and moved into the integration, testing, and commissioning (IT&C) phase…
Mike Richman
Current Coordinate Metrology Society Chair Matt Ilardo of Brookhaven National Laboratory and CMS PrecisionPath Consortium Co-Chair, Professor Ed Morse of the University of North Carolina–Charlotte, are expert metrologists who always seek to share the importance of precision measurement with members…
Davis Balestracci
In 2006 I was at a presentation by a world leader in quality (WLQ) who has been singing W. Edwards Deming’s praises since the late 1980s and even does the famous red bead experiment as part of some of his plenaries.
He presented the following bar graph showing a comparison of the sum of rankings…
Samantha Maragh
I didn’t understand what people were asking me when I was a kid. The question would come in several different forms. Sometimes it was, “What are you?” Other times it was, “Where are you from?” I would answer with things I knew to be true, like, “I’m a girl,” or, “I’m a person,” or, “I’m from…
Alberto Castiglioni
Ensuring the quality of a car’s performance and design, FARO 3D measurement technology solutions provide simple yet accurate ways of taking contact and noncontact measurements for quality control in automobile manufacturing and assembly.
Portable CMMs such as articulated arms can be used for rapid…
Ryan E. Day
Every year, Manufacturing Day brings attention to the career path that has financed millions of growing families throughout the decades—including mine. This attention also recalls the ongoing shortage of people to fill the thousands of available jobs in manufacturing. The same can be said for the…
Jody Muelaner
Attribute gauges are a type of measurement instrument or process that gives a binary pass/fail measurement result. Examples of attribute gauges include go/no-go plug gauges, feeler gauges, and many other types of special-purpose hard gauges. Many visual-inspection processes may also be considered…
Jody Muelaner
I’ve written a lot about how to evaluate the uncertainty measurements. My articles have ranged from basic introductions to metrology and uncertainty budgets, to more advanced topics such as sensitivity coefficients and Monte Carlo simulation. To date, all of the examples I’ve used have been for…