NPL Training Courses

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK's National Measurement Insitute.  They are responsible for measurement standards in the UK, and are a leading centre for scientific research.  NPL provide guidance on good practice, wide ranging resources for education, along with commercial training and consultancy services.

The NPL Training Framework consists of a matrix of measurement-related training programmes.  The framework has been developed in partnership with industry with the following objectives:

• to develop core skills and competencies in practitioners
• to raise the level of technical knowledge
• to promote and instil good practice
• to foster a questioning and planning culture

The NPL training programmes are accredited by NPL, validated by The National Skills Academy for Manufacturing, and delivered only by NPL Accredited Training Providers.

Iain Macleod Associates became an NPL Accredited Training Provider last year for the courses in dimensional measurement.  These courses teach the fundamental principles of metrology for engineers, inspection and QA people.

Courses which teach people how to inspect engineering components obviously have a natural fit with courses which teach people how to specify engineering components, and make a logical extension to our training portfolio.  This means that we can now offer a consistent range of training courses across the spectrum of design, manufacture and inspection.

Click here for a flyer describing these courses in more detail.

Only in America ...

Frosty in Vienna

Recently returned from the ISO TC213 conference in Vienna. Vienna was beautiful, but bloody cold.

Some useful progress was made in some of the working groups.

WG17, which I chair, has been given the task of updating a document which has the vaguely threatening title of 'ISO/TR 14638 - GPS Masterplan'. This document maps out the structure of the entire ISO GPS system, and describes how the different standards relate to each other.

The document has not been touched for about 15 years, and is very hard to understand, so there is quite a lot of work to do. In fact, most of the 'up-date' will probably involve redrafting large sections of the text just to try and make it comprehensible.

In the previous TC213 series of meetings in San Antonio, a new study group was set up to map out the differences between the ISO GPS system, and the American ASME Y14.5 standard. The study group is jointly led by Archie Anderson of the USA, who oversaw the development of Y14.5 for many years, and Renald Vincent of France, who has played a major role in the development of GPS over recent years.

Meeting again in Vienna, we have now mapped out a structure for the comparison, and can start to fill in some of the detail. I think that this could potentially be a very useful study, as the differences are not always well understood, and organisations in many areas of industry are having to work with both systems.

WG 18, which deals with the geometrical tolerancing standards, was a much patchier affair. Too many new options and possibilities being introduced, and not enough progress on sorting out what we already have.

Encouraging signs for 2010

It is a long time since I posted anything here. Happy New Year to anyone who reads this.

We seemed to turn an economic corner around Autumn last year. There was a noticeable upturn in the number of enquiries I was receiving in November, and then things started to get very busy indeed in December. The level of work has continued into this year - I've been away training for most of the last two weeks, and have a reasonable number of courses booked in for the next couple of months.

In the last few days, I've even had an enquiry from a company in the automotive supply chain, the sector which was probably hardest hit of all in the downturn, so all around there seem to be positive signs of recovery.

During the quieter bits of 2009, I became a licenced deliverer of some of the metrology courses offered by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), and I intend to expand that area of activity in 2010. These courses teach the fundamentals of measurement and inspection, and are a perfect fit with the geometrical tolerancing training that I offer already. It means that we should be able to provide a seamless, and fully consistant, series of training programmes across the disciplines of design, manufacture and inspection.

One area of particular interest is Large Volume Metrology, where laser scanners or trackers are used to scan large components or assemblies to very high levels of accuracy. The aerospace insdustry is starting to use this technology extensively, and it also has applications in other industries.

New Years Resolution - to try and keep this blog updated more frequently.

Three days in San Antonio

The latest ISO TC213 conference was held in San Antonio, Texas. Other commitments meant that I was only able to fly in for three days of the conference, which lasted about 10 days altogether.

I flew from Manchester via Atlanta, a most efficient airport, where it took no more than about 30 minutes to pass through immigration, collect luggage, redeposit luggage, pass through security and make my way to the correct terminal and gate for the next leg.

I arrived in San Antonio, which had been enduring weeks of heat wave recently, to find it raining. Their first proper rain for 18 months, timed to greet a visitor from Manchester! It rained on each of the following three days as well.

Most of the trip was spent inside the Holiday Inn, where all the delegates were staying, and all the meetings were being held. I was in meetings from 9:00am to 8:00pm on the first day, and 9:00am to 6:00pm the second day, so I did not see a lot besides the inside of the hotel until day 3.

San Antonio itself is smaller than I expected, as American cities often seem to be. I expect them all to be huge, and most of them aren't. According to Wikipedia, its population is around 2 million (smaller than Manchester), and it is still the seventh largest city in the USA. Rain showers each morning cut the humidity to comfortable levels, and left it pleasantly warm and even fresh while I was there.

We saw the Alamo, of course, which is close to the centre of the city.

Also in the heart of the city is Riverwalk: one storey below street level, there are walkways along either side of the San Antonio river, where there are clustered a vibrant collection of bars, shops and restaurants. We strolled along here each evening to find somewhere to eat, and always ate well.

My flying visit was quickly over, and then it was back to Manchester (which had enjoyed some of its sunniest weather in my absence).

The next TC213 conference will be in Vienna in 2010, which I will look forward to. I just hope that the ISO habit of scheduling meetings to run all evening as well as all day will still leave a little time to see the city.

Next BS 8888 now scheduled for 2011

Been very remiss with postings recently. Somewhat shocked to see the last one was on 1st July! My only excuse is that I was away for half of July, and spent the other half doing some major updates to training course material (lots and lots of new diagrams, which always take ages to get right).

Anyway, we had a meeting last week of the BSI committee looking after BS 8888 with a view to getting preparation of the next revision (then scheduled for October 2010) underway.

We had a useful review of the current edition, and are making plans to restructure the content (to make the information more accessible), add more diagrams and illustrations, and to cull the annexes, which now make up almost 75% of the document. These annexes have been added over a period of time, with intention of providing additional explanation and useful background information, but they are getting a bit out of hand. Some will stay, and may even be extended, but some will be incorporated into the main body of the standard, and some are no longer necessary and can be removed altogether.

We then turned our attention to a number of forthcoming ISO standards and amendments, which I have already mentioned on previous posts. These are bringing through some significant changes and additions to the system of technical specification. The justification for the next revision of BS 8888 lies in providing coverage of the changes and developments that these new standards and amendments will bring.

- ISO 1101 amendment 1 is bringing in the additional annotation elements required for fully annotating 3D CAD models.

- ISO 1101 amendment 2 is introducing additional symbols, bringing in some new, and rather technical functionality to geometrical tolerancing.

- ISO 5459 is a complete overhaul of the definitions and rules for datums.

- ISO 14405 is a new standard on linear sizes, which will replace ISO 8015.

In each case, we reviewed the timetable for the new document - how many comment, discussion, amendment and voting stages each has still to go through, and the likely timescale for that to take place. Our conclusion was that there is a faint chance of ISO 1101 amendment 1 being ready for inclusion in a 2010 revision of BS 8888, but that none of the other will see the light of day before 2011 at the earliest.

While we could bring out a 2010 revision of BS 8888 with tweaks, adjustments and improvements, there is no technical justification for a revision of the standard until these new technical changes and developments can be included. I am pleased to say that we have decided to delay a revision of BS 8888 provisionally to 2011. Pleased, because I have wanted all along to make BS 8888 a more stable standard that changes less frequently.

Our decision has also been influenced by the fact that some of these future developments are still fairly contentious, and have a rocky road ahead of them before they are finalised. In several cases, the new standards are introducing new possibilities and symbology to address very specialized and rarefied applications, and they run the constant risk of making the whole system horribly complicated in order to address issues which are of largely academic interest.

The UK representatives on the ISO committees have always sought to avoid unnecessary complexity, and to take a pragmatic, working engineer's approach to these new developments, but we don't always manage to get our own way. Amid the complexities, however, there is also much genuinely useful work taking place. Some of these new standards are now clearly defining rules and principles that have previously often been implied rather than stated, and rarely properly understood. Our challenge is to introduce these in a way that is practical and useable for industry at large.

In just over 4 weeks I shall be going to Texas for the next ISO TC213 conference (having finally managed to find some affordable flights), and will report back on how things develop there.

Catching up

I was away training last week. The course went very well indeed, but I'm always a bit drained afterwards. Friday night was then spent at a charity ball/auction to raise funds for my childrens' school - a terrific night out at The Lowry in Manchester, but a very late finish.

Saturday was when Friday night caught up with me. Sunday was a fund-raising sponsored walk (the childrens' school again - who schedules this stuff?) with me trying to catch up with the kids. And this week has been mainly catching up with admin so far.

I have a meeting coming up next week at BSI for TDW/4/6, the committee dealing with education. We have been slowly working towards a fully accredited training scheme in Geometrical Product Specification for some time now. The IED are going to be the accreditation body, but we still have a long way to go in sorting out the details of how the process will work, how it will be funded etc. I need to catch up with some outstanding actions on structuring the curriculum.

In TDW/4/6 we have learnt a great deal from the National Physics Laboratory (NPL) who have had a system of accredited training for metrologists in place for sometime now. When I catch up with everything else, I'm planning to become a deliverer of the NPL training. It is a near-perfect fit with the geometrical tolerancing training I'm providing now.

Something more technical next time ...