New Courses

It has been a busy summer so far.

We have developed and piloted a new Stress Analysis course, introducing the basic principles of stress analysis for calculations with calculators and spreadsheets.  The idea has been to give engineers and designers the tools to carry out basic calculations for stress, strain and deflection in fairly straight-forward structures.  This is really covering a lot of the same ground that engineering students cover at degree level, but compressed into three days, with a strong emphasis on practical application.

We had hoped to compress this into a two-day course, but that proved overambitious.  We will be trialing the latest version of the course with the client who requested it within the next few weeks.   Once all the creases have been ironed out, we will be publicising this with the other courses on our main web site.

When running the geometrical tolerancing course for one of our main aerospace clients, we frequently get questions and feedback comments about datums and tolerances applied to assemblies.  There is not time to cover this adequately in the standard course, so we have proposed working with the client in questions to develop an advanced, follow-on geometrical tolerancing course.  This new, advanced course would look in particular at assembly datum structures and assembly-level tolerances.  If any other organisations out there (particularly aircraft manufacturers) would be interested in collaborating with us on the development of such a course, please get in touch.

First NPL GD&T course

The first NPL GD&T course was held in the splendid setting of Bushy House in Teddington, where the National Physical Laboratory began over a hundred years ago.  This is not far from Heathrow Airport, but you would never know it.  Surrounded by the extensive grounds of Bushy Park, including cricket pitches, orchards and deer parks, we felt a bit like extras on a Jane Austin movie set.

This was one of the views from the museum room where the course was held.  There are a herd of deer out there somewhere, but you can't see them in this picture.

The museum room itself was full of old bits of measuring equipment mapping some of the history of NPL since 1900, although some of the equipment looked older.

We had a great mix of people on the course, including three from Scotland, three from Ireland, and one from the Isle of Wight.  They represented an equally diverse range of industries, including aerospace, boat building and medical equipment.

Feedback from the course has been highly positive, and we hope to run the next one in August or September.

Geometrical Tolerancing courses enter the NPL Training Framework

Two of our Geometrical Tolerancing courses are now available as accredited training courses through the National Physical Laboratory Training Framework.

• Geometrical Tolerancing to BS 8888 and ISO Standards.

• Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing to ASME Y14.5.

We are running the first of these as an open 3 day course at the National Physical Laboratory on 25th, 26th and 27th May.

 

As far as I know, this is the first time that accredited Geometrical Tolerancing courses have been available in the UK. The courses are accredited by the National Physical Laboratory and validated by The National Skills Academy for Manufacturing.  Delegates who successfully complete the course receive a numbered certificate, registered with NPL Training, which also carries the National Skills Academy logo.
The same courses are also still available from us in non-accredited form (which means that they cost less).  I have no idea yet how much interest there will be in accredited training in these subjects, but the response to the public course we are running at NPL later this month has been very good, and the course is almost full.

 

Email me if you want further details about these courses, or know anyone else who might be interested.

Gadgets

This month I took delivery of a new HTC Desire mobile phone.  What a brilliant little device!  The Google Sky Map is a fantastic app.

Also stumbled across a web site for some of the most amazing time pieces you are likely to see: check out the 'Horological Machines' at http://www.mbandf.com./  Will someone get me one for Christmas please.

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.