Precision mechanics

Precision mechanics is a manufacturing technique for components used in telecommunications, microsystems, measuring instruments, prostheses (medicine), optical devices, or in the aerospace industry. Its development has been favored by machining processes using computers (CNC) or electrochemical processes such as EDM.

Precision mechanics has been throughout history a technical field that has been characterized by the precision of its work, hence its name. The measures with which the pieces are machined are the central axis of the activity.

Significant developments in precision mechanics

• Numerical control of machine tools: The operation and control of the already classic machine tools, through instructions given to the machine by means of a computer associated with it.
• Prosthesis or artificial extension: The main objective of a prosthesis is to replace a part of the body that has been lost by an amputation or that does not exist because of agenesis, fulfilling the same functions as the missing part, such as artificial legs or dental prosthesis (total mechanics). For the preparation of these prostheses, precision instruments are required to assist in the manufacture of parts in order to fit the body accurately.
• Robotics: Robots are called to elements that are able to perform any physical or mental work being assisted by a computer program.

Technically, there is a first level of robots, designed to respectively execute a sequence of mechanical operations controlled by a program. Basically, they are mechanical arms or manipulators, not very static, that carry out tasks with precision and tirelessness such as welding parts, placing bolts, painting bodywork or more dangerous operations such as feeding furnaces and forging presses.

• Cybernetic robots: On a second level, robots have important additional devices, particularly "eyes" made up of television cameras. Through them, the robot takes from the environment a diffuse pattern of lights, shadows and colors and feeds a computer. It performs a scene analysis and thus records in its memory the objects surrounding it. Based on this information, the robot guided by the artificial intelligence instrumented on the computer plans its activity, generating and comparing sequences of operations and choosing the one to execute the ordered work objective. It is authentic cyber ingenuity, whose operation is automatically controlled and adjusted according to the variations of the environment, applying for it, in the world of technology, the principle of feedback. This second and more advanced level of robots has, for the first, a very important property: versatility.

Applications of precision mechanics

To a large extent, components manufactured with precision mechanics are used for the creation of parts, the transmission, recording, transformation, supervision and processing of optical and acoustic, electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic signals.

Microtechnics/Microsystems Engineering unites microelectronic, micromechanical, and optoelectronic components such as intelligent microprocessors, sensors, and actuators to form extremely miniaturized technical systems. Applications range from navigation systems in vehicles to complex chemical analysis systems of the smallest dimensions, eg for space navigation, to valves and pumps for dosing medicines in the body. Optoelectronics provides the joint technical foundations for televisions, CD players, digital photography apparatus, laser machines, night vision systems, and many other industrial goods.

Engineers specializing in Precision Mechanics often collaborate with physicists, chemists, computer scientists, and engineers from other fields. Precision Mechanics studies are closely related to Prosthetics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Computer Science.