Weathering the storm: Keys to resiliency in MRO
Weathering the storm: Keys to resiliency in MRO By Ken Ameika It’s no secret that COVID-19 has adversely affected the airline industry, and consequently the MRO and test cell markets. But the impacts are nuanced. Commercial aircraft utilization is way down; meanwhile, freight carrier business is expanding markedly. Operators are spending less; but they still have needs, which often require quick turnaround. It’s been hard for many. But there’s good news: COVID provided lessons that we can all use to make our businesses, or our careers, more resilient to the next major disruption. Diversify Your Business Commercial passenger traffic—or [...]
Capacitance Probes vs. Strain Gauges in Piezo Flexure Stages
Capacitance probes with pico-positioning sensors can be embedded in piezo flexure stages. With minor mounting modifications, these non-contact probes provide significantly greater accuracy than strain gauges. Piezo flexure stages are positioning devices with a high degree of resolution. These motion stages contain a piezoelectric actuator that converts an electrical signal into displacement based on the reverse piezoelectric effect, which is the ability of a piezo electric material to elongate when a voltage is applied. When a voltage (e.g., 0-150 VDC) is applied to the actuator, the stage moves in proportion to the applied voltage. Yet, the exact position remains [...]
Press Release: Vitrek Offers Metrologists Laboratory-Level Accuracy in a Portable, Battery Operated DC Calibrator
Vitrek Offers Metrologists Laboratory-Level Accuracy in a Portable, Battery-Operated DC Calibrator The XiTRON 2000 Series provides flexibility when calibrating thermocouple, pressure, flow and DC voltage instrumentation; portable DC calibrator’s performance rivals costlier devices traditionally used in lab settings […]
CMP and Capacitance-Based Semiconductor Wafer Measurement
Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) uses chemical oxidation and mechanical abrasion to selectively remove material from semiconductor wafers in order to achieve very high levels of planarity. The planarity, or flatness, of these wafers is important for optical lithography, a microfabrication technique that produces integrated circuits (ICs) by transferring a geometric pattern from a photomask to a light-sensitive chemical photoresist. Also known as photolithography or UV lithography, optical lithography can produce a geometric pattern on a thin film or directly onto the substrate. Semiconductor Wafer Measurements: Flatness and Shape During optical lithography, variations in wafer flatness must be smaller than [...]
MTI Instruments Announces Newest Addition of the PBS-4100+ Portable Vibration and Balancing System
[/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container] [/fusion_text] [/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_column] [/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][/fusion_text] [/fusion_builder_column] Learn More About PBS-4100+ Gen4 [/fusion_text] [/fusion_builder_column] MTI Instruments Announces Newest Addition of the PBS-4100+ Portable Vibration and Balancing System; Continuing its Industry Leading Excellence in Aircraft Engine Maintenance Systems The fourth-generation iteration of MTI Instruments’ engine vibration analysis and balancing system is more mobile than ever, while maintaining the highest standards in the industry for commercial aviation ALBANY, N.Y., April 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — MTI Instruments, Inc. (“MTI Instruments”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mechanical Technology, Incorporated [...]
MTI Instrument’s PBS ROI Calculator: See How Much Money You Can Save
Ensuring the proper operation of your aircraft engine is essential to complying with manufacturers guidelines for the safety and longevity of the aircraft. Ensuring engines are not operating outside acceptible vibration limits and operating optimally isn't just smart, it is vital to your business. Excessive engine vibration can lead to cracked turbine, fan and compressor components potentially leading to catastrophic failure. The costs of catastrophic engine failure due to an unbalanced engine can measure in the millions of dollars. As airlines push to get more and more life out of their aging fleets, the need to properly maintain the [...]
TESTING CHARGE AMPLIFIER GAIN AND FREQUENCY RESPONSE WITH A SIGNAL GENERATOR
[Application Note 40518] Piezoelectric transducers produce small electrical charges in response to pressure. Their sensitivity, ruggedness, and stability at high temperatures make them an essential building block of many accelerometers and pressure sensors. Applications include turbine vibration measurement (accelerometers) and combustion dynamics monitoring (pressure sensors). Typically, the high-impedance charge output produced by a piezoelectric transducer must be conditioned and amplified before transmission across system cabling to the data acquisition and measurement instrumentation. This conversion is accomplished with a device called a charge amplifier. Problem Over time, a charge amplifier’s signal response can drift. Damage to the charge amplifier or associated [...]
Multinational Manufacturer Saint-Gobain Selects MTI Instruments’ Digital Capacitance Measurement Technology to Streamline R&D
Multinational Manufacturer Saint-Gobain Selects MTI Instruments’ Digital Capacitance Measurement Technology to Streamline R&D ALBANY, N.Y., April 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — MTI Instruments, Inc. (“MTI Instruments”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mechanical Technology, Incorporated (NASDAQ: MKTY), announced today that Compagnie de Saint-Gobain (“Saint-Gobain”) has selected MTI Instruments’ non-destructive measurement technology to help streamline the Saint-Gobain’s manufacturing research and development. Saint-Gobain, a French multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and distributes various high-performance materials, chose MTI Instruments as a partner after identifying that the process for producing accurate and repeatable measurement solutions was time-consuming and cost-prohibitive. Saint-Gobain estimated that just 30% of their process [...]
MEMS and Capacitance-Based Semiconductor Wafer Measurement
MEMS Technology and Capacitance-Based Wafer Measurement Micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMS) are tiny devices that house electrical and mechanical components on a single silicon chip or integrated circuit (IC). They integrate mechanical structures with electronics that are normally fabricated with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. In addition to miniaturization, the benefits of MEMS include expanded functionalities at lower cost and with improved performance and reliability. With MEMS devices, critical physical dimensions range from smaller than one micron (µ) to larger than several millimeters (mm). In complex systems, multiple moving elements may be controlled by integrated electronics. Examples of the mechanical components in [...]
THICKNESS INFORMATION OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS
Composite materials consist of two or more materials which include a substrate or base material such as paper, cotton cloth, or glass cloth along with a resin or adhesive such as epoxy, melamine, or silicone. To make a thermoset laminate, the base material is coated with the adhesive so that layers of material can be pressed under heat and pressure into sheet form. The Problem: Composite material thickness needed to be verified prior to forming or machining. Due to the size of the sheets typical measurement techniques were not suitable. A consistent method to accurately measure the board thickness [...]







