CUTLINES:

Paul Artman operates the fib.

Lorie Lucas measures weights using a single pan balance.

Metrology: the art of measurement

By Bill Bartkus
NADEP North Island

There is a select group of personnel at Naval Air Depot North Island whose task it is to maintain and disseminate the most accurate units of measurement within the Navy metrology and calibration program. The Navy Primary Standards Laboratory (NPSL), located in Building 469, provides direct measurement traceability to U.S. legal standards that are defined, maintained and disseminated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md.
For more than 50 years, NPSL - the only one in the Navy, has been synonymous with excellence and representing only the highest echelon of the Navy’s metrology and calibration program.
Headed by Patty Leyva, Code 4.1.4, the laboratory’s diverse standards are directly traceable to NIST or fundamental physical phenomena, according to an informational handout published by NPSL.
“We maintain several balances and mass comparator systems capable of precisely measuring weights within a few micrograms across a range of just a few milligrams up to 50 kilograms, and all our traceability comes through the NIST,” said David Giesenschlag, Code 4.1.4.5. “We provide calibration services for standards such as weights to numerous Navy activities and customer laboratories.”
He said that NPSL metrologists, physicists and technicians are basically responsible for developing specifications for new measuring equipment. “They are typically trained in-house by the equipment vendor on the new equipment, and then are responsible for managing and maintaining that equipment and performing measurements on it.”
“We provide measurement traceability for various customers that will send in their different types of physical and dimensional measurement standards. The new equipment will help us to provide that service more efficiently and more accurately,” Giesenschlag said.
Environmentally controlled rooms maintain a temperature of plus or minus a quarter degree Fahrenheit. This is required to provide stable, accurate measurements down to millionths of an inch in dimensional measurements.
“The equipment that we calibrate is not normally directly related to aircraft programs but to the laboratories that calibrate equipment for aircraft programs,” Giesenschlag mentioned. “Forty to 50 percent of our work is for non-NAVAIR customers such as the Strategic Programs Office and the Naval Sea Systems Command,” said Jim MacKinnon, Code 4.1.4.4. “However, we do calibrate some aircraft equipment such as humidity standards that the calibration lab in Building 463 (NADEP North Island Avionics) uses.”
Giesenschlag said the calibration lab next door to NPSL is one of its many customers “and we provide them direct calibration support. A lot of work performed by the (local) cal lab is further used to calibrate items used by the Depot.”
“There are currently 36 teammates working at NPSL, and they perform about 5,500 calibrations a year,” Leyva said. “Our personnel have an average of 20 years’ metrology experience.”
NPSL personnel also offer such services as calibration engineering and technical consultation and guidance, data analysis, lab audits, ands on-site training and engineering evaluation.
As one of the most comprehensive standards laboratories in the world, NPSL serves as a valuable resource in such areas as electro-optics, physical and dimensional, electromagnetics and flow. NPSL maintains the Navy’s most accurate standards by striving for continuous improvement and participating in professional metrology organizations.
Through state of the art measurement process, statistical process control and years of metrology experience, NPSL has reduced measurement uncertainties, turnaround time and customer cost to a minimum.