Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series on gage calibration.
Part 1: Plain Plug Gages
This is not a how-to column but rather an overview of what is required in the way of hardware used for gage calibration. As with any measuring process, several types of equipment can be used; I will only deal with the most commonly used equipment. It is assumed that you have a proper environment, your equipment and masters are calibrated, and you have a skilled person to use the equipment.
What does that stack of catalogs sitting in your mailbox have to do with product quality? I think it has a lot to do with quality and it exposes some important issues that I feel the quality profession has not addressed.
Who do you think paid for that stack of catalogs in your mailbox? You did. The companies that send them are smart. If they didn’t have good reason to believe that you would buy plenty of stuff to justify sending you a catalog, then they would stop sending them. I know there are cases where you keep getting a catalog from a company that you rarely buy from, but generally speaking, you are getting those catalogs because you keep paying for them with the products you buy.
The Sentinel Smart Camera from Webview Inc. (Santa Rosa, CA), now being introduced to the industrial market, is designed to make machine vision affordable for a wide range of manufacturers. Available with a line of sensors, ranging from VGA to mega pixel, color to monochrome, it can be fitted with a line-scan sensor for surface inspection applications.
How can a company move forward if it does not know where it is? In general terms, any audit is a snapshot in time of how an organization is complying and performing to a set of requirements. If uncomfortable when hearing the word audit, then ponder this: Some organizations actually request audits-not from their customers but from their internal nondestructive (NDT) inspectors and managers. These companies have a different perspective of an NDT audit. They believe in being proactive, which is the key to not only a successful audit but the foundation of a successful organization.
ideo measurement provides noncontact dimensional measurements with speed, accuracy, and above all, flexibility. Whatever type of system is used, it must match the application. These systems help ensure product quality, so getting the best system is crucial.
Thermography is a well-established technique for predictive and preventative maintenance (P/PM), where the inspector uses the infrared (IR) camera in a passive mode to measure the steady state surface temperature of a component during its normal operation.
Several years ago, Jerry Skoff, president of Badger Metal Tech Inc. (Menomonee Falls, WI), saw the rapid growth that his company was experiencing and questioned how it would accomplish this growth without losing its ability to respond to customers’ needs and keep employees fully informed, on a need-to-know basis, of all aspects of the changes and procedures being made at Badger Metal Tech. The company was computerized, and all employees had a working knowledge of its systems. The problem: employees would spend hours looking for documents or files on the computer to respond to customers’ requests or find information. The larger the company grew, the harder it became to stay organized and maintain good customer relations.
Ultrasonic thickness gages have progressed since their early development in the 1960s. The first thickness gages were large and bulky. However, they used the same conventional longitudinal, or compressional wave, techniques still in use today. Thickness gages are used in a wide variety of industries including automotive, manufacturing, refineries, power plants, process control, transportation, and oil and gas.
The biggest mistake made by companies considering the use of lean manufacturing is to jump into the water without a strategically focused plan. That might be OK for an Olympic swimmer, but most organizations end up doing the dog paddle and are eventually worn out and decide it is just too difficult to achieve-ignoring or aborting the initiative. In some cases, they may drown. This results in wasted time, energy, credibility and money for an organization.
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