Measuring & Metallurgical Instruments
Introduction – Measuring and Metallurgical instruments are the instruments/equipments that are used to measure the different physical quantities like Surface quantities, Hardness, Tensile strength, Roughness & Thickness of the real world metallic & non-metallic objects or bodies. In industrial engineering, production and quality assurance, measuring instruments are used to obtain the physical quantities of specimen objects or products for their true value & quality control. The measuring instruments are not limited to the above mentioned objectives but also there are lots of things that you can measure with different measuring devices / instruments.
  Calibration of measuring instruments – Calibration is done to compare the measured values by measuring devices/instruments to the calibrated international standards. These comparisons of the measured values are done to find the stability, reproducibility, precision & accuracy of the measuring instruments. Following would be the outcomes of the calibration of a measuring instrument-
a. No error in the device- The device given the exact value in an experiment as that of the standard value.
b. Significant error but no adjustment done
c.  An adjustment made to correct the error to reach an acceptable level
 Types of measuring and Metallurgical instruments
                                    i.     Optical measuring instruments Â
                                  ii.     Hardness Testing Equipments
                               iii.     Industrial Microscopes
                               iv.     Environmental Test Equipments
                                  v.     Material Testing Machines
                               vi.     Surface roughness testers
                             vii.     Thickness Measuring Gauges
                          viii.     Non-destructive Inspection Instruments ( NDT)    Â
2.      Functions-wise-
                                    i.     Measuring microscopes
                                  ii.     Profile Projectors
                               iii.     Video measuring machines
                                  iv.     Rockwell Hardness testers
                                    v.     Vickers Hardness Testers
                                  vi.     Micro hardness testers
                                vii.     Brinell Hardness Testers
                              viii.     Universal hardness Testers
                                  ix.     Metallurgical Microscopes
                                    x.     Stereo microscopes
                                  xi.     Universal Testing machines
                                xii.     Portable Hardness Testers
                              xiii.     Coating thickness measuring gauges
                              xiv.     Ultrasonic Thickness gauges
 Measuring & Metallurgical instruments in different industries & society- Different measuring instruments are used by different industries, Institutions and organizations as per their need. By the way almost all the dimensional measuring instruments are used by the mechanical or physical industries.
 In the automotive industry measuring instruments are required for conducting inspection, measurement, and quality checks for various components and parts. The automotive industry has been increasingly using optical measurement systems and coordinates measuring machines instead of the conventional strain gauges, accelerometers, transducers, and extensometers for improving the safety and comfort level of vehicles. Dimensional metrology or measurement equipments are crucial for automotive industry as designing and styling play an important role in the automotive industry.
   Aerospace and Defense
Metrology/Measuring instruments play crucial role also in Aerospace and Defense industry as it is one of the highly competitive industries/market where products performance and their quality is very important for market success. Environmental concerns and Regularity changes are the serious challenges for this industry. As this industry have to use new construction materials, production techniques such as additive manufacturing & advanced machining.
Nowadays, manufacturing industries are having huge demands of manufacturing more products in a shorter time along with enhanced quality demands and standards. In this situation, unstable & disturbing processes and low precision quality control can cause serious quality problems or production failures. Therefore manufacturing companies are facing huge pressure to remain competitive in their respective markets as they have to optimize and control all of their processes very effectively & economically. Again affordable high precision metrology/measuring equipments are required to meet these challenges.
 Benefits of using high precision measuring instruments – As you know quality control have become one of the most important roles for the production in all industries, the industries should move towards the use of high precision metrology equipments with latest technologies for better control on quality, time consumption and economical performance. Measuring instruments are available in the market with –
A.     Higher stability
c.    Digital & Automatic functions that make them easy to use and save time of the industry.
  The product development and process validation are directly depending on the high precision measuring instruments while performance of a company & its existence or stability in the market is indirectly dependent.
 Quality control is the key to better performance
