Dr. Lau and NIST
39 years ago, a visionary young engineer, newly bestowed with his doctorate, began working at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), which would later become known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
By the fall of that year, Dr. Kam Lau had completed the first demonstrable prototype of his vision for the future of industrial robot performance improvement: the Laser Tracker. But in the 5 years Dr. Lau searched for an industrial partner to help bring the tracker to market before founding his own company to make it happen, NIST provided a home for him to continue experimenting and tinkering. The other fruits of Dr. Lau’s labor in that time included 3D analog probes and the first designs of the XD Laser for Machine Tool Calibration (MTC). These would become the lifeblood of an early API that had licensed the design of the first tracker to Leica (the Wild) and was working on the design of the T2.
The 5 years Dr. Lau worked at NIST allowed for the development of some of the most significant manufacturing and quality control equipment of the industrial age and led directly to the Radian, the smallest, lightest, most accurate Laser Tracker known to man, and the XD Laser, the only machine calibration laser that can capture all errors in one, simple setup. Click here to learn more about Dr. Lau and the state-of-the-art dimensional metrology products and services API offers, and speak to a Real Metrologist today:
