Acceleration calibration goes digital

ASC GmbH, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, PROSE AG and SPEKTRA GmbH are cooperating on the joint development of a new calibration certificate

Conventional calibration certificates will get a digital counterpart this year. To prove that and how a measuring instrument has been calibrated, metrological institutes worldwide will in future be able to use "Digital Calibration Certificates (DCC)". The machine readability of the new calibration certificate will significantly support the increasingly digitalized manufacturing and quality monitoring processes.

When using the information of conventional calibration certificates manually, many sources of error exist, such as the incorrect transfer of calibration values into a data acquisition system or into the data evaluation. In addition to making the contents of the digital calibration certificate usable, the handling or management of the certificates themselves also plays an essential role. The DCC provides all the necessary information for archiving, tracking, etc.. Thus, higher efficiency is achieved through improved handling, which is noticeable through resource and time savings. The goal is to develop universal DCC exchange formats in the entire field of metrology; for the partners involved here, the "acceleration" measurand is being considered.

The focus is particularly on the metrological services offered by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in the legally regulated area and the quality infrastructure, as well as on the German sensor and measuring instrument industry, which is often organized as a medium-sized enterprise, and its users. Since the DCC that has now been developed is based on the internationally recognized and proven exchange format XML (Extensible Markup Language), it is machine-readable and all data including the numerical calibration curves can be transferred directly and automatically to all digitally supported processes.