Edward McMenamin

Laser tracker technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last 20 years. But experts say the biggest shift has actually been in thinking and how they are used.

Walking the floor of the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago—between the 100,000-plus attendees and the thousands of booths—it was impossible not to notice the ongoing trend towards speed and automation in every aspect of manufacturing. It’s no different in metrology, as more manufacturers look to automate their inspection processes.

In a regulated consumer industry, it is vital to test everything from individual components and materials to major assemblies and crash structures.

New changes to ISO 13485, published this spring as EN ISO 13485:2016, mean U.S. medical device companies that sell in Europe will need to integrate risk-based approaches throughout their quality management systems. The emphasis on risk management is the biggest of several changes in the third version  of ISO 13485.

When Exact Metrology bought an industrial computed tomography scanner, it opened the door to inspection services for the aerospace industry.

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.

Today, most industrial 3D printing is a closed shop—printers are tied to brand-specific polymers and proprietary software. 

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