Our industry is fraught with tales of quality audits from hell and other less than desirable places, usually the result of standards written by folks who know a little but expand it to encompass a lot.

In my last column I noted that I would give some hints to help you avoid problems with assigning and applying acceptance limits, so let’s go back to square one.

More companies than ever are downloading decisions to calibration laboratories causing perfectly acceptable gages and instruments to be ‘failed’ by them. How could such a thing happen?

Some of the data I’ve noted from the AMTMA studies make it very clear that measurement disputes will continue. When the range of readings is close to or exceeds the tolerances of the gages being calibrated, it is a certainty. Further problems will occur due to unrealistic expectations by all the parties involved in a dispute.

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Measurement disputes over gage calibration continue despite the results of the studies noted in my previous column.

The market for specialist metal additive manufacturing (AM) services is rapidly evolving as more and more companies realise the advantages which metal additive manufacturing offers over more traditional design and manufacturing techniques. 

A host of tools are available to metrologists in today’s manufacturing environment. Many are simple, mechanical, and accessible to anyone who wants to measure something.

The American Measuring Tool Manufacturers Association (AMTMA) is an organization whose members manufacture, supply, and/or calibrate precision gages and measuring instruments. If you use this type of equipment, the odds are it came from one or more AMTMA member companies.

Readers of this column will be familiar with the subject of measurement uncertainty since I comment on it from time to time, as I did last month. Those readers that have not been that interested in it will certainly run across it on reports from their calibration sources.