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Industrial borescopes generally fall into two categories: rigid borescopes and flexibleborescopes, also known as fiberscopes. The type of borescope employed is contingenton the application. These devices are used in a number of industries to attainquality assurance, enabling inspection for manufacturing defects withoutnecessitating part destruction. They also are used in equipment maintenance programs,eliminating the need for teardowns when checking for defects.

Quantitative measurement of surface topography is now a key QC/QA requirement in an increasingly broad range of industries, products and materials. This includes measurements on finished products, research and development (R&D) into new surfaces and surface treatments and in-process monitoring during volume production. Materials include metals, composites, plastics, paper, painted and plated surfaces, porous surfaces and glass. Drivers for these measurements range from critical functional and performance impact, as in the case of a partially processed semiconductor wafer surface, to expected lifetime, such as for hip implant bearing surfaces, to aesthetic considerations, an example being orange peel in automotive paint.

It is disheartening to watch the continuing exodus of business leaders from their organizations because of poor performance. According to recent research, the number of executive turnovers at North American public companies increased by 68% between 2005 and 2006; between 40% to 60% of high-level corporate executives recruited from outside the company will fail within two years; and at large companies, chief financial officers are turning over at the rate of 22% per year.

As flowcharting or process mapping has evolved to a new level of sophistication, the question remains:How can new flowcharting capabilities help quality control (QC) professionals do their jobs more efficiently? That is the goal all software developers and users must keep in mind. And, because consistency is such an important aspect of quality control, the importance of flowcharting cannot be underestimated. A flowchart must provide a standard that facilitates process improvement.

Performing accurate micro/macroindentation hardness-Vickers and Knoop-tests can be a difficult process, even under the best conditions. Preparing the surface properly to allow the optical measurement, and the manual indent measurement process, using a high-powered microscope, is time consuming and costly.

Eastern Automation Systems (Farmingdale, NJ) designs and builds custom assembly and inspection machines. The machines range from simple manual tools to fully automated assembly lines. Eastern places a large emphasis on quality by integrating inspection tasks directly into the assembly process. All machine motion is controlled with endpoint sensors, and all components assembled are 100% inspected in-process for presence, color, orientation and function.

Until recently, briquette/compacting machine manufacturer K.R. Komarek (Elk Grove Village, IL) had to make house calls virtually every time one of its machines had a hiccup at a customer site. The company needed a solution to avoid delays for simple repairs such as adjusting the hydraulic pressure, processing speed or spacing between the rolls at the heart of each machine. The key, they knew, was to find a way to discuss the problem at hand while viewing equipment diagrams with the customer.

Laser tracking systems entered the manufacturing marketplace in 1991. At the time, pundits speculated the new mobile measurement system was just a passing fad, unstable and expensive. More than 15 years later, laser tracking has withstood the test of time with several thousand installations worldwide. The technology has established itself as a standard-issue metrology tool for in-place inspection of large parts and assemblies in both the automotive and aerospace industries. Major inroads are being made in other precision industry applications that require accuracies of a couple thousands of an inch.

As I noted in last month’s column, this will be an overview of the most popular hardware used for calibrating gages. In case you are wondering why I didn’t mention the use of coordinate measuring machines for this work, and won’t, the answer is quite simple. Few of them are accurate enough for the tolerances involved, and those that are rarely exist outside of national measuring institutions.

Ogihara America Corp. (OAC, Howell, MI) is a subsidiary of the Japanese Ogihara Corp., a large independent automotive die manufacturer. The company motto is “Comply or surpass our customers’ most demanding quality requirements.”