As additive manufacturing gains traction as a means for making production parts, standards need to keep pace, ensuring quality and constancy across industries. Already, ASTM and other standards bodies are leading the effort.

A depth gage could be as simple as marks on a piece of tape, a line on a ruler, or tape on a drill. Fortunately, of course, modern gages take the guesswork out of measurement, providing a range of simple or high-tech options depending on the job.

Industrial inspection equipment doesn’t appear in mainstream news on a regular basis. But that’s what happened when Samsung found itself in the unenviable position of determining why its Note 7 smart phones had turned pyrotechnic.

IoT has the ability to alter nearly every facet of our lives, Hexagon CEO Ola Rollen said.

When explaining surface finish measurement, it can be helpful to start with the classic metaphor of a desert, as often described by gage maker Taylor Hobson. Imagine grains of sand as roughness, the ripples of sand as waviness, and then the undulating dunes as the surface profile.

Carbon fiber reinforced plastics, or CFRPs, are found throughout the aerospace and automotive industries, as well as in high-performance sporting goods, due to their light-weight, high-strength properties.

As multi-sensor machines grow in popularity, so does their flexibility and the variety of optional sensors. One of the newest solutions of choice is confocal white light sensors for non-contact measurement.

Pick up a material analysis data sheet and you’ll always find tensile testing, and probably flexural testing as well. But depending on the application, don’t hold your breath looking for compressive testing.

Computed tomography, in-line CMMs, laser scanning, integrated data collection and the latest in modern metrology on display in Stuttgart, Germany.

Industrial computed tomography has been a buzz-worthy technology for several years, and NDT experts know it’s a valuable tool for inspecting the complex internal geometries of 3D-printed parts, or for finding porosity in both additively and traditionally manufactured parts.