Major improvements to the inspection process at Alcoa Howmet’s foundry in Exeter has been delivered by the introduction of a GOM ATOS II optical measurement system (GOM UK, Coventry) and Geomagic Qualify computer-aided inspection software (Admeasure Scanning, Northwich, Cheshire)
Read More
|
MACH, the UK's bienniel manufacturing technology event, will be held at Birmingham's NEC from Monday 21 April through to Friday 25 April.
This is Machinery's first preview of the upcoming exhibition.
Read More
|
Over the course of the past decade, the increasing accuracy capability of portable measuring technology has steadily encroached into fixed-bed CMM territory. Originally derided as the ‘poor relation’ to CMMs, portable solutions have since advanced to become a genuine alternative to their larger, immobile counterparts.
Read More
|
In late summer 2006, a training initiative was launched by NPL Training (National Physical Laboratory) to help drive up the measurement skills of industry. Progress is gathering pace.
Read More
|
Bedfordshire’s Cranfield University, which since the 1960s has been able to boast a long line of R&D facilities, has unveiled the latest building that adds further to its Precision Engineering Centre. The Hexagon Loxham Precision Laboratory (named after chief sponsor Hexagon Metrology and eminent metrologist and engineer, the late Professor John Loxham, CBE) is intended to fulfil a number of commercial and research projects including, perhaps most notably, the manufacture of mirrors for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Read More
|
While some are still mourning the closure of the MG Rover plant at Longbridge and the Peugeot facility at Ryton, suppliers to automotive customers have had to dust themselves down and find new business.
Read More
|
Formed component manufacturer Goss Components is using ISO/TS16949 as a springboard to even greater things.
Read More
|
Instant, mobile, reliable and verifiable: just some of the reasons supporting the growing take-up in measuring arm technology.
Read More
|
Manufacturers are fully familiar with the alternatives of establishing and then regularly monitoring a capable process to assure output quality, or of inspecting products after the event to capture failures. Well, the EU Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) status, which will affect manufacturers, is akin to the former – establishing a process that will guarantee, in this case, the safety and security of goods traded internationally.
Read More
|
A new, voluntary trading scheme designed to improve security in the transport of goods will affect manufacturers in international supply chains, whether they do or do not export or import directly.
Read More
|
Name the top three metrology suppliers in the UK. Well, the first two are pretty easy, but after that you are likely to struggle. But Metrology Direct’s managing director, Mike John, believes his company takes that third place and is the “largest independently owned metrology company” in the UK.
Read More
|
While scanning probes and non-contact probes have attracted recent headlines, the most common form of measurement probe – the touch probe – is still evolving.
Read More
|
TESA - “Top quality calipers, micrometers, bore gauges and height gauges, but expensive”. If that is your perception, then it is wrong. Yet it is still a common misconception, says TESA Technology UK’s general manager, John Drover. It’s a myth that he is determined to break, however, both in terms of product range and in terms of cost. He is also keen to ensure that customers know that TESA also supplies surface measurement equipment, profile projectors, vision systems and CMMs.
Read More
|
A recently set-up Black Country presswork company is thriving, having spotted a business niche; it is headed up by 25-year-old Anna Stevenson.
Read More
|
A technology that is commonplace in medical fields has now found a use in the metrology area. Zeiss heralds it as “measurement revolution”, but it is a technology that most people will have heard of, although not in the mechanical component measurement sense. CT scanning, a 3D measurement technology well known and applied for many years in the medical area is now finding a use in another: Zeiss’ Metrotom is the vehicle, married to Zeiss Calypso software for interpretation of the captured data which includes both external visible as well as internal hidden detail.
Read More
|
A software retrofit for mechanically reliable CMMs can bring modern CMM benefits at a fraction of the price.
Read More
|
Baty has married 2D profile measurement with vision, thrown in a patented, novel measuring reference system to come up with a new type of inspection device for 2D profile measurement purposes.
Read More
|
Laser part marking is driven by traceability and quality issues. And increasing demand for the process has spurred innovation in the equipment used.
Read More
|
The GTMA Metrology Section has set out on a new strategy following the appointment of a new chairman.
Read More
|
Two ex-Renishaw employees have set up GS Productivity Solutions Ltd to drive up UK firms’ productivity and quality, and deliver a competitive edge. But ‘Make it simple’ is the mantra.
Read More
|
If you need to measure to microns but on large workpieces/structures, or over large distances, then laser trackers and even GPS systems are de rigeuer. Machinery provides an overview of this still unfamiliar territory.
Read More
|
With the opening of its new southern technical centre in Swindon, during August, Hexagon Metrology simultaneously announced its intention to help drive up the measurement skills of those in UK manufacturing.
The measurement specialist is to deliver UKAS-accredited NPL-developed training materials, along with a network of other accredited deliverers. The NPL’s training sales manager, Dr Emma Mulligan, explained how the course material had come about. “There has been feedback from industry over the last 18 months to two years about the decline in measurement skills. There has been a decline in apprenticeships and people are not being taught measurement from first principles anymore. Sophisticated equipment in industry eliminates the thinking; you push a button and you get an answer, so we have lost the questioning culture in terms of measurement. We recognise this, industry recognises it and so do the measurement equipment OEMs, who have been working quite hard to fix the problem themselves.”
Read More
|
There is a host of data contained within a CNC control system that can provide important information on machine tool performance, the cutting process, and the part being machined. This data can be used for all sorts of production control and management information, says Seiki Systems, Brighton.
Read More
|
If you are a manufacturer of aerospace parts and you employ unconventional processes such as EDM or impact finishing, expect the be touched by Nadcap soon - the increasingly common international aerospace quality standard for unconventional processes.
Read More
|
AIMS (Advanced Integrated Mathematical System) is an open-architecture technology developed by The Boeing Company in the US and Metronor Group, Norway, to improve collaboration between manufacturers and suppliers. It is a system for mathematical definition, creation, standardization and evaluation of curves and surfaces; and for performing geometry processing operations, storage, access, control, management, exchange, and use of product definition data, without translation or approximation of the mathematical forms of the geometry
Read More
|