European Society for Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology

Euspen Logo

The European Society for Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology or Euspen was founded to bring together industrialists, academics, researchers and industry bodies to form a cohesive and influential organisation representing the precision engineering community as a whole.

Furthermore, the community serves as a great networking platform and nurtures entrepreneurial spirit. Euspen is at the forefront of precision engineering and serves as a great arena to share and learn about new technology and industry trends. 

Euspen was formed in 1999 and is headquartered at Cranfield University, a central pillar of the precision engineering community.

Cranfield Precision is a Euspen Corporate Sponsor and helps to promote Euspen activities and support the precision engineering community.

What is Precision Engineering?

Precision Components

This seems like such a simple question yet it is often blurred or confused by various quotes and uses of the term precision.


Broadly speaking, the classic definition of Precision Engineering is an accuracy of 1x10-6 which is one part in one million or 1 micron in 1 metre. This is increased ten fold to 1x10-7 to determine that the level of accuracy falls under the realm of Ultra Precision Engineering.


These definitions in them selves do not mean very much though. These rather broad definitions really just apply to plain dimensional measurements such as the length of a component. These can still be perfectly valid in a precision engineering process, however they are seldom the only categorisation or precision engineering.


More specific definitions of precision that consider aspect ratio or form accuracy are often more useful and valid as a means of stating that something is precision engineered. For example, there are many small so called precision engineering machine shops that do not use temperature control and struggle to achieve tolerances of even a few microns over 100mm or less. This would not be considered precision engineering. Then there are more modern examples such as micro-machining which also can't achieve the 1x10-6 definition of precision but are accepted as precision engineered components due to their very small size and physical challenges of producing a certain aspect ratio.

The DT40 High Precision Lathe

DT40 - High Precision Lathe

The Cranfield Precision DT40 (DeltaTurn 40) is a high precision lathe comprising a unique machine cell design allowing it to be very compact, stiff and stable.

The DT40 produces high accuracy hard turned components and has been used for automotive, electronic and aerospace parts.

Read an in-depth technical case study on the design and development of this high precision lathe.

High Precision Hard Turning