While a high-performance measuring machine is a prerequisite for staying competitive, many quality managers are not achieving maximum efficiency and quality with their coordinate measuring machines (CMMs).

No one wants to spend time making scrap, and automation is one way to avoid or at least minimize quality issues. Rather than spending time making products that aren’t up to specification, operators will make good parts and catch quality issues earlier. 

Sensors are an essential part of a metrology system, and there are several key factors that inform a buyer’s choice. These include ease of use, accuracy, speed and cost. Comparing the options can involve both analysis of features and actual demonstration of capabilities, but to get meaningful information for either you have to ask the right questions.

If you’re looking for more data in less time, 3D scanning may be a good choice for your application.

Two years ago, Process Engineer Bill Roberts and his team at Minnesota-based Roberts Automatic Products, Inc., were looking to improve the company’s statistical process control (SPC) and its overall data collection processes.

Within a metrology inspection environment, fixturing is a three-step process of positioning, locating and securing a workpiece within a measuring volume for inspection. 

Compared to CMMs and articulating arms, laser trackers constitute a fairly young technology. In use for about 30 years, these increasingly portable and flexible devices are known for measuring large objects by determining the positions of optical targets, usually spherically mounted retroreflectors (SMRs) that a technician holds up against the objects.

Despite the mountains of paperwork and sophisticated systems, occasionally a glitch makes all of that effort appear to have been a waste. It happens to the best of us with the only winners being therapists and system developers claiming to have the answers that will save us from a repeat in the future.

Simply put, product quality is always on the mind of a production manager. But what exactly characterizes a quality product? Is it when CMM inspection data reads good versus bad?

With its racing debut in 2016, Haas F1 Team is the first American Formula One team to hit the circuit since 1986. Founded by Gene Haas, the team is based in Kannapolis, NC. Haas is the founder of Haas Automation, the largest CNC machine tool builder in North America, and he is the chairman of Haas F1 Team.