All Features
Mike Campbell, Ben Hughes, Dan Veal
I n this article, we present a wide angle, frequency scanning interferometer (FSI) system capable of measuring the absolute distance to multiple targets simultaneously.
A spatial light modulator has been integrated into the FSI sensor head, projecting multiple beams towards targets. Absolute…
NIST
Let’s say you’re a biotechnologist working to develop new medicines or a better test for forensic analysis. You might find yourself frequently using absorbance spectroscopy, a technique that allows researchers to identify even small amounts of a substance (such as DNA) or an antibody based on how…
Nikolai Klimov
Physicists at NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) have been working on a new class of chip-based photonic thermometers that measure temperature with light. Now the team has reached another key milestone with the creation of a system that tests and packages their photonic thermometers…
Howard Yoon
As a physicist who explores ways to measure light more accurately, it should come as no surprise that I’m fascinated by even common optical phenomena that we see all around us (e.g., rainbows or oil slicks on butterfly wings).
Rainbows occur because light travels through water and air at…
Beamex
For more than a century, Salt River Project (SRP) has produced power and delivered water to meet the needs of its customers in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. Today, as one of the nation’s largest public power utilities, SRP provides reliable electricity and water to more than 1 million…
NIST
A collaboration between NIST researchers and a private-sector firm has led to the development of a commercial device to fill a critical need in industry: calibration of laser tracking systems.
Laser trackers are state-of-the-art instruments capable of measuring the dimensions of objects as large…
Randy Long
A study conducted by the Laboratory Accreditation Bureau of noncompliances during accreditation assessments to ISO/IEC 17025—“General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories” found that the most cited clauses were found in section 5.4—“Methods and method validation…
NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been pioneering antenna measurement methods for decades, but a new robot may be the ultimate innovation, extending measurements to higher frequencies while characterizing antennas faster and more easily than previous NIST facilities.…
Automated Precision Inc.
All machine tools need maintenance, adjustment, and calibration over time. For precision multi-axis machines, scheduled service including machine conditions, performance, and calibration are necessary to maintain machine performance, thereby reducing scrap or rework. Regular calibration is also a…
NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is about to open the world’s most accurate facility for calibrating infrared (IR) detectors. What makes this possible is an extremely precise reference scale based on NIST’s newly developed standard detectors with sensitivities two orders…
NIST
In a world of incessant change, some things have to stay the same. One is the set of values for the fundamental physical constants—such as the speed of light or the charge of the electron—that underlie precision measurements in industry, science, and medicine worldwide.
Yet even the constants…
Artec 3D
Thames Water is the United Kingdom’s largest water and wastewater services provider with more than 15 million customers. As part of its business, Thames Water delivers an average of 2,600 million liters of drinking water every day. The company’s cast-iron water mains in many areas of London and…
Capture 3D
To reduce weight and fuel consumption, the aerospace industry increasingly relies on lightweight materials and new material combinations. That’s why the entire fuselage of the Airbus A350 XWB consists of carbon fiber composite (CFC) materials. In total, the long-haul aircraft reaches a CFC portion…
Rina Molari-Korgel
What a busy year for the Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS). To get you updated, I will need to throw a lot of numbers and dates your way. Here we go!
The 2015 Coordinate Metrology Society Conference (CMSC) in Hollywood, Florida, was a great success. Forty-five exhibitors and a newly expanded…
In aerospace vehicle manufacturing and assembly, including that at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, measurements of composite part thickness are required for ensuring that underlying processes are within tolerance, and for achieving outer-mold line-control surface requirements.
This article…
Belinda Jones
This past summer, the Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS) and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte were awarded an Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia (AMTech) grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department.…
Thermal chambers have found a place in the psyche of test, quality, and production engineers—and for good reason. Chambers have been a staple for testing and conditioning materials and electronics for many decades.
First developed as passive conditioning tools, chambers have become standard fare…
NIST
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Intel have reported success in using an X-ray scattering technique to accurately measure features on a silicon chip to within fractions of a nanometer, or about the width of a single silicon atom.
The achievement could…
William Tandler
Editor's note: The original version of this “classic” article by William Tandler first appeared in Quality Digest media in June 2008 and was based on the ASME Y14.5 1994 standard. Updated here to address the ASME Y14.5 2009 standard, it is an alphabetically organized primer of the terms that…
Michael Huda
What happens to products when color goes wrong? It’s wrong color that keeps discount stores in business. Copy paper that isn’t quite bright enough, a label with the wrong color red, or a pillowcase that’s a shade off from the rest of the sheets, and the product is rejected. A discounter can buy…
New River Kinematics
Learning to effectively use and troubleshoot geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) analysis can be a saving grace when you’re faced with the question, “Why did my check fail?”
This article will explain the fundamental principles of GD&T evaluation and provide practices to…
Dan Perreault
Sponsored Content
The CMM, or coordinate measuring machine, has long been the standard for dimensional inspection of complex parts across a variety of industries. But has the CMM outlived its usefulness? Is this technology now obsolete in the face of new technologies such as 3D scanning?
The …
Marc Silverstein
Because many types of image analyses are performed to meet the different needs of industries and applications, imaging software and microscope companies have created software that serves as a “jack of all trades,” offering a variety of tools that apparently allow you to accomplish just about…
Meindert Anderson
Sponsored Content
Ultrasonic flaw detection is a powerful nondestructive testing (NDT) technology and a well-established test method in many industries. However it can seem complex to a person who has not worked with it.
Modern ultrasonic flaw detectors are small, portable, microprocessor-based…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Life may be as unpredictable as a box of chocolates, but ideally, you always know what you’re going to get from a quantum dot. A quantum dot should produce one, and only one, photon—the smallest constituent of light—each time it is energized. This characteristic makes…