Quality 101

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A height gage does exactly as its name indicates—measures the height of a workpiece.

Building aircraft has always been a struggle between the size of their components and the need to craft them carefully. 

Torque testing is an important quality-control step in nearly every manufacturing sector. Properly testing rotary parts for torque with handheld or automated gages can prevent everything from un-openable bottle caps to loose fasteners. Or, in a grave example, if GM properly acted on failed rotational torque tests of ignition switches in some of its mid-2000s models, 13 lives would have been saved.

Work holding fixtures for inspection devices have evolved over time and now have become, in some cases, as complex as the parts they are designed to hold. There was a day when some 1-2-3 blocks, knee blocks, double-sided tape and hot glue were all you needed to fixture parts for measurement on a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). 

Choosing the right stylus for a coordinate measuring machine probe is a balancing act of size, weight, rigidity and hardness.