This text presents the latest technology for assessing the performance of machine tools, coordinate measuring machines and robotics. It also details procedures involving international calibration, certification and standardization, and introduces the gear and transmission metrology section.

Developments in lasers continue to enable progress in many areas such as eye surgery, the recording industry and dozens of others. This book presents citations from the book literature for the last 25 years and groups them for ease of access which is also provided by subject, author and titles indexes.

Maximizing reader insights into the key scientific disciplines of Machine Tool Metrology, this text will prove useful for the industrial-practitioner and those interested in the operation of machine tools. Within this current level of industrial-content, this book incorporates significant usage of the existing published literature and valid information obtained from a wide-spectrum of manufacturers of plant, equipment and instrumentation before putting forward novel ideas and methodologies. Providing easy to understand bullet points and lucid descriptions of metrological and calibration subjects, this book aids reader understanding of the topics discussed whilst adding a voluminous-amount of footnotes utilised throughout all of the chapters, which adds some additional detail to the subject. Featuring an extensive amount of photographic-support, this book will serve as a key reference text for all those involved in the field.

This book focuses on effective methods for assessing the accuracy of both coordinate measuring systems and coordinate measurements. It mainly reports on original research work conducted by Sladek’s team at Cracow University of Technology’s Laboratory of Coordinate Metrology. The book describes the implementation of different methods, including artificial neural networks, the Matrix Method, the Monte Carlo method and the virtual CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine), and demonstrates how these methods can be effectively used in practice to gauge the accuracy of coordinate measurements. Moreover, the book includes an introduction to the theory of measurement uncertainty and to key techniques for assessing measurement accuracy. All methods and tools are presented in detail, using suitable mathematical formulations and illustrated with numerous examples. The book fills an important gap in the literature, providing readers with an advanced text on a topic that has been rapidly developing in recent years. The book is intended for master and PhD students, as well as for metrology engineers working at industrial and research laboratories. It not only provides them with a solid background for using existing coordinate metrology methods; it is also meant to inspire them to develop the state-of-the-art technologies that will play an important role in supporting quality growth and innovation in advanced manufacturing.

Parallel Kinematic Machines (PKMs) are one of the most radical innovations in production equipment. They attempt to combine the dexterity of robots with the accuracy of machine tools to respond to several industrial needs. This book contains the proceedings of the first European-American Forum on Parallel Kinematic Machines, held in Milan, Italy from 31 August - 1 September 1998. The Forum was established to provide institutions, technology suppliers and industrial end users with an improved understanding of the real advantages to be gained from using PKMs. This book contributes to a mid-term strategy oriented to reduce time to market and costs, improve production flexibility and minimize environmental impacts to increase worldwide competitiveness. In particular the authors focus on enabling technologies and emerging concepts for future manufacturing applications of PKMs. Topics include: Current status of PKM R&D in Europe, the USA and Asia. Industrial requirements, roadblocks and application opportunities. Research issues and possibilities. Industrial applications and requirements.

Until recently, engineering materials could be characterized successfully using relatively simple testing procedures. As materials technology advances, interest is growing in materials possessing complex meso-, micro- and nano-structures, which to a large extent determine their physical properties and behaviour. The purposes of materials modelling are many: optimization, investigation of failure, simulation of production processes, to name but a few. Modelling and characterisation are closely intertwined, increasingly so as the complexity of the material increases. Characterisation, in essence, is the connection between the abstract material model and the real-world behaviour of the material in question. Characterisation of complex materials therefore may require a combination of experimental techniques and computation. This book publishes papers presented at the Third International Conference on Computational Methods and Experiments in Material Characterisation.Topics covered include: Composites; Ceramics; Alloys; Cements and Cement Based Materials; Biomaterials; Thin Films and Coatings; Advanced Materials; Imaging Analysis; Thermal Analysis; New Methods; Surface Chemistry, Nano Indentation; Continuum Methods; Particle Models; Damage Mechanics; Innovative Techniques; Stochastic Methods.

This Three-Volume-Set constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Software Engineering and Computer Systems, ICSECS 2011, held in Kuantan, Malaysia, in June 2011. The 190 revised full papers presented together with invited papers in the three volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on software engineering; network; bioinformatics and e-health; biometrics technologies; Web engineering; neural network; parallel and distributed; e-learning; ontology; image processing; information and data management; engineering; software security; graphics and multimedia; databases; algorithms; signal processing; software design/testing; e- technology; ad hoc networks; social networks; software process modeling; miscellaneous topics in software engineering and computer systems.