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Precision Engineering
Precision engineering is a subdiscipline of electrical engineering, software engineering, electronics engineering, mechanical engineering, and optical engineering concerned with designing machines, fixtures, and other structures that have exceptionally low tolerances, are repeatable, and are stable over time. These approaches have applications in machine tools, MEMS, NEMS, optoelectronics design, and many other fields. Overview Professors Hiromu Nakazawa and Pat McKeown provide the following list of goals for precision engineering: # Create a highly precise movement. # Reduce the dispersion of the product's or part's function. # Eliminate fitting and promote assembly, especially automatic assembly. # Reduce the initial cost. # Reduce the running cost. # Extend the life span. # Enable the design safety factor to be lowered. # Improve interchangeability of components so that corresponding parts made by other factories or firms can be used in their place. # Improve quality contro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NIST Precision Engineering Research
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical science laboratory programs that include nanoscale science and technology, engineering, information technology, neutron research, material measurement, and physical measurement. From 1901 to 1988, the agency was named the National Bureau of Standards. History Background The Articles of Confederation, ratified by the colonies in 1781, provided: The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states—fixing the standards of weights and measures throughout the United States. Article 1, section 8, of the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1789, granted these powers to the new Congr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optoelectronics
Optoelectronics (or optronics) is the study and application of electronic devices and systems that find, detect and control light, usually considered a sub-field of photonics. In this context, ''light'' often includes invisible forms of radiation such as gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared, in addition to visible light. Optoelectronic devices are electrical-to-optical or optical-to-electrical transducers, or instruments that use such devices in their operation. ''Electro-optics'' is often erroneously used as a synonym, but is a wider branch of physics that concerns all interactions between light and electric fields, whether or not they form part of an electronic device. Optoelectronics is based on the quantum mechanical effects of light on electronic materials, especially semiconductors, sometimes in the presence of electric fields. * Photoelectric or photovoltaic effect, used in: ** photodiodes (including solar cells) ** phototransistors ** photomultipliers ** optois ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Measurement Uncertainty
In metrology, measurement uncertainty is the expression of the statistical dispersion of the values attributed to a measured quantity. All measurements are subject to uncertainty and a measurement result is complete only when it is accompanied by a statement of the associated uncertainty, such as the standard deviation. By international agreement, this uncertainty has a probabilistic basis and reflects incomplete knowledge of the quantity value. It is a non-negative parameter. The measurement uncertainty is often taken as the standard deviation of a state-of-knowledge probability distribution over the possible values that could be attributed to a measured quantity. Relative uncertainty is the measurement uncertainty relative to the magnitude of a particular single choice for the value for the measured quantity, when this choice is nonzero. This particular single choice is usually called the measured value, which may be optimal in some well-defined sense (e.g., a mean, median, or m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kinematic Coupling
Kinematic coupling describes fixtures designed to exactly constrain the part in question, providing precision and certainty of location. A canonical example of a kinematic coupling consists of three radial v-grooves in one part that mate with three hemispheres in another part. Each hemisphere has two contact points for a total of six contact points, enough to constrain all six of the part's degrees of freedom. An alternative design consists of three hemispheres on one part that fit respectively into a tetrahedral dent, a v-groove, and a flat. Background Kinematic couplings arose from the need of precision coupling between structural interfaces that were meant to be routinely taken apart and put back together. Kelvin Coupling The Kelvin coupling is named after William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) who published the design in 1868–71. It consists of three spherical surfaces that rest on a concave tetrahedron, a V-groove pointing towards the tetrahedron and a flat plate. The tetra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flexure
A flexure is a flexible element (or combination of elements) engineered to be compliant in specific degrees of freedom. Flexures are a design feature used by design engineers (usually mechanical engineers) for providing adjustment or compliance in a design. Flexure types Most compound flexure designs are composed of 3 fundamental types of flexure: * Pin flexure- a thin bar or cylinder of material, constrains 3 degrees of freedom when geometry matches a notch cutout. * Blade flexure- thin sheet of material, constrains 3 degrees of freedom. * Notch flexure- thin cutout on both sides of a thick piece of material, constrains 5 degrees of freedom Since single flexure features are limited both in travel capability and degrees of freedom available, compound flexure systems are designed using combinations of these component features. Using compound flexures, complex motion profiles with specific degrees of freedom and relatively long travel distances are possible. Design asp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accuracy And Precision
Accuracy and precision are two measures of ''observational error''. ''Accuracy'' is how close a given set of measurements ( observations or readings) are to their ''true value'', while ''precision'' is how close the measurements are to each other. In other words, ''precision'' is a description of '' random errors'', a measure of statistical variability. ''Accuracy'' has two definitions: # More commonly, it is a description of only '' systematic errors'', a measure of statistical bias of a given measure of central tendency; low accuracy causes a difference between a result and a true value; ISO calls this ''trueness''. # Alternatively, ISO defines accuracy as describing a combination of both types of observational error (random and systematic), so high accuracy requires both high precision and high trueness. In the first, more common definition of "accuracy" above, the concept is independent of "precision", so a particular set of data can be said to be accurate, precise, both, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abbe Error
Abbe error, named after Ernst Abbe, also called sine error, describes the magnification of angular error over distance. For example, when one measures a point that is 1 meter away at 45 degrees, an angular error of 1 degree corresponds to a positional error of over 1.745 cm, equivalent to a distance-measurement error of 1.745%. In machine design, some components are particularly sensitive to angular errors. For example, slight deviations from parallelism of the spindle axis of a lathe to the tool motion along the bed of the machine can lead to relatively large (undesired) taper along the part (i.e a non-cylindrical part). Vernier calipers are not free from abbe error, while screw gauges are free from abbe error. Abbe error is the product of the abbe offset and the sine of angular error in the system. Abbe error can be detrimental to dead reckoning In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating current position of some moving object by using a previously det ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Society For Precision Engineering
The American Society for Precision Engineering is a non-profit member association, founded in 1986, dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and technology of precision engineering, to promote its dissemination through education and training, and its use by science and industry. Overview The American Society for Precision Engineering (ASPE) focuses on many areas that are important in the research, design, development, manufacture and measurement of high accuracy components and systems. This collective discipline is known as Precision engineering, and includes precision controls, metrology, interferometry, materials, materials processing, nanotechnology, optical fabrication, precision optics, precision replication, scanning microscopes, semiconductor processing, standards and ultra-precision machining. History There has long been a "community" of precision engineers within the United States but a formal structure and common focus for the activities was lacking. This was not th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nanoelectromechanical Systems
Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are a class of devices integrating electrical and mechanical functionality on the nanoscale. NEMS form the next logical miniaturization step from so-called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS devices. NEMS typically integrate transistor-like nanoelectronics with mechanical actuators, pumps, or motors, and may thereby form physical, biological, and chemical sensors. The name derives from typical device dimensions in the nanometer range, leading to low mass, high mechanical resonance frequencies, potentially large quantum mechanical effects such as zero point motion, and a high surface-to-volume ratio useful for surface-based sensing mechanisms. Applications include accelerometers and sensors to detect chemical substances in the air. History Background As noted by Richard Feynman in his famous talk in 1959, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," there are many potential applications of machines at smaller and smaller sizes; by building an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electrical Engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the latter half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and electrical power generation, distribution, and use. Electrical engineering is now divided into a wide range of different fields, including computer engineering, systems engineering, power engineering, telecommunications, radio-frequency engineering, signal processing, instrumentation, photovoltaic cells, electronics, and optics and photonics. Many of these disciplines overlap with other engineering branches, spanning a huge number of specializations including hardware engineering, power electronics, electromagnetics and waves, microwave engineering, nanotechnology, electrochemistry, renewable energies, mechatronics/control, and electrical m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microelectromechanical Systems
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), also written as micro-electro-mechanical systems (or microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems) and the related micromechatronics and microsystems constitute the technology of microscopic devices, particularly those with moving parts. They merge at the nanoscale into nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and nanotechnology. MEMS are also referred to as micromachines in Japan and microsystem technology (MST) in Europe. MEMS are made up of components between 1 and 100 micrometers in size (i.e., 0.001 to 0.1 mm), and MEMS devices generally range in size from 20 micrometres to a millimetre (i.e., 0.02 to 1.0 mm), although components arranged in arrays (e.g., digital micromirror devices) can be more than 1000 mm2. They usually consist of a central unit that processes data (an integrated circuit chip such as microprocessor) and several components that interact with the surroundings (such as microsensors). Because of the la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Machine Tool
A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All machine tools have some means of constraining the work piece and provide a guided movement of the parts of the machine. Thus, the relative movement between the workpiece and the cutting tool (which is called the toolpath) is controlled or constrained by the machine to at least some extent, rather than being entirely "offhand" or " freehand". It is a power-driven metal cutting machine which assists in managing the needed relative motion between cutting tool and the job that changes the size and shape of the job material. The precise definition of the term ''machine tool'' varies among users, as discussed below. While all machine tools are "machines that help people to make things", not all factory machines are machine tools. Today machine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
