Anyone use Brown and Sharp Micromeasure software?

I bought an older manual CMM at auction the other day. Big shop in town shut down. Wasn't really looking for one as I was there to buy a vibratory tumbler. Anyway, it's a B & S Microval 454. The PC that runs it wasn't with the machine, but managed to find it out on the loading dock. It's an older 486 p.c. with a card in it that takes the input from the machine. Unfortunately the hard drive is kaput. It had the software and drivers I assume for the machine and there were no disks in the manuals for the machine.

I've got some calls in to B & S, and some aftermarket places to see what my options are for new software and upgrades to a modern PC. While that is happening, I'd like to see if anyone has any experience in bringing a cmm up to date cost effectively. I could scrap the machine for what I have in it I suppose, keeping the Renishaw MIP probe to resell and use the surface plate, but that's not my style, being a cheapskate and all.

I'd love to find the software and at least bring it back to life for the short term. Super busy right now and don't have time for another month or two to spend much time or $ on it as far as retrofit.

How do you know that the Microval works? I would be willing to bet that the reason that the former user quit using the machine was the air tubing used for floating the axes and clamping them deteriorated and the machine became unusable. I had this problem with my Microval, and a local CMM service company re-tubed my machine for $2,000. I did not have the software concerns that you have, as my computer is still usable. If you do a search in the metrology section of PM for MICROVAL, you can find a historic account of my adventures. Good Luck!

Lord Byron

Forget Brown and Sharp...what you want is a QC-330 retrofit from Quadra-Chek. On a manual CMM you can easily do it yourself too. No PC needed. The unfortunate part is Quadra Chek was bought by Heidenhain a few years ago and now the prices and service might not be as good. I think Heidenhain changed the part number to ND 1400 or 1403.

But even at Heidenhain prices it will probably be cheaper than anything B&S offers to get that thing up and usable...they will look at this like it came out of an Egyptian tomb.

CMM Upgrades

Brown & Sharpe (Hexagon Metrology) will try to sell you PC-DMIS as an upgrade to Micromeasure. Don't do it! At a previous employer, we had a Microval 454 also, and the powers-that-be bought the sales pitch, and sprung for PC-DMIS. While it's great for a DCC-type CMM, it's overkill for a manual machine. I'm with Milacron, and look into Quadra-Chek. At my current employer, we're using that on 2 manual CMM's, and it works great.

Eric M said:

Brown & Sharpe (Hexagon Metrology) will try to sell you PC-DMIS as an upgrade to Micromeasure. Don't do it!

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LOL...I don't think we have too much to worry about him "doing it" ! I imagine a cartoon outline of his body thru a wall as he run's screeming into the night when he hears the PC-DMIS prices !

Bruce, I believe that I read your post when I started searching yesterday. I don't know what is bad at this point as far as machine goes if the tubing is bad, but I do know that the hard drive on the pc doesn't boot and throws an error, and I don't have the software. Machine is on the floor now.

Just talked to B & S and from the conversation, I can tell that they are gonna want to sell me a new machine, or retrofit for enough that a used machine would be a better option. Was told that we don't even have a copy of that software (Micromeasure III) anymore, but go on a forum and find it! I am hoping just to get it running with the original software still.

You guys can rest assured that I won't be buying PC DMIS software! I figure I've got as much luck with this a going to the casino so I thought I'd gamble on this with the money. It's more fun to piss away money on this than with little old ladies smoking 100's.

Got some info from Hemel, they want around 15k to do anything for Geomet something or other. Get real.

Anyone know anything about CMM Manager? Talked to a place that does retrofits of this machine often so they know the process in and out and it's feasible I think if the machine turns out OK.

Milacron, will look into the quadra check when I get a chance.

Quadra check has gone by the wayside in favor of CMM Manager.

Air Lines are shot.

Bruce, re read your thread. What is the "light pen"?

Eric M, you're only an hour away from me. Who does calibration and service for you?

Kris P said:

Quadra check has gone by the wayside in favor of CMM Manager.

Air Lines are shot.

Bruce, re read your thread. What is the "light pen"?

Eric M, you're only an hour away from me. Who does calibration and service for you?

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Be better to keep the probe and chuck the B&S in the dumpster and find a manual Starrett with all granite column that needs retrofit and then retrofit that with Quadra-Check. Then you'd have a proper manual CMM. And no PC boot up time and waiting and waiting, clicking this, clicking that, just to home it and get started.

My Microval has a light pen to make entries that the Micromeasure software requires. On some versions of Micromeasure, the same entries are made by a keyboard. What data entry method your system has, I couldn't say. My Micromeasure software is intact and operating properly. I also have another software called REVENG, that was developed by Cadkey, and is integrated by a separate computer that is incorporated in the system. This software is what is valuable on my system. It enables me to draw Cadkey entities in all construction planes, using the Renishaw touch probe as a input device. The Cadkey entities include points, lines, arcs, circles, 2d and 3d parametric splines. These entities are saved as CADL files, and then fed into Mastercam to convert into surfaces to make complete 3-d drawings for all Mastercam's machining routine. I can even digitize 3-d splines to create surfaces from parts (impellers) that need 5-axis to machine. (See Milacrons latest digitizing video) I don't have access to a 5-axis cnc, 3-axis is the best I have available. Like I said before, my only need was to get my Microval re-tubed, everything else worked. I would use Hexagon Metrology as a resource to get your machine running. I was able to find someone local (Twin Cities) to accommodate me. And like I said, it cost me $2,000 to get it re-tubed. They assured me that the quality of the new tubing would last indefinitely.

I may be the only individual that can be found that can do accurate 3-d reverse engineering on a coordinate measuring machine. I don't know if Milacron knows of anyone else with a manual cmm that can do this.

Lord Byron

Kris P said:

Quadra check has gone by the wayside in favor of CMM Manager.

Air Lines are shot.

Bruce, re read your thread. What is the "light pen"?

Eric M, you're only an hour away from me. Who does calibration and service for you?

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Kris - For all of the calibration we don't do in-house, we use Technical Maintenance, Inc (out of Tampa) for gaging, and Certified Calibrations, Inc (out of Dunedin) for all the things too big to be done off-site, and our surface plates. I would be happy to recommend either one.

Working through this still. I'm a sucker for punishment! I'm not in a hurry and not dependent on the machine so I will probably retube it. We will pull the covers and look at doing it in house over time.

CMM Manager runs about $4k. Plus pc and some other hardware. Not sure about cost of Quadra Check. The dealer of Quadra Check I talked to said don't bother as it's not that well supported now that Heidenhain took them over. I'll still try to find out though.

Kris P said:

Working through this still. I'm a sucker for punishment! I'm not in a hurry and not dependent on the machine so I will probably retube it. We will pull the covers and look at doing it in house over time.

CMM Manager runs about $4k. Plus pc and some other hardware. Not sure about cost of Quadra Check. The dealer of Quadra Check I talked to said don't bother as it's not that well supported now that Heidenhain took them over. I'll still try to find out though.

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Sounds like a plan. You should be able to handle the re-tubing job in-house. Make sure that you replace tubes one at a time, so you know that you have the tubes connected correctly. It will probably take you several days to complete the job. When you do have it done, get a calibration specialist to help you adjust the air system for the sliding motions, they can calibrate the machine at the same time.

Lord Byron

Yes, the book has a pretty good diagram of the tubing routing. And guess what.....Hard Drives are alive!!!!! Took the pc to a computer guy and he pulled the drives and got them going outside of the machine and booting and opening Micromeasure. He was having issues getting the pc to display video, but it did at my shop so that is the next task after he makes copies of everything on the drives. Get the drives back in it's home and see what the card does that runs the machine. Really excited about a good turn of events!

Edit: Computer is alive! It is running, power cycling, working good according to computer guy. Got to bring it back to the shop and see if it talks to cmm. I don't know what kind of voodoo he did to it but it's working. I"m happy to find a good computer guy. I like the guy, he swears a lot and thinks out loud a mile a minute. If only I could find a cnc tech that was as good.

Update in case someone runs into the same issue: We were able to re tube the machine in house. Wasn't too bad at all. A bit of head scratching on how to do it but once we got going it went along fine. I estimate 2 guys could do it in a day without having ever done this before. Bought tubing from Mcmaster, took about 60' of 1/8" line. We were able to spin the bearings around to get at the barb fittings. It's definately not fun, but can be done without too much swearing. It's not as neat and tidy under the covers as OEM because we had to leave some slack in the lines to spin both bearings at once back into position.

Machine moves around great, will get it calibrated in the coming weeks.

Kris P said:

Update in case someone runs into the same issue: We were able to re tube the machine in house. Wasn't too bad at all. A bit of head scratching on how to do it but once we got going it went along fine. I estimate 2 guys could do it in a day without having ever done this before. Bought tubing from Mcmaster, took about 60' of 1/8" line. We were able to spin the bearings around to get at the barb fittings. It's definately not fun, but can be done without too much swearing. It's not as neat and tidy under the covers as OEM because we had to leave some slack in the lines to spin both bearings at once back into position.

Machine moves around great, will get it calibrated in the coming weeks.

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Glad to hear of your success. Milacron wasn't much help, was he?

Lord Byron

Well we will see if the computer upgrade is necessary still. Just plugged it into the computer at the end of the day and the Z axis was feeding position fine but x was not giving much and y was giving no position. Switched cables around in the back of the computer and z worked in the x slot but didn't get anything out of the other axis'. Moved them back and now Z isn't even giving me position. It does say axis error on the screen, which makes me think it's in the CMM and not in the computer. Now I gotta learn about glass scales I guess...Maybe dirty reader? Machine was very dirty when I got it

Kris P said:

Bought tubing from Mcmaster, took about 60' of 1/8" line.

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What sort of tubing did you get from McMaster-Carr? I've got a B&S MicroVal A with what might be original tubing and would like to know what sort to use if it needs to be re-tubed. The current tubing is a light yellow color and feels a bit like natural rubber.

FWIW, this model dates from the early 90's and has the software hard-coded on ROMs.

Mike

NB - The website for McMaster-Carr is www.mcmaster.com

That might not be obvious.

Excellent company to deal with. No minimum order, accurate online inventory system, and only actual shipping charges.

- Leigh

Mike Henry said:

What sort of tubing did you get from McMaster-Carr? I've got a B&S MicroVal A with what might be original tubing and would like to know what sort to use if it needs to be re-tubed. The current tubing is a light yellow color and feels a bit like natural rubber.

FWIW, this model dates from the early 90's and has the software hard-coded on ROMs.

Mike

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The yellow tubing that you describe is what I found in my machine. It had deteriorated to such a degree that a slight bend would crack and break it. The tubing that I used was approved for use in re-tubing, and was a clear flexible plastic tubing like Kris P described. If you tackle the re-tubing job yourself, make sure that you replace each tube individually as you remove them. I found that after re-tubing the machine functioned like a new one. I had a local CMM service company re-tube my machine for $2,000. They also calibrated it with a laser.

Lord Byron

Mike Henry said:

What sort of tubing did you get from McMaster-Carr? I've got a B&S MicroVal A with what might be original tubing and would like to know what sort to use if it needs to be re-tubed. The current tubing is a light yellow color and feels a bit like natural rubber.

FWIW, this model dates from the early 90's and has the software hard-coded on ROMs.


Mike

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Wow that would be incredible if yours was still running on the original tubing. Mine just disintengrated when you just looked at it. I used this. Pretty flexible. I had to buy metric tubing to do the larger line that feeds the manifold.
McMaster-Carr