A little more than 10 years ago Tect Corp.'s Cleveland forging plant, specializing in aircraft engine blades, installed its first coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The company's plan was to reduce dependency on ubiquitous hard gages, particularly guillotine gages, many of which cost $50,000 to $60,000. The company partnered with the provider of its CMM software, PC-DMIS/Wilcox Associates (Danville, CA), to develop an airfoil analysis package that would support its diverse analysis and reporting requirements.
Within several years the company was no longer purchasing hard gages for new jobs, and saving tens of thousands of dollars in tooling costs annually as a result. Then Tect Corp. turned its attention to the use of CMM-based data collection and analyses to further improve its manufacturing capabilities and lead times. From this simple beginning, the company's measurement capabilities have evolved into a complete, networked enterprise metrology system spanning design, engineering and manufacturing.