shopfloor cmm

[pcasanova]

looking at adding a cmm, and have my eye on the mitutoyo mistar. but open to other solutions.
Posting here instead of metrology because this isn't going to be a qc person running it.
Will be in the middle of the shop and being used by operators/lead to check parts as they come off
the line and want more of a shop perspective. my thoughts are having a rack of fixture that can be dropped
in, select the program for part and hit start, get a reports and go. not sure of what software would work best or whats
out there but seeing if anyone has gone through anything similar

 

[SteveEx30]

I ran a Brown&Sharpe excel that was on a shop floor. Never had any issues over the years despite it not being a shopfloor specific. I did personally wiped the granite and top bridge clean before using it daily...

PcDmis was simple to use and train operators to use. Takes minutes to drop a fixture on table, level, align, etc and run programs.

 

[beege]

I had a Fowler zCAT demo'ed and thought it was g pretty good option

 

[gkoenig]

Zeiss Duramax.

The MiStar is very nice, but I've never seen one on a shop floor - always more the job shop CMM that goes in a little inspection room. The Duramax, on the other hand? Is like the definitive factory floor CMM and I've seen them in some very rough places. One factory here has a Duramax on a vibration pad right between their 2 Komatsu 330T presses. I couldn't use a dial test indicator on a Speedio over 100' and a separate concrete pad away while it was running, but the Duramax? Just worked.

Just a phenomenal piece of equipment, at a reasonable price.

 

[in2glamisgirl]

Hexagon makes a few different shop floor specific cmm's.
The machines are self contained on a rolling stand and uses one 110v power cord.
They use linear bearings so no shop air requirement, and some type of wide band temperature compensation.

 

[Joe Miranda]

For years I used a Brown & Sharpe with the Reflex software and I absolutely LOVED that machine. It was an air bearing machine and I re-tubed it a couple of times but it was no longer supported and we were having other issues so my bosses said it was time to get a new one. We got a Hexagon 4.5.4 "SF" which means it is supposed to be a shop floor machine. It has PCDIMIS software. I absolutely HATE it. I think PCDIMIS SUCKS. I think whoever created PCDIMIS was a programer with no shop floor experience. I went for the 1 week training to Hexagon and it was worse than worthless - and I told them my thoughts. I am far from computer illiterate. I have run many different CNC machines; Haas, Cincinnati, Giddings and Lewis, Milltronics, ProtoTRAK, and most of them I taught myself and I do the programing. I have used BobCAD in the past and for the past 10 years or so I use OneCNC. I say all that to show you that I am not inexperienced. PCDIMIS SUCKS! I HATE IT and I hope they are following this thread. I will never pass up an opportunity to say how much their software sucks. That is my opinion - others may disagree. At this point, I would pick any other machine and software that is available if I ever had to do it again.

 

[tteitgen]

Hexagon makes a few different shop floor specific cmm's.
The machines are self contained on a rolling stand and uses one 110v power cord.
They use linear bearings so no shop air requirement, and some type of wide band temperature compensation.

We also used these CMM's. Some were in climate controlled areas and the other were not. Got the same reading on either machine. Also we were doing aerospace parts for a customer, and we would have to send the parts across country, and the parts would measure within .0001 in their fancy lab.

 

[5 axis Fidia guy]

Not sure what machines you have, or if your using probes, but on machine probing works fantastic. I use Powermill on the Hermle and read in the inspection with Fusion 360. It gives me a very accurate idea of what the part is before I yank everything off, it still goes to our CMM for a more thorough check later. This will save you from getting a shop CMM that will more than likely get beat up.

 

[EmGo]

... on machine probing works fantastic. I use Powermill on the Hermle and ....

Well jeeze ... "When I was driving the Bentley in this morning ..."

 

[Trevor360]

Not sure what machines you have, or if your using probes, but on machine probing works fantastic. I use Powermill on the Hermle and read in the inspection with Fusion 360. It gives me a very accurate idea of what the part is before I yank everything off, it still goes to our CMM for a more thorough check later. This will save you from getting a shop CMM that will more than likely get beat up.

Are you posting the inspection probing directly out of fusion to the hermle? did the post work out of the box for this?

 

[5 axis Fidia guy]

Are you posting the inspection probing directly out of fusion to the hermle? did the post work out of the box for this?

I post the probing directly out of Powermill to the Heidenhain control, then only read the results in Fusion. I know very little about Fusion other than the basics, it comes free with Powermill so I try to get some use out of it. I will "assume" fusion could also post the code out, but don't take my word for it. Allot of shops do on machine probing, especially guys in the mold industry doing huge work. It is quite slick, providing you have probes on your machines. I guess even if you don't, they are much cheaper than getting a CMM machine.