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The powder metallurgy (PM) process offers manufacturers the ability to produce high volumes of complex parts in a cost effective manner. Many powder metallurgy components go through heat-treat processes producing parts with increased strength or wear resistance. To ensure the quality of the heat…
Capture 3D
Today’s challenges in the turbine industry to meet the ever growing requirement to manufacture parts faster, on schedule, and at reduced costs, have made it apparent to industry experts that traditional inspection methods are too slow and inadequate to achieve the required results. With the…
GKS Global Services
A mechanical engineering firm was contracted to install new cooling equipment in a municipal ice rink’s mechanical room. The challenge was to design the equipment installation without tearing out the old equipment first, and to install some elements and piping that housed the refrigerant around…
Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs) are used in practically every industry that requires precise dimensional inspection of manufactured parts. In today’s competitive environment, manufacturers demand CMMs that are accurate, reliable, fast, economical, and provide maximum flexibility with respect…
Located near Montreal, Canada, the Nova Bus manufacturing team was routinely building many hundreds of complete bus frames per year. Production grew as new models were introduced. The addition of a new diesel electric hybrid design necessitated a re-examination of the quality inspection…
Dave Maxham
A joint project of NCMS called Volumetric Accuracy for Large Machine Tools (VALMT), partnering Automated Precision, Boeing, Siemens and Mag Cincinnati, has pioneered an innovative process and established new methodology in volumetric error compensation for large machine tools. Volumetric error…
Bob Cramblitt
Although he’s not one for clichés, Rus Emerick, process improvement specialist at Schneider-Electric, endorses this one: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
This concept, which dates back to Aristotle, is at the core of an approach called functional analysis that has…
Ron Rode
As “Old Man Winter” continues to toss his wrath at many of us, it is quite easy to turn our thoughts toward warmer, sunnier places. One of those locations we are all starting to think about is Reno, Nevada, the location for the 2010 Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference (CMSC) hosted by the…
redOrbit
With a silicone rubber “stick on” sheet containing dozens of miniature, powerful lenses, engineers at Harvard are one step closer to putting the capacity of a large laboratory into a microsized package.
The marriage of high-performance optics with microfluidics could prove the perfect match for…
A spring-loaded guided core AC-LVDT is an air-extended, spring retracted LVDT offering consistent measurement for dimensional gauging, factory automation, and similar position measurement applications.
Linear variable…
(ISM: Tempe, AZ) -- The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) will present the 95th Annual International Supply Management Conference and Educational Exhibit April 25–28 in San Diego, California. The event includes four days of supply management professional development, training, and networking…
Patrick Beauchemin
Optical comparators, also referred to as profile projectors and contour projectors, were first introduced in the 1940s and they are still widely used today in a broad range of industries to verify that manufactured parts are within tolerance. These versatile instruments are easy to use and the fact…
FARO
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has set a goal of obtaining at least 5 percent of U.S. electricity needs from wind power by the year 2020. This means that the demand for “green energy,” such as wind power, is growing. One company that has taken full advantage of wind power’s exploding growth…
GKS Global Services
Litigating in the aftermath of accidents is big business in the United States today. The costs of the lawsuit system are estimated to be several billion dollars a year. With such large sums of money riding on the outcomes of lawsuits every year, tools are…
Michael Raphael
3-D digitizing technologies have been utilized in the industrial world for the last 20 years but are increasingly used in many other fields. One of the exciting, but unanticipated, uses of 3-D measurement tools has been their adoption by museums for sculpture conservation, research, and…
Jennifer Sprance
The molecular diagnostics industry is a relatively new territory that offers much promise for early disease detection and personalized patient care. When analyzing samples at the molecular level, there are serious consequences for errors, and tests must be highly accurate and precise. For example…
Konica Minolta Sensing Americas Inc.
Alfred Kärcher GmbH & Co. KG is a global leader in the field of cleaning technology. Their innovative cleaning products are manufactured in Baden-Württemberg, continuously improved, efficiently marketed and have provided the company with continuous, organic growth. Today, almost 60 years after…
Reishauer AG is a company with a long tradition in the gear industry. Reishauer’s products range from tooth profile grinding machines, to diamond and CBN tools, which the company exports to industrial states throughout the world. Teeth on gears with a diameter of 150 mm to 1,000 mm are given their…
Dong-Yea Sheu
This article describes a novel, integrated micromanufacturing process utilizing a combination of wire electro discharge grinding (WEDG) technology and one-pulse electro discharge (OPED) to fabricate microspherical stylus tips for microcoordinate measuring machines (μCMM). With an optimal selection…
Measuring the sharp edges of cutting tools is a challenging process, because it involves a small radius, which requires high lateral resolution and high angles. It is also important to be able to measure a diverse range of heights. The study becomes more difficult when the surface has chipping or…
Michael Raphael
VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System 150-acre campus
Faro Laser Scanner LS scanning room elements
Photo of section of room
3-D scan of same room
In November 2008,…
GKS Global Services
The majority of marine vessels in service today do not have digital documentation or CAD models. Despite the fact that vessels currently under construction are designed based on 3-D data, they suffer the same lack of documentation of their true as-built geometries. Due to the inherent inaccuracy…
Jeff Bibee
T
he complex geometries of prosthetics, implants, and specialty medical screws can be measured using typical measurement equipment with only limited success. Prosthetics and implants are becoming more and more complex and delicate. That’s why Stuckenbrock Medizintechnik , in Tuttlingen, Germany…
Steven Wachs
The purpose of using control charts is to regularly monitor a process so that significant process changes may be detected. These process changes may be a shift in the process average (X-bar) or a change in the amount of variation in the process. The variation observed when the process is operating…
Raissa Carey
Just as many industry sectors have been experiencing this year, the machine tools industry has seen a slow period in consumption and distribution of manufacturing technology.
Manufacturing technology consumption data is relevant because it provides a reliable economic indicator of how…
