5. Calibration – accuracy

Nowadays, it's fairly easy to buy a high-quality measuring chain. We can also often be satisfied with good reproducibility or fidelity of the measuring system. Sometimes, however, you're looking for greater accuracy than that offered by standard commercial equipment. In this case, the first step is to ensure that the measurement conditions allow the use of a more elaborate measuring method, which is therefore delicate, time-consuming to set up, costly and subject to new, sometimes very subtle, causes of error. To guarantee measurements with this instrument, we can envisage regular calibrations, which will be all the more important the greater the absolute precision required.

When assembling disparate components yourself, it's best to calibrate the entire chain once it's been put together.

In all cases, the entire chain should be calibrated...