All Features
X-ray fluorescence spectrometry was done directly on the paintings in the Louvre Museum.
Copyright: V.A. Solé/ESRF
How did Leonardo da Vinci manage to paint such perfect faces? For the first time a quantitative chemical analysis has been done…
Regan Arndt
As the push to alternative energy technologies continues, the demand for photovoltaic modules is expected to increase exponentially. This article describes the specific performance tests found in IEC 61215:2005—“Crystalline silicon terrestrial photovoltaic (PV) modules—Design qualification and…
Brothers Jürgen and Andreas Hellgeth are entrepreneurs with a passion. Their interests, both business and leisure, center on motor sports and off-road vehicles. Their successful business designing and building off-road vehicles began by creating special vehicles for their own use. A converted…
GKS Global Services
A major manufacturer of high-tech bicycles with a worldwide distributorship and many professional endorsements to its name used 3-D laser scanning to maintain its competitive edge. Its mission is to promote bike riding through innovative products, and exceptional care for its dealers and…
Pierre Gouvin
Moles are invading Seattle. Not the small, furry mammals often reviled for destroying lawns, but the specialized boring machines used to excavate tunnels in urban environments. As part of its long-range capital investment plan, Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, known simply as “Sound…
Laser Design Inc.
Kimberly-Clark and its well-known global brands are indispensable parts of life for people in more than 150 countries. Every day, 1.3 billion people—nearly a quarter of the world’s population—trust Kimberly-Clark brands (e.g., Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex, and Depend) and the solutions…
Emil Venere
This image shows a new “hybrid optoelectric” device, developed by researchers at Purdue. The device uses a combination of light and electric fields to position droplets and tiny particles, such as bacteria, viruses, and DNA, representing a potential new tool for…
Criterion NDT
(Criterion NDT: Auburn, WA) -- Doctors, hospitals, and individuals depend on the highest quality hypodermic needles to administer medicines and draw fluids. Unfortunately, 100-percent visual and/or water-leak test inspection of the needle tubing or finished product for microscopic cracks or…
Donald J. Wheeler
During the past 20 years it has become fashionable to condemn measurement processes that are less than perfect. Yet the reality is that we must always use imperfect data. Given this fact of life, how can we ever know if a measured item is or is not within the specifications? Put another way, how…
Raissa Carey
It took Gutzon Borglum 14 years to complete the carving of Mount Rushmore, one of the world’s most iconic monuments. Sixty-nine years later, thanks to ground-breaking 3-D laser scanning technology, the granite sculpture of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and…
Michael Raphael
There are many reasons why firms need to model the exterior contour of existing aircraft outer mold lines (OML). Most aircraft flying today were not designed in a modern 3-D CAD system. Even with a current 3-D digital design, the actual as-built contour deviates from the intended shape, at least…
Ron Rode
Yes, it’s time to get your game on—metrology game, that is. I invite you to join us in Reno, Nevada, where the Coordinate Metrology Society is in the final preparations for its 26th annual Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference (CMSC). This year’s conference, sure to be a landmark event, will be…
GKS Global Services
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n 2006, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) kicked off a project called the Vehicle Design Summit (VDS), which today has grown into a large international consortium of teams from universities and innovative companies seeking, among other pressing global needs dealing with energy and…
Hiram Powers (1805–1873) is considered one the America’s great neoclassical sculptors. His works were popular in his time and remain so today. The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) has one of the most comprehensive collections of Powers’ work featuring major sculptures in marble, as well as…
Jacques Hoffmann
Not too long ago, when you wanted a product to be leak-proof, you simply put it under water, made sure it didn’t bubble, and thereby concluded there were no leaks. Such “bubble testing” takes time and depends on the operator’s ability, making it totally inappropriate for the modern production…
The client is a small independent company that just made a $600 million bet on a new deepwater floating platform to develop a Gulf of Mexico field, which bigger companies considered too small to develop themselves. Get it right and the client doubles production next year. Get it wrong… well, do…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Hexagon Metrology Inc. announced its latest product today at Quality Expo South in Charlotte, North Carolina—the Leica Absolute Tracker AT401, the industry’s first wireless, battery powered laser tracker.
See It Live
The Smallest,
Ultra-Long Range Laser…
Nikon Metrology Inc.
A
few years ago a Missouri-based casting company, O’Fallon Casting, realized that its touch probe-based inspection system was stretched to the limit for most of its rapid prototyping work. O’Fallon Casting took a new approach by installing a cross scanner from Nikon Metrology plus PolyWorks…
Under an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract with the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Great Lakes Region, Ghafari Associates LLC, a full-service architecture, engineering and consulting firm, was selected to design the restoration of the Chicago Federal Center (CFC…
Keith Kokal
The collapse of the global economy has put a lot of manufacturing companies out of business. Even at this late stage of the recession, there are still auctions of recently closed plants conducted every day. There are many more manufacturers struggling to reduce their operating costs and improve…
With today’s limited internal resources, it’s tough to transform machine maintenance from reactionary to preventive, and ultimately proactive, despite the obvious upsides in higher overall equipment efficiency (OEE), better process control, and lower total cost. Outsourcing this requirement to a…
GKS Global Services
A company based in the U.S. Southwest makes innovative optics for racing cars and other extreme vehicles. Recently the owners, who grew up in Southern California’s skateboard culture, came up with a new product idea for a kick scooter, mainly for kids, based on the design of a skateboard. The…
Direct Dimensions Inc.
In 2009, Direct Dimensions Inc. was approached by Texas A&M University’s Flight Research Laboratory (FRL) with a challenging yet typical 3-D problem. The FRL, while primarily an active teaching facility, also offers both flight and wind tunnel test services. This particular project was for a…
Consider the most fundamental of measurements: the measurement of physical distances, as when we use feet and yards, or meters. Once upon a time, a foot must have been thought of as the size of, well, a human foot, without worrying whose foot exactly. These days, we are no longer satisfied with…
Environmental Quality Corner with Ken Appel
No quality control system is perfect. Just think “Toyota” in the context of today’s headlines and that should be abundantly clear.
Taking Toyota’s predicament to heart—for any quality manager in any industry—means thinking through where the inherent weaknesses are in production processes and…
