When customers demand certain capabilities, smart companies respond. Visicon Inspection Technologies (Napa, CA) listened to customer requests, and responded with the Sentry, an alternative to optical comparators or profile projectors.
Money may make the world go round, but it doesn’t necessarily buy happiness or job satisfaction. While dollars and cents can’t be ignored, Quality Magazine’s 7th Annual State of the Profession Survey reveals that almost one-third of quality workers think that a feeling of accomplishment is the most important job attribute
TaylorMade (Carlsbad, CA), a golf club manufacturer, needed to update its display system. The display system had to be overhauled quickly so it would be ready for a national sales campaign, which was to be launched in conjunction with a sales meeting and industry show. To accomplish this, the company contacted Anaheim, CA-based Craftech, a custom plastic injection molding company. Craftech was given eight weeks to update the design of the holder and produce production injection-mold tooling.
Tactile
and multisensor coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) are no longer used
exclusively in the inspection lab. More and more, they are used directly in
production. This means that operators must sometimes measure at temperatures
that deviate greatly from calibration temperature. Measurement errors resulting
from this temperature differential are often underestimated and neglected and,
therefore, cause errors in measurement results.
As an organization implements Six Sigma thinking, it needs
to restructure how it approaches quality. These changes impact everyone and
change the way business is managed.
For
more than a hundred years, industrial manufacturers have been using film-based
radiographic techniques (RT) for a full range of inspection needs, from
aircraft testing to weld qualification. But in today’s digital world,
radiographers are seeking more efficient methods of accomplishing the
inspection cycle by using computed and digital technologies for nondestructive
testing.
Two Vector 2-D eddy current inspection
instruments from GE Inspection Technologies (Huerth, Germany) are helping
Montupet (Livonia, MI) to maintain the high quality manufacturing standards
involved in the production of aluminum cylinder heads at its Belfast factory.
By using the Vector 2-Ds to provide 100% inspection, Montupet is ensuring that
it adheres to its rigorous quality policy.
To
ship consistently high-quality products while keeping costs down, companies are
incorporating more automated inspections into their manufacturing processes.
Photoelectric sensors can handle simple visual inspections, but complex
inspections require machine vision. The range of machine vision products
available-from off-the-shelf $1,000 vision sensors to custom systems that run
tens of thousands of dollars-create opportunities for automation, while
reducing waste and improving productivity.
Webster’s
Dictionary defines innovation as, “a new idea or method or device.” That
definition is rather vague as it implies that anything new is innovative. That
is simply not the case. Painting a blue widget red, or making it round instead
of square may have merit, but it is not necessarily innovative.
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