Which CMM for students?

I am looking for thoughts on which machine to purchase based on the current software. We are looking at small CMM's from Hexagon, Mitutoyo, and Zeiss. I have talked to other instructors and have heard that Hexagon's PC-Demis has a steep learning curve. Another really likes Zeiss with Calipso. I have no feedback on Mitutoyo. I have talked to sales people and of course theirs is the best. I understand that no software is perfect and all have their pitfalls. I have no experience with CMM but will be attending the training for the machine chosen.

What I am looking for from you experienced CMM folks is which would be best choice for Machine Tool Technology Students. It needs to be user friendly and have a fairly quick learning curve to get the basics of measurement and inspection. We want to give them a beginners exposure to CMM without frustrating or loosing them. Unfortunately, we also cannot spend an excessive amount of time to make experts of them. We know that whatever machine we choose is very unlikely to be the exact same one they use when they enter the workforce. And of course we know that is where their training will continue, where ever they go, for the rest of their career.

Thanks for the help.

IMO Software is the last thing you should be specializing on while teaching. You should instead focus on basic alignment practices, advanced alignment, proper measurement practices, and the fundamentals of metrology, etc. Just because you ram a probe into a hole, or feature and it goes beep, doesn't mean it was a proper measurement...... etc.

Ya, software is important, but it's the foundation of how and why that is important. Once you know how, and why to do things, the software is just another interface to learn. I've run CMM's using checkmate, measuremax, geopac/cosmos, and pcdmis, and while the software was all different it's all very easy to learn when you have a good foundation of knowledge. I've never used Calipso, so I have no opinion of that.

Up here around the GTA I see mostly pcdmis, and some geopac (what we use). I really miss checkmate, as it was autocad based and it was really intuitive for me, but it's old and i'm not even sure it's supported anymore. You should look into what your local area and industries are using so you can better prepare them for the local workforce. But still try to focus more on the fundamentals, instead of the software special features.

Well, I don't program them, but I run a variety of Zeiss CMMs with the Calypso software. Once the programs are written, they are incredibly easy to use, and quite powerful, allowing you to program a family of parts by writing one program and calling dimensions from a table file in Excel, you can track operators/part numbers, you can output to QCCalc or similar for data tracking. They're robust, pretty durable (we still break them from time to time), and they repeat pretty well. They are also, from my understanding, among the more expensive machines, once you start adding options.

All I can say is that whatever you get, make sure to have a few spare stylii in each size laying around....

I do program CMM's and have experience with Mitutoyo and PC-DMIS. My thoughts:

Mitutoyo MCOSMOS is really easy to use. Definitely great software to get the basics of CMM programming. However the support hasn't really blown me away (almost non-existent).

PC-DMIS has a much higher learning curve. But it's pretty much the standard in terms of CMM software (not a bad idea to teach the standard). The support from Hexagon has been pretty good too.

I should note that I'm not really current on what's out there. Besides not being able to spell Calypso, and MCOSMOS properly, my opinion is at least 5 years out dated (even more because our version of Mcosmos is really old).

D Dubeau said:

I should note that I'm not really current on what's out there. Besides not being able to spell Calypso, and MCOSMOS properly, my opinion is at least 5 years out dated (even more because our version of Mcosmos is really old).

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The basics still apply . Our software is current. When it comes to just making a quick measurement, the majority of the time I really like the MCOSMOS. Just wish the support was better. PCDMIS has good support but is trickier to use. I did spend a week at a PCDMIS training course and recommend that for anyone who's going to be teaching it.

I'm not certain what the course objectives are, in terms of final achievement, but as previously noted, a good grounding in CMM fundamentals and mechanics is a key part of the instruction set IMO. The worst thing in the QC world is a mindset that says "the CMM is infallible, regardless of how poorly I'm using it". Teaching the would-be QC managers should involve a healthy dose of skepticism tempered with alternative methods as sanity checks.

If I were faced with setting this up, I would be looking for a machine and software package that allows for very easy manual use, for machine familiarization purposes, and then has the capability for both on-machine programming, as well as off-line programming.

I used a Zeiss machine (way) back in the mid-90's for about 10 years, and found it to be a very repeatable machine. That system employed UMeasure, which has been completely replaced with Calypso, I think. I worked a bit with PC-DMIS on a B&S Microval, and did not find that software to be as user-friendly, but had only limited exposure. It isn't clear to me how easy Calypso is to learn, and to some degree, it may depend on what machine is being used with it. If you have a scanning-type CMM, it is best utilized in conjunction with 3D modeling software to create programs that use the scanning functionality.

As noted also, the Zeiss machines probably contain a little price premium compared to others. The Mitutoyo might be a screaming deal based on exchange rate today as compared to a year or so ago.