Smart organizations are taking a holistic view of their manufacturing operation and a hard look at their inspection and quality practices. As technology has progressed, so has the manufacturer’s ability to closely align their unique needs and applications to the selection of a coordinate measurement machine (CMM).
It’s easy to take many of today’s technological marvels for granted, 3D measurement among them. The idea of simply pointing a “ray gun” of sorts at an object and obtaining all of its geometrical measurements would once have been solely the domain of Star Trek-ian science fiction.
Sir Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion, published in his thesis Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) in 1687, are what modern-day physicists and metrologists refer to when they describe force as any interaction that, if unopposed, will change the motion of an object.
When material surfaces are in mechanical contact and slide against each other, complex microscopic interactions occur between the surfaces that lead to friction and wear.
Why leak test? Leak testing is performed to ensure that when in service, the component or assembly has zero leakage or a leakage that is acceptable over time for the fluid/gas that it is meant to contain, or conversely to prevent material on the outside from leaking in.
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.