All Features
Craig W. Alexander
A few weeks ago I was returning from a business trip in the evening. I was tired after a long day at a conference followed by fighting traffic to the airport. Add a rental car shuttle train, security lines, and the general airport experience, and I just wanted to get home quickly.
I parked at off-…
FARO
(FARO: Lake Mary, FL) -- FARO Technologies, a global provider of portable measurement and imaging solutions, has been named Manufacturer of the Year by the Manufacturers Association of Florida (MAF), an award that recognizes FARO for its excellence in manufacturing, customer service, and community…
Nikon Metrology Inc.
(Nikon Metrology: Brighton, MI) -- Focus 10 offers a completely new user interface and now provides support for handheld laser scanning and tactile probing. Users gain productivity through the intuitive and attractive user interface that optimizes available space of the 3-D scene. The tabbed ribbon…
Assembly Guidance Systems Inc.
(Assembly Guidance Systems: Chelmsford, MA) -- Alenia Aeronautica, a Boeing partner in Grottaglie, Italy, has purchased five LASERGUIDE long-throw systems for 787 fuselage production. The projector supporting the systems is a new model of LASERGUIDE, called LASERGUIDE LT, and is able to project…
Rapidform Inc.
(INUS: Seoul, South Korea) -- INUS Technology, developer of Rapidform 3D scanning software, has achieved 23-percent revenue growth in 2011. This achievement surpassed the company’s 2010 sales year, up till then the best ever in its 13-year history.
Overall, the company experienced growth across…
InnovMetric Software
(InnovMetric: Quebec City, Canada) -- InnovMetric Software has announced that the latest intermediate release of the PolyWorks universal 3-D metrology platform, v. 12.0.3, can display laser-scanned points being captured in real time on Apple mobile devices, thanks to the new PolyWorks/Talisman app…
Geomagic
(Geomagic: Morrisville, NC) -- Geomagic, a global provider of 3-D software for creating and inspecting digital models of physical objects, has released its 2012 lineup of 3-D imaging products: Geomagic Studio 2012, Geomagic Wrap 2012, Geomagic Qualify 2012, Geomagic Qualify Probe, and Geomagic Wrap…
New River Kinematics
(NRK: Williamsburg, VA) -- New River Kinematics (NRK), producer of SpatialAnalyzer, has announced record revenue and earnings in 2011 with a 21-percent revenue growth over the previous year. During the past five years, NRK has maintained a greater than 20-percent average year-to-year growth.…
Verisurf Software Inc.
(Verisurf: Anaheim, CA) -- Verisurf Software has release a new version of Verisurf X5.1. The software is loaded with innovative features that enhance in-process portable inspection, tool building, composite wing analysis, 3-D scanning, and reverse engineering.
“We continue to collaborate with our…
Belinda Jones
When it comes to metrology, particularly as it applies to portable 3-D applications, no organization is more committed to this discipline than the Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS). Each year, the CMS welcomes abstracts for presentations and technical papers for its annual Coordinate Metrology…
William Fetter
As Atlantis touched down for the final time at the Kennedy Space Center, it marked the poignant end of the Space Shuttle program. However, the precious cargo it left behind at the International Space Station could lead the way to a new wave of future missions. The first Robotic Refueling Mission, a…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
(Hexagon: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Metrology has released CoreView 6.0 for the Cognitens WLS400 series. Winner of Photonics Tech Briefs’ 2011 Reader’s Choice Product of the Year, the WLS400 white-light series is available in both automated and manual configurations. Coreview 6.0, the latest…
Philip Hewitt
Aircraft manufacturing is international, with a complex supply chain dividing work among numerous companies around the world. Globalized manufacturing and outsourcing brings challenges and opportunities for suppliers.
Technical challenges include improving the quality of complex components with…
Fluke Corp.
(Fluke: Everett, WA) -- Users of the handheld DPC 743B/744 or the new DPC 753/754 documenting calibrators from Fluke, manufacturer, distributer, and service provider for electronic test tools and software, can now upgrade from DPCTrack2 software to the latest ProCalV5 release, which offers more…
Adept Technology
(Adept Technology: Pleasanton, CA) -- Adept Technology Inc., designer, manufacturer, and provider of intelligent vision-guided robotics systems and autonomous mobile services, has announced a collaboration with Willow Garage, developer of hardware and open source software for personal robotics…
Aerotech Inc.
(Aerotech: Pittsburgh) -- The ABL1500 direct-drive linear air-bearing stage from Aerotech Inc., designer and manufacturer of precision motion control products, meets the needs of demanding scanning and inspection applications with fully active preload, high stiffness, and unsurpassed geometric…
Wiley
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- “If your company depends on data—and it’s hard to imagine a company that doesn’t—you need a cloud strategy, today,” says Hunter Muller, author of On Top of the Cloud: How CIOs Leverage New Technologies to Drive Change and Build Value Across the Enterprise (Wiley, 2012). “…
Georgia Institute of Technology
Recent earthquake damage has exposed the vulnerability of existing structures to strong ground movement. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers are analyzing shape-memory alloys for their potential use in constructing seismic-resistant structures.
“Shape-memory alloys exhibit unique…
Carly Barry
When I first started learning about lean Six Sigma and familiarizing myself with all the different terminology and methodologies, I was a little overwhelmed and confused by all the abbreviations: FMEA, C&E matrix, Gage R&R, SIPOC... the list seemed endless. However, I really got tripped up…
Avery Point Group
(Avery Point Group: Alpharetta, GA) -- As the economy continues to heal, post-recession demand for continuous improvement talent persists strongly, according to the latest study of almost 7,100 recent Internet job postings reviewed by The Avery Point Group.
The executive search firm’s eighth…
Jason Jonassen
Even though contact “drag” scanning and noncontact laser scanning are prevalent in our industry, there are many manufacturers who still use kinematic touch trigger probes. Questions often come up regarding when a probe should be replaced. Is there a best practice for troubleshooting?
Of course,…
Chuck Pfeffer
“That’s so 27 seconds ago.” My daughter and I recently heard this catch phrase on a television commercial. We had a good laugh because there was some truth to it. We are living in a world of real-time updates, and it does not stop at news and social media. It extends to all facets of our lives.
In…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
As we arrived in the lobby of the Westin in Grand Cayman, George Davidson was playing the love song from The Phantom of the Opera on the grand piano. Grand Cayman is one of our favorite winter retreats and Davidson has been a staple of what we enjoy about that warm and refreshing island since we…
MESA International
(MESA International: Chandler, AZ) -- Every two years, Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) International, a community of manufacturers, producers, industry leaders, and solution providers focused on improving operations management capabilities, and its research partner, Cambashi,…
Productivity Press
(Productivity Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- As a society, we tend to reward problem solvers rather than those who prevent problems at their source. In other words, we focus on after-the-fact occurrences (“appraisal activities”) instead of trying to eliminate these occurrences (“preventing activities…