Introducing: Measure twice, cut once

My dad introduced me to the titular saying of this piece when teaching me carpentry as a child. It’s excellent advice that I have ignored too many times. Whilst familiarising myself with the Manufacturing Quality industry I have stumbled into and reading about Gauge Repeatability & Reproducibility tests, that old saying seems even more relevant than ever. 

I am entirely new to the world of metrology, and it feels somewhat as if I am back in school. The statistics, the repetition of tests, the scientific vernacular: it all reminds me of the lab reports we used to do in school. That, plus the overwhelming feeling that there is so much knowledge out there that I don’t (and could never) fully grasp, gives me those heebie-jeebies akin to my final exams. 

It has been a strange journey to end up in writing for a new publication on manufacturing quality technologies and this is certainly not a job I expected to get. For a long time, the looming £30K+ debt seemed to be a measurable value of how irrelevant my history degree was; it was only recently that I fully came to understand how transferrable skills are and how inaccurate my own measurements had been. The student debt’s still lingering, but I have found myself in a job about… measuring, or 3D scanning, or something along those lines. When I first heard the word metrology, I thought it was the analysis of the weather. Discovering that it’s the science of measurement did not necessarily spark a great sense of passion for me, until I got to understand in how many different parts of life it’s relevant, including my own interests where I never thought to find it.

As part of my preparation for this job, I read a brilliant article on the basics of metrology on engineering.com, which mentioned the origins of quality control in the development of firearms. Knowing a little more than the average person about the development of arms during WWI, and connecting this to an interest in modern defence, it’s become clear to me that everything in the modern world is subject to quality assurance. Archaeological artefacts and remains can be scanned in 3D for some very productive research opportunities, and even entire ruins, such as Clitheroe Castle, have been scanned in 3D. Finding out about this, I knew I had a chance to find my own passions coming back to me within the field of metrology. 

Even in my spare time, I find myself confronted with relevant technologies. There has been a wonderful development in video games over the last decade or so to incorporate 3D scanning and motion capture into these artificial worlds, to make them more accurate and realistic. A common technique nowadays is to use facial scanning of actors to render more realistic faces and expressions for in-game characters, but it goes much further than that: one of my favourite games used a satellite height-map to accurately render a real-world landscape within the virtual world. In effect, an entire environment was 3D-scanned. 

So, the possibilities are endless, and the necessity just so, as we move forward into a new age of refined, high-tech equipment everywhere around us and explore the number of connected industries. I certainly have come a long way from the workbench making toy swords and look forward to expanding my knowledge and understanding of the future of measurement.