Three Cities. Two Countries. One Incredible Manufacturing Journey.
When the JASPER filming wrapped in Willow Springs, Missouri, there was no triumphant return home, no quiet weekend and absolutely no opportunity for my suitcase to unpack itself.
There was simply another boarding pass.
We left Missouri and headed east toward Washington, D.C., carrying camera equipment, freshly recorded stories and enough airport snacks to survive a small manufacturing recession.
Missouri had been about horsepower, engine blocks and giving hardworking components a second life. The next stop would take us from the controlled violence of combustion to the almost invisible world of dimensional accuracy.
We were heading to API Metrology in Rockville, Maryland.
Where the invisible becomes measurable
Manufacturing loves big numbers.
We talk about enormous machines, massive castings, ridiculous spindle torque and enough horsepower to make Tim “The Toolman” Taylor grunt himself into another insurance claim.
But the success of those machines often depends on numbers so small that the human eye cannot see them.
A machine can look level and still be wrong.
A robot can return to the same position repeatedly and still miss the correct position repeatedly.
A component can look perfect, feel perfect and confidently announce itself as perfect—right before the metrology equipment exposes it as a liar.
That is the world API lives in.
API, or Automated Precision Inc., was founded by Dr. Kam Lau, the inventor of the laser tracker. While working at what is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Dr. Lau developed an early laser-tracker prototype to improve the measurement and performance of industrial robots.
When larger companies failed to recognize the opportunity, he did what stubborn inventors have done throughout history: he stopped asking for permission and built the future himself.
API began in a modest 1,100-square-foot warehouse, where Dr. Lau and his small team handled everything from research and engineering to sales, accounting and cleaning the building. By 1989, API had entered an agreement with Swiss company Wild to produce laser trackers based on its original prototype. Wild later became Leica Geosystems and eventually part of one of the largest metrology organizations in the world.
In other words, some companies entered the laser-tracker business.
API helped invent the neighborhood.
The company continued developing new generations of laser trackers, machine-tool calibration systems, automated measurement solutions and robot-calibration technology. Its innovations include the Radian Laser Tracker family, the award-winning XD Laser, the Dynamic 9D LADAR, iSCAN systems, vProbe tactile sensors and integrated solutions for measuring and improving industrial robots. Read the story behind API.
Filming innovation at its source
Walking through API was different from visiting a traditional machine shop.
There were still machines, components and unmistakably brilliant engineers, but this was a place built around questions most people never think to ask:
How do you verify the position of something across a massive working volume?
How do you measure a large aerospace structure without moving it into a traditional inspection room?
How do you determine whether a CNC machine is truly accurate throughout its entire travel?
How do you improve a robot that repeats its mistakes with tremendous confidence?
And how do you measure surfaces quickly without physically touching every point?
API’s technology helps answer those questions across aerospace, automotive, energy, defense, heavy equipment, machine tools, robotics and transportation.
The Radian Pro, API’s flagship laser tracker, combines interferometric measurement with absolute-distance measurement for portable, high-accuracy inspection. The XD Laser can identify multiple geometric errors from one setup, helping manufacturers understand what is happening throughout a machine’s motion rather than merely checking a single position. The Dynamic 9D LADAR pushes measurement toward high-speed, noncontact scanning for large components and complex surfaces.
API also supports reverse engineering, machine alignment, first-article inspection, production measurement, robot calibration and machine-tool verification through globally distributed, accredited metrology teams. Explore API’s measurement and calibration technologies.
What impressed me was not simply the number of patents, inventions and awards attached to the API name.
It was the culture behind them.
Dr. Lau never appeared interested in inventing technology merely so it could sit beneath dramatic lighting at a trade show. The inventions were created to solve actual manufacturing problems—to reduce setup time, reveal hidden error, improve robots, verify machines and help manufacturers make better parts.
Because in manufacturing, measurement is not the final chapter.
Measurement tells you whether all the previous chapters were fiction.
We filmed the technology, the people and the story behind a company that helped reshape dimensional metrology. And just when my brain was beginning to understand how API could measure nearly everything, it was time to measure the distance to another airport gate.
Washington, D.C. to Querétaro, Mexico
From the Washington, D.C. area, we turned south toward Querétaro, Mexico.
Another flight. Another country. Another customs line politely asking why one human being needs that much camera equipment.
But this trip was about far more than changing geography.
We were traveling to join Protecnic de México for its fifth annual Seminario Técnico 2026, held September 3 at the company’s Querétaro showroom.
The theme was:
“Manufactura Inteligente: Competitividad e Independencia en la Nueva Era Industrial.”
Or, in English:
“Smart Manufacturing: Competitiveness and Independence in the New Industrial Era.”
That theme could not have arrived at a better moment.
Mexico’s manufacturing sector is growing, but sustainable growth requires far more than placing another machine on the floor and hoping productivity arrives inside the shipping container.
Smart manufacturing requires machines, cutting tools, workholding, automation, software, metrology, fluids, applications knowledge, technical service and—most importantly—trained people capable of connecting everything together.
The Protecnic event brought together nine technical conferences and 19 industry partners to share knowledge involving advanced manufacturing, automation, continuous improvement and the technologies helping Mexican companies become more productive and globally competitive. Learn more about Seminario Técnico 2026.
Protecnic has spent 20 years building connections between Mexican manufacturers and advanced production technology. But its value is not limited to selling equipment.
Anyone can deliver a box.
Real partners help determine what belongs inside the box, how it should be applied, who will support it and whether it actually solves the problem after the purchase order loses its new-car smell.
That is what technical events like this accomplish.
They bring machine builders, tooling specialists, metrology experts, automation companies, engineers and manufacturers into the same room. Knowledge stops being protected like the secret recipe for someone’s grandmother’s salsa and starts moving freely between people who can use it.
Three stops. One manufacturing story.
Missouri taught us about remanufacturing, Associate Ownership and how JASPER is combining an 84-year history with new SPINNER CNC technology.
Maryland showed us how API turns invisible error into usable information through inventions that helped define modern dimensional metrology.
Querétaro demonstrated what happens when Protecnic, its technology partners and Mexico’s manufacturing community gather to exchange knowledge instead of waiting for the future to knock politely.
At first glance, these stops could not be more different.
Engines in Missouri.
Laser trackers in Maryland.
Smart manufacturing in Mexico.
But underneath everything was the same idea:
You cannot compete tomorrow using only what worked yesterday.
Progress requires better equipment, stronger measurement, smarter processes, trustworthy partners and people willing to keep learning—even when their passport is full, their suitcase smells suspicious and they have temporarily forgotten which time zone owns them.
From Missouri to Washington, D.C., and from Washington down to Querétaro, this journey was about more than flights.
It was about following manufacturing knowledge across borders—and proving once again that innovation does not belong to one company, one state or one country.
It belongs to the people brave enough to keep moving it forward.
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