With the resurgence of manufacturing in the United States has come a high demand for flexible quality inspection systems in the production environment. To keep up, CMM’s and other flexible measurement systems have had to get much faster without sacrificing accuracy. That has led the top manufacturers of metrology equipment to introduce high-speed machines capable of being placed directly on to the shop floor.

Many of these machines are used in an inline scenario, but many others are used “near line,” supporting multiple operations and products with a single inspection apparatus. While these technologies are being applied to vision and form measuring technology as well, for the purpose of this article we will focus mostly on CMMs.