Nickel and nickel-alloy microparts sized on the order of 5–1000 microns have been imaged in three dimensions using a new microscopic technique, Digital Volumetric Imaging (DVI). The gears were fabricated using Sandia National Laboratories’ LIGA technology (lithography, molding, and electroplating). The images were taken on a microscope built by Resolution Sciences Corporation by slicing the gear into one-micron thin slices, photographing each slice, and then reconstructing the image with software. The images were matched to the original CAD (computer aided design) model, allowing LIGA designers, for the first time, to see visually how much deviation from the design is induced by the manufacturing process. Calibration was done by imaging brass ball bearings and matching them to the CAD model of a sphere. A major advantage of DVI over scanning techniques is that internal defects can be imaged to very high resolution. In order to perform the metrology operations on the microcomponents, high-speed and high-precision algorithms are developed for coordinate metrology. The algorithms are based on a least-squares approach to data registration the {X,Y,Z} point clouds generated from the component surface onto a target geometry defined in a CAD model. Both primitive geometric element analyses as well as an overall comparison of the part geometry are discussed. Initial results of the micromeasurements are presented in the paper.

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Phenoloxidase (PO) production can be used as an indicator of pathogen defence in insects. The geographical mosaic of coevolution implies that traits associated with pathogen defence will vary across a geographical range. Bateman's principle implies that the benefit of increased defence levels is greater for females than males. To test both of these hypotheses, we sampled four populations of Japanese beetles, Popillia japonica, across Vermont: two were from locations using biological pest control, and two locations did not use biocontrol. We quantified defence levels (PO) and parasite resistance in males and females from each population. Populations from areas with biocontrol exhibited greater PO production, females produced more PO, populations with higher levels of PO suffered less mortality from pathogen exposure, and PO levels positively correlate with increased mortality in the absence of parasitism. Results support the geographical mosaic of coevolution and the implications of Bateman's principle.

The lack of plug-and-play programmability in conventional toolpath planning approach in subtractive manufacturing, i.e., machining leads to significantly higher manufacturing cost for CNC based prototyping. In computer aided manufacturing (CAM) packages, typical B-rep or NURBS based representations of the CAD interfaces challenge core computations of tool trajectories generation process, such as, surface offsetting to be completely automated. In this work, the problem of efficient generation of free-form surface offsets is addressed with a novel volumetric representation. It presents an image filter based offsetting algorithm, which leverages the parallel computing engines on modern graphics processor unit (GPU). The scalable voxel data structure and the proposed hardware-accelerated volumetric offsetting together advance the computation and memory efficiencies well beyond the capability of past studies. Additionally, in order to further accelerate the offset computation the problem of offsetting with a large distance is decomposed into successive offsetting using smaller distances. The accuracy of the offset algorithms is thoroughly analyzed. The developed GPU implementation of the offsetting algorithm is robust in computation, easy to comprehend, and achieves a 50-fold speedup on single graphics card (NVIDIA GTX780Ti) relative to prior best-performing dual socket quad-core CPU implementation.

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