In the first issue of this magazine I wrote about metrology in connected digital manufacturing, and the value of being informed in real time, presenting very much a future view. I would like to develop that by digging into the foundations of measurement for manufacturing and looking back at where this current capability has come from. with Dr. Neil Calder Measuring between the lines Foundations of metrology
It is always important not to forget our engineering heritage, and to recognise the shoulders of which giants we stand on. Early science lessons in school are centred around measuring things and are the first real confluence of numbers with the world around us. I recall measuring the dimensions of our primary school playground with a rudimentary metre stick and being disappointed (or even affronted) at the relative inaccuracy of this. Later, as a practicing researcher in manufacturing engineering it was more normal to have a Vernier calliper or a micrometer within arms reach and I have become comfortable with that. These are still tools which are found in the workbench drawers of even the most advanced shop floor that I visit, despite the former dating from around the 1820s and having existed almost unchanged in its analogue form for the last two hundred years. The neat trick that Pierre Vernier developed a couple of centuries before that to increase measurement accuracy of graduated scales by an order of
magnitude by concentrating on minute but discernible differences is paralleled to some degree in the optical interferometry techniques which powers accurate laser measurement today. I had the occasion to attend an evening business function at the Musee des Artes et Metier in Paris a few years ago which included an after-hours tour through the museum’s artefacts.
14 Measurement & Manufacturing
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