Until recently, if a company wanted the best measurements in the world for the physical dimensions of one of its dimensional standards, it had to book time on the NIST Physical Measurement Laboratory’s (PML) Moore M48 coordinate measuring machine (CMM). Operating at NIST since 2000, this CMM—referred to as the “primary”—is an instrument the size of a small truck. Made of cast iron, it uses a touch probe to detect, and an integrated laser interferometer to measure, the distances between points on an object in three dimensions with ten billionths of a meter sensitivity.

Customers who rely on PML’s calibrations with the “primary” Moore M48 include the military, academia, other government calibration and research labs, private-industry calibration labs, discrete part manufacturers, and instrument manufacturers. The primary’s services are so popular that customers often have to wait several months for time to be available on the machine. As a result, the CMM is now working almost every day of the year, which leaves little to no time for upkeep or the development of new services.

 …