Open Forum – Horrobilia
Thursday, November 17, 2011
12:00 N – 1:30 PM
Session Co-chairs: Byron R. Knapp (Professional Instruments, Inc.) and Brian P. O’Connor (Aerotech, Inc.)
To quote Chris Evans, “Precision engineering is plagued with painful re-invention and repetition of past failures.” The Horrobilia Session is intended to draw attention to some of these past failures, and reduce the chances of their repetition. It also prepares young engineers to deal with similar problems, understand how long it may take, how much patience may be necessary to find the exact source of a problem, but how easy they may be to fix!
In the tradition of Dr. Erwin Loewen’s and James Bryan’s past Horrobilia Open Forums, we have planned a very special session this year featuring introductory presentations by Erwin G. Loewen (retired), James B. Bryan (Bryan Associates), Robert J. Hocken (University of North Caroline at Charlotte), and Alexander H. Slocum (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). These world-renowned experts will recount problems they have encountered with expensive and embarrassing consequences such as days, weeks or months of frustration, machine downtime, and failed theories. The solutions to these problems are shockingly simple to understand, but not obvious.
All of this is for the purpose of warming up the audience to tell their own Horrobilia stories. Audience members will be encouraged to participate by recounting their own problems that have cost more money, took more time to solve, and were even easier to fix.
Erwin Loewen spent a long professional career in the field well before it acquired the name precision engineering. Working in both industry and academia he specialized in the production of diffraction gratings with tolerances in the nanometer domain over significant areas. This is well before the word became so famous. Problems that had to be overcome make fascinating stories, both technical and personal. He is co-author of one of the few texts on the technology and history of the field. He is a life member of ASME, Fellow of Society of Precision Engineers, Society of Manufacturing engineers and the Optical Society of America. He has been a member of CIRP (International Society of Production Engineering research) serving various terms in its metrology subcommittee. For 19 years he was chair of ASME standards committee B-89 on dimensional metrology.
Jim Bryan retired in 1985 after 30 years as the Metrology Group Leader at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California. Honorary Memberships: (1) The International Academy for Precision Engineering (CIRP), (2) The European Society for Precision Engineering. (3) The American Society for Precision Engineering. (4) The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Awards: (1) The SME 1977 International Research Medal. (2) CSPE 1979 Archimedes Engineering Achievement Award. (3) The ASME 1995 Dedicated Service Award. (4) The SME 2007 Masters of Manufacturing Award. (5) The ASME 2008 Eugene Merchant Award. (6) The CIRP 2009 General Pierre Nicolau Award. Patents: (1) The “Telescoping Magnetic Ball Bar” (for testing machine tool contouring accuracy), (2) The “Slow Tool Servo” (for diamond tool facing of asymetric workpieces).
Dr. Hocken began his career at the NBS where he developed software correction of CMMs and the use of computer assisted theodolites (with Bill Haight) for large-scale stereotriangulation. He played a lead role in the development of the Automatic Manufacturing Research Facility, invented the laser tracker (with Kam Lau), and edited the first American measuring machine standard. In 1988 he came to UNC Charlotte as a chaired Professor. Here he built the internationally recognized Center for Precision Metrology. The Center performs research and educates students in manufacturing metrology. Dr. Hocken has continued to performed research in areas ranging from large-scale metrology to nanotechnology. Also he is active on the B89 committee for dimensional metrology. He is currently working with other universities on nanotechnology projects.
Alexander H. Slocum is a member of the IEEE and a Fellow of the ASME. He received the S.B. (1982), S.M. (1983), and Ph.D.(1985) from MIT in Cambridge Massachusetts in Mechanical Engineering. From 1983 to 1985 he also worked at the US National Bureau of Standards. He is currently the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He is the author of seven dozen journal articles and 12 dozen conference papers. He is also the author of text/reference books Precision Machine Design (Dearborn, MI, SME 1985) and FUNdaMENTALS of Design (Cambridge, MA, MIT 2005, http://web.mit.edu/2.75/resources/FUNdaMENTALS.html ). Dr. Slocum was awarded a Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 1995 for Federal Service, seven dozen patents issued/pending, and has helped create 11 products that have been awarded R&D 100 awards, each for annually being one of one hundred most technologically significant new products. Dr. Slocum received the Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award in 1999 and was the Massachusetts Professor of the Year in 2000. Dr. Slocum has also received the SME Frederick W. Taylor Research Medal, and the ASME Leonardo daVinci and Machine Design Awards. Dr. Slocum has completed numerous Ironman triathlon events, is a rescue certified SCUBA diver, an avid snowboarder, woodworker, and has for many years helped coach a FIRST robotics team with his wife Debra.