  We report on a proposal aimed at measuring the Casimir force in a
cylinder-plane configuration. The Casimir force is evaluated including
corrections due to finite parallelism, conductivity, and temperature. The range
of validity of the proximity force approximation is also discussed. An
apparatus to test the feasibility of a precision measurement in this
configuration has been developed, and we describe both a procedure to control
the parallelism and the results of the electrostatic calibration. Finally, we
discuss the possibility of measuring the thermal contribution to the Casimir
force and deviations from the proximity force approximation, both of which are
expected at relatively large distances.
