Education is paramount at the Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference to be held July 12-16 at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, NV. This year, there will be four educational workshops, held in the afternoons. Topics include the Metrology Certification Initiative, 3-D Imaging, Gage R&R, and GD&T. The sessions kick off on Tuesday afternoon with a review of the activities of the CMS Metrology Certification subcommittee, and an interactive session on the next steps in this process. Efforts over the past year have generated a body of knowledge, and the three other workshops will all draw from that to provide a taste of the content of a certification program.

Tuesday, July 13
Tuesday will begin an interactive large-scale Gage R&R study sponsored by Mitutoyo. The study, coordinated by the National Physical Laboratory, will ask conference attendees to make a series of prescribed measurements using first principle measurement tools provided by Mitutoyo. Participants will also be asked to provide information on their level of experience and background in metrology. The collected data will be compiled and used to examine measurement variability. The results will be presented at several of the other workshops. Please be sure to visit the NPL booth to participate in the data collection, and then join us at the workshops to see the results.

Wednesday, July 14
Wednesday's workshop covers 3-D imaging, with presentations from some of the most experienced users in the world. The workshop covers a review of technologies, real-world examples, and a challenging part inspection that will be part of the GD&T session the following day.

Thursday, July 15
Thursday includes two sessions, starting with a Gage R&R workshop presented by Keith Bevan of the National Physical Laboratory from the UK. Keith will be presenting concepts as well as analysis of the real data collected during the large-scale Gauge R&R study mentioned above.

The Thursday sessions conclude with a GD&T workshop covering the analysis of methods to inspect the parts measured in the 3-D imaging and Gage R&R sessions. Bill Tandler of Multi-Metrics will lead this workshop. Bill brings over 35 years of industry experience to this session, and never fails to be engaging and informative.

For more information on the 2010 CMSC, visit http://www.cmsc.org/.