Consider a hypothetical turned shaft with a diameter specified as 20.000 mm ± 0.010 mm. The supplier reports 20.009 mm, just inside the upper limit of 20.010 mm, with an expanded measurement uncertainty of 0.003 mm.

If you’re familiar with the maker community, you may already have encountered WhippetInTech, from a design engineer who documents his builds on YouTube.

Manufacturing Day fell on Oct. 2 this year. Manufacturers opened their doors and showed the public what modern manufacturing looks like, and, hopefully, built some interest in manufacturing careers.

Adding a control element to any system may seem like an easy path, even a necessary one. Redundancy reassures the stakeholders and the auditors, and it might become a sales pitch for the customers.

Most shops accept a gauge the same way. They run a gauge repeatability and reproducibility (gauge R&R) study with 10 parts, three appraisers, and three trials. Get a %GRR under 30. File the report and move on.

It’s one of the most dangerous sentences you can hear on a factory floor: “The drawing is updated, and we’re good to go.”

It sounds like the finish line. We fixed it! Nothing else to do here.

Highly reflective metallic surfaces are among the most challenging inspection targets in machine vision.

Manufacturing in the U.S.

At first glance, the next version of RC14001, the management standard for the chemical industry, looks like a simplification. In practice, it gives organizations more flexibility but also more responsibility.

They may seem simple, but standard operating procedures (SOPs) are surprisingly tricky. On the surface, they describe how a specific process is carried out at your organization. Pretty straightforward, right?