Page 18 - MetalForming December 2019

Rugged Portable- Arm CMMs
Perform on the Shop Floor
Inspect parts at the press, assess die wear, fix fixtures and much more. These versatile machines complement fixed CMMs and find use throughout a stamping operation.
In metal stamping operations, inspection often can become a bot- tleneck, as parts and processes route to the quality lab to undergo time-consuming checks on large fixed- location coordinate measuring machines (CMMs). Balancing produc- tion and delivery demands sometimes supersedes quality inspection in the time-crunched stamping world.
Portable CMM arms have their place in a metal stamper’s quality arsenal, enabling rapid shop-floor measure- ment capabilities for parts and tooling.
BY LOUIS A. KREN, SENIOR EDITOR
But skimping on inspection, as we can imagine, has serious, and costly, consequences. Consider this true tale: A stamper supplying an automotive OEM faced a long wait for part-check- ing on its quality-lab CMM. Truckloads of a particular part run took to the road before a batch could be tested. More than one of those truckloads returned for more part rework, totaling $300,000,
on top of raising the customer’s ire. All due to a CMM backlog.
For this and other good reasons, a portable CMM arm pays dividends. Such machines do not always replace their fixed counterparts, but definitely have their place in a metal stamper’s quality arsenal, even beyond part- quality functions. To explore the capa- bilities and benefits of portable-arm
16 MetalForming/December 2019
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