Dream CMM Machine

Alright guys,

Management is willing to spend some big bucks on upgrading our 2 B&S machines (XCEL 7-10-7 & 9-15-9), as well as get potentially 2 NEW machines. They have passed most of the responsibility onto me and my peer and as expected we are having a hard time coming to consensus on what to do, so I have a couple general questions for everyone to start.

A little background on our parts: We make small to medium aerospace parts that require holding .001 true position over 12 inches in rare circumstances. We check parts in process as well as finished parts, so the machines are running for most of a 18 hour work day. We use long styli often (greater than 50mm) so we want something that can work with the long stuff.

-For an upgrade to the existing machines: We currently have PH10MQ probe heads with TP20 triggers. Most likely going to upgrade to SP25 to accommodate longer styli.
The big questions are:
-Will the SP25 work on the legacy PH10MQ or do we need to upgrade to the PH10MQ PLUS?
-For those that have used both TP20 & SP25; what is your experience with both in terms of accuracy and reputability?
-Are there other probes/probe heads that we could consider that would improve performance with long styli?

For the new machines: We will be looking for bridge machines in the 9-15-9 size range. We will probably end up running two software's regardless, so hardware is the main focus right now.
Questions:
-If you were building your dream machine, what would it be and why? What components/accessories would you get?
-What are the major pros and cons of a fixed, continuous scanning probe head?

Thanks everyone!

I just went through this and for me the questions were Scan or Touch. 3 axis or 5 axis. You can get any combination but certain, but if you went Touch 5 axis, you're really locked into that particular set of head, probe, and stylus.

Assuming you stay renishaw. I am a big fan of renishaw hardware and support for CMMs. We ended up going 3 axis scan. So we have an SP25 and we also can load up TP20 beneath the scan probe. The scan probe is slower at taking touch readings so we have two touch probes.

All probe tips can change with an FCR rack. However, the scan probe is always loaded. Its the first component attached to the head. Without an ACR-3 rack, we cannot automatically remove the scan probe and just use a touch probe. There is a screw that has to be turned and the ACR-3 can do it but not the FCR. ACR-1 can do it too i think but its cumbersome. Anyway, look into the racks and there's an adapter for the PH10QM to go direct to touch probes if you want to manually unscrew your scan probe and load the touch probe. As you may know already, SP25 probes are a wider body than TP20 so an adapter is needed. The Its kinda complicated but now that I know it its easy to understand. My biggest concern was that 90% of the time we're not using the scan probe so I didn't want to potentially damage it. But, taking some precautions thats a low risk.

The only con I have for the scan probe so far is that it takes a while to calibrate. And I've noticed it goes out of calibration quickly, so now I calibrate every week or before each program if its not a common angle I use. The pro is just that it allows you to get much more data from a measurement. If you have complex profiles to trace scan is great. It just takes some time to understand what the best scan settings are, and when to use it and when not.

We also just went through a very similar process and settled on a ZEISS Contura RDS.