INTRODUCTION

 

Welcome to the part of Eckels Island where I try and explain a little bit of what I do to put food on the table and a roof over our heads these days. 

 

While I've done a variety of things over the years, for the last 10 years or so I've spent the bulk of my time in the Quality Assurance arena and within the last 5 years most of 

my time has been spent increasing my knowledge and improving my skills in Metrology and the running of the CMM machine. 

 

 

RESUME

 

If you are here as an employer looking to see if I have the needed skill set to meet your requirements you can click HERE for a simple web view of my current resume or you 

can click HERE for a downloadable copy in WORD document form. 

WHAT IS METROLOGY?

There are as many definitions of what Metrology entails as there are employers, but according to Webster's the official definition is as follows:

The Science that deals with Measurement

In my experience in the real world what Metrology encompasses is organizing, maintaining and using the measuring tools required to make sure that the product being produced by the manufacturer is meeting the required customer specifications of the Blueprint or CAD (Computer Aided Drawing) file. While that may sound simple to accomplish there are literally hundreds of different types of tools and gages to choose from when measuring a particular part. One of many challenges in the daily life of a Metrology person is to choose the proper tool for the job so that the highest degree of accuracy can be achieved in a repeatable fashion. 

 

WHAT IS A CMM?

 

Well, first off, CMM is an acronym for Coordinate Measuring Machine. There are many different  brands and styles of CMM. There are manual machines and there are DCC (Direct Computer Controlled) machines. There are also as many different types of software as there are CMM manufactures. This makes being qualified for a particular job a real challenge as you may have years of experience on CMM's, but no experience with a particular brand of software. Of course, knowledge of the software is necessary 

if you plan on writing part programs for your employer.  

 

Without getting too technical what a CMM does is measure part surfaces and  features, such as a drilled hole by taking "hits" on the surface or around the inside diameter of 

the hole to produce a coordinate point in space. Each of these points or "hits" has an 

"X", "Y" & "Z" value. Assembling these measurements in an organized fashion makes it possible for the software to produce the measurement data.  

 

My experience with CMM's consists entirely of running Brown & Sharpe machines,

using various versions of their software, PC-DMIS. For more information about Brown & Sharpe machines, PC-DMIS software or CMM's in general, click on the icons below .

© Tom Eckels - Eckels Island 2007