Conference: Progress in Precision Technical Conference, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, April 17-18, 2002

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

This grant provides funding to produce a video record of the conference "Progress in Precision" that will take place in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 17-18, 2002. This video record will be in two phases: first, a verbatim video for each session will be created and made available as streaming video for viewing over the web; second, a summary of the conference (60-90 minute) will be produced and made available in the form of a DVD. This conference will emphasize the technical progress that resulted from the growth of precision engineering as a technical field over the past 20 years. Line widths for VLSI circuits have gone from 5 micron to 0.1 micron; magnetic data storage has increased by a factor of 1000 and now data can be stored at 10 Gb/in2; biological labs-on-a-chip have been produced; new metrology systems have been developed including white light interferometers and scanning probe microscopes; diamond turning is in common use for lens fabrication and snap-together assembles for alignment; and the word "nanotechnology" has entered the lexicon. All of these systems have been at the focus of precision engineering research and development. The goal of the conference is to describe the wide range of technical fields intrinsic to precision engineering, to define the impact of the multi-disciplinary viewpoint that is at the heart of the field and to predict the future challenges. It will serve to remind the practitioners of the significant improvements in process and measurement that have taken place over the past 20 years and to introduce a new group of faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students to the importance of precision engineering. By creating the video record of the conference and distilling the 2 day meeting into a 90 minute DVD, a permanent record of the conference will be available that can be widely distributed to emphasize the contributions of this important field.