For over 20 years, Desenco Inc. (Akron, OH) has been producing high quality rubber molds for injection and transfer molding of precision parts. The company needed to accurately measure Z depths of parts.
Most of the molds were manufactured using computer numeric controlled (CNC) vertical machining centers. The company purchased a new horizontal machining center, but it was not yielding expected results. According to Craig Jorstad, CNC coordinator at Desenco, operators reported that it was almost impossible to attain accurate Z depths and repeatability in the Z axis. "Setting tool lengths on the machining centers was extremely difficult, and the machines did not cut required depths and had shallow or deep variances as high as 0.0025 inch," he says.