Page 29 - ITAtube-journal_2-13

29
ITAtube Journal No2/September 2013
the machine, measuring each fea-
ture in turn (where possible), re-
cording this information on our in-
spection sheet, checking with “go”
and “no go”. We are ticking a box
essentially for each measurement
in turn, sometimes even taking a
10mm EDM cut of the geometry for
inspection at a shadow graph de-
vice to be safe. Whether we leave
the machine running during the
inspection process and risk pro-
ducing defective profile, or if we
stop the machine for inspection,
all of this takes up valuable time
to do, and in this current climate
as we all know, this is something
we quite often don’t have a lot of
these days. None of this is said
light heartedly of course, so let’s
now put some numbers to this and
see the differences the device can
mean to us.
In the adjacent table, we can see
an approximation of the time tak-
en to inspect a simple component
with five features, this can be a
“C” Section, with 2 Inward Lips, 2
Sides and Base for example. Quite
easily good inspection can be taking
six minutes or so, whereas in com-
parison to that, with the COPRA®
ProfileScan Desktop, we are now
talking 90 seconds and this with
a complete measurement proto-
col populated too, an example of
which can be seen on the right.
We can take this further still and
now consider what we are produc-
ing during this six minutes “in-
spection” time window, which is of
course unless we have stopped the
machine to conduct our inspection
procedure. The following table il-
lustrates the potential waste mate-
rial we could also have produced in
this time frame alone.
If we are working to a fifteen min-
ute inspection rate we can of course
increase these figures fourfold …
The beauty of the device is the
measurement is conducted contact-
less, so given a good part length
there should be no spring-back to
give us concern, the sample does
not have to have accurate cut ends
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