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CMM arm crash course

Greenworks

Plastic
Joined
Feb 1, 2017
I have been manufacturing tooling out of my garage shop on a Haas VF6. I subcontracted to a company that modelled, finished, and inspected the tools. That company overextended itself, and went out of business. The main company that was contracting to them now wants me to become a direct vendor, and do all the functions of the company that went out of business other than modelling the tools. I guess that means I'm in the market for a CMM arm. Not even sure where to start? Prices? Things to look for? Things to avoid? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Kyle
Greenworks Tooling, Inc.
 
Polyworks is less buggy than PC-DMIS, but won't report datum shifts (as of about a year ago, they may have fixed that by now). PC-DMIS reports datum shifts, but makes a fundamental error in the way it's calculated under certain circumstances.
 
First thing before you even consider anything else is to determine if the arm is suitable for your tolerances. Articulating arms are much less accurate than a conventional CMM.
 
If it isn't in the contract to use CMM, the old manual methods still work. Especially well if you only do a limited range of parts.
 
Should you decide to take the plunge and get some type of CMM, please remember there WILL be a learning curve on how to use it (the CMM), as well as whatever software package you go with. Don't plan on checking any parts with it the day you take it out of its crate, I don't care what the salespeople tell you! :)DAMHIK...
Also - using "crash" and "CMM" in the same sentence is not a good idea...
 
Having something like a Faro Arm CMM is really useful when you have a "reduced dimension drawing" and they stipulate that a profile of a surface has to be within +/-.005 or even +/-.010. Seems like more and more drawings are reduced dimension and give you jack squat for conventional measurements. so yes...an arm-style CMM is very useful (with the appropriate software that can translate CAD models to compare against).

defintely stay away from OLDER Faro arms....expensive to get serviced, if Faro doesn't outright refuse to work on it if it's too old.
 








 
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