Where will metrology be in 5 to 10 years?

. Inspection will no longer be considered as a parallel procedure, but rather an integral part of the manufacturing process.

Metrology has come a long way since its conception during the era of the pharaohs. It has particularly evolved in the last 25 years with the advent of lasers, 3-D scanners, and optical technology. Therefore, it is logical to consider that this field will continue to evolve — new specificities will improve inspection, and new developments will change manufacturing processes.

Inspection will move from the metrology laboratory to the production floor. The keys to this transition will be the equipment’s portability, simplicity, and flexibility. Moreover, measurements will be performed without the need for human intervention, and manufacturing processes will self-correct based on these automated measurements.

Measure Close to Manufacturing

Now that metrology tools are moving closer to the production floor, their simplicity and ease of use will become mandatory to enable those who manufacture the parts to also inspect them. Inspection will no longer be considered as a parallel procedure, but rather an integral part of the manufacturing process. Measurements will occur on several occasions during the manufacturing, so that the part will have already been measured several times before completing its production cycle.

Simplicity and Flexibility

More operators will be asked to perform part inspection directly on the production floor. Therefore, metrology tools will need to be intuitive, simple to use, and easy to understand. The level of expertise required to manipulate and operate this measuring equipment will decrease. Moreover, there will be a transition period in which part inspection will still be managed by quality control teams who are not necessarily familiar with automation and robot programming, and progressively moving to production teams who are not completely used to measuring methods.

Metrology will have to rely on flexible systems during this period to get measurements, which will soon be automated and self-corrected.

3-D Scanning

3d measurement technology solutions will gradually be replacing probing systems for three major reasons:

1. Speed of acquisition
2. Density of analyzed information
3. Shorter time required to characterize a complete part

Software and Hardware Integration

In the future there will be better synergy between each of the system components. Indeed, both software and hardware will be jointly developed by the same company to fully interact, operate, and give users maximum capabilities. Therefore, generic software compatible with each piece of hardware will give way to an integration of both. It will allow for more possibilities and provide users with important benefits, especially in terms of simplicity and ease of use.

Automation

Going forward, human intervention during inspection will be replaced by an automated measurement system. Since programming may quickly become a nightmare for quality control teams, they will prefer using flexible and intuitive software integrated with the hardware. Ultimately, it could be as easy as manually making a motion, so the robot can record and program its trajectory independently.

Finally, smart measurements – created through the use of Industry 4.0 -- will completely modify the production process. Based on automated measurements, manufacturing processes will auto-correct. In fact, this concept is a wish of many futurists.

Imagine if the measurement system, after inspecting a lot, could discern defaults, pinpoint their location in production, and transmit this information to the manufacturing software, so that the error could be corrected in-process, all without human intervention.

Jérôme-Alexandre Lavoie is product manager for Creaform, 418-833-4446, www.creaform-metrology.com.