The Scientific Technical Committee Precision Engineering and Metrology (STC P) had two meetings in 2012 - in Paris on January 26th and in Hong Kong on August 24th. The STC P meetings were attended by 60 participants in Paris and 63 participants in Hong Kong.

Details of the technical presentations and discussions at the 2012 STC P meetings can be found in the complete minutes of these meetings, produced by W. Gao, STC P Secretary. The minutes are available to CIRP members at the CIRP website.

This year’s keynote paper of STC P entitled “Precision Engineering for Wind Energy Systems” was presented by Gert Goch during the plenary session of the General Assembly in Hong Kong. Gert Goch coordinated this excellent paper together with Wolfgang Knapp and Frank Härtig. The paper, which gives details of the design, manufacturing and accuracy of decisive mechanical components like the wind rotor system and the drive train, was well received by the assembly.

Following the keynote paper, the STC P paper session was held on August 21st and 22nd. As already in the last years one special focus were measurement techniques for micro structures: Wei Gao presented a noncontact scanning electrostatic force microscope for surface profile measurement, Thomas Liebrich gave insight into a 3D-probing system for micro-components and Yasuhiro Takaya presented a method applying standing wave scale sensing for the measurement of microforms. Also the fabrication of mircoparts was discussed in detail in the paper “Nano fabrication of star structure for precision metrology developed by focused ion beam direct writing” by Zongwei Xu. Further focus of the STC P in the last years was the computed tomography for dimensional measurements. Also this year new developments, results and comparisons were presented during the General Assembly: Simone Carmignato showed the results of an international comparison and Wim Dewulf discussed the sense and non-sense of beam hardening correction in CT metrology. Currently, Leonardo De Chiffre is working on a keynote paper focusing on industrial applications of CT scanning, which will be presented during the General Assembly 2014. Also the topic of the 2013 keynote paper “Manufacturing and metrology of freeform optics” was of interest during this year’s presentations as Xiadong Zang presented a paper about “Machining of optical freeform prisms by rotating tools turning”.

During the General Assembly new STC P officers were elected for the period of September 2012 to August 2015. These candidates were proposed:
-    Wolfgang Knapp, Chairman
-    Wei Gao, Vice Chairman
-    Alkan Donmez, Secretary.
This proposal was accepted unanimously.

Albert Weckenmann