AMCE continued from page 5 students conduct reproducibility and repeatability studies to find the errors in measurements,” says Fuehne. One of Creasy’s students will present a paper at a conference this summer on his measurements of a ren cylinder. Ren is a material frequently used by pattern makers in pre-production projects. A lot of surface-finish study occurs in the metrology lab. An important piece of equipment for that is a Surfcom Flex unit manufactured by Zeiss. The unit was made possible by a grant from the Vibrations Institute. “The goal is to determine when chatter is about to occur,” says Creasy. Chatter is an undue level of vibration in a machining operation. The Smart Scope, made by Optical Gaging Products, can determine nearly infinitesimal dimensions with amazing precision. Fuehne, Creasy and metrology manager Matt Ferrell like to demonstrate its capabilities with the side of a penny on which Abraham Lincoln’s face, unable to be discerned with the naked eye, peers between the columns of his memorial. The Smart Scope can zoom in and measure the width of his head (.00425 inches in one recent demonstration). The surface finish machine yielded the information that his head rose 23 microns above the surface of the penny. Other Purdue College of Technology equipment in the center includes two MakerBot Replicator 2X rapid prototypers and a Z Corporation Spectrum Z510 3-D printer. Fuehne says that a 3-D scanner is “on our wish list.” Several area companies, such as Cummins, Faurecia, Edinburgh-based container manufacturer George Utz and Illinois-based Elkay, give the college projects to work on. “I would guess that we’re the only facility in the state that can
A penny is measured by an OGP Smartscope. The face of Lincoln, inside the engraving of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the coin, was optically measured by the machine to be .00425 inches across.
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