ONDRIVES is a gears and gear box manufacturing company but the parts we produce are blanks.
We make manufacturing components, gears for aerospace, motorsports – industries that need tightly controlled components. So, the first part is, you turn a raw bit of blank and that’s when the VICIVISION comes into its own by measuring those parts.
The machine we have is the VICIVISION M309. You can measure 90 diameter by 300 long. We started looking at expanding our measurement capability. As we were aware of VICIVISION already, I went down for a demonstration, took some parts and was impressed by what it was able to produce.
We want to be able to measure run outs, chamfers, corner radii, and to do that in a format that allows us to have printable reports and saved pdf reports, you want to pick up a clean feature and get a definite radius or chamfer length and this machine allows us to do that.
The actual accuracy of the machine itself when it’s producing the measurements is great. In fact, it’s got a nice couple of features on it where it will go and calibrate itself before it starts a process of measuring. So, we’re looking for detail accuracy to produce the accurate results and the accurate layout that we need for measurement reports.
The VICIVISION is a perfect product for that. We have a part on there at the moment, we’ll measure some radii, relational line lengths, some diameters. It’ll then be processed for gear cutting and then when it gets onto the precision grinding, it returns to the VICIVISION, then it measures a tolerance that is a plus or a minus two and a half microns. If you’re producing a quantity, you’re getting the reports to back that up, to scan and save for customers.
It means that the blanks are able to be that quality and exceed it, and you can’t ask for more than that.
For optical scanning, a machine like the VICIVISION that we use, is a must in or industry. You need this type of equipment to verify the component you’re making. You can scan it instantaneously if it’s a component that takes 60 seconds to scan or a minute and a half to scan, you know it might be a 20-minute job on a CMM. So, if you’re doing 400 components and you want to do one out of every ten or if you want to inspect every one, this is the type of machine you’ve got to use.
Once I’d had the demonstration with the VICIVISION and saw what the report layout was able to produce, and actually the products, it sold itself really. So, it’s worth the extra investment buying a machine like this and also spending the time with the right people to learn how to use it because when you do, the benefits you get are immeasurable really. This can measure what the benefits will be to you as a company.
A vision machine like the VICIVISION is improving quality all the way along. You’ve got to invest in measurement machines to get the most out of the product you’re going to make. If you want to be in the industry we’re in nowadays – we’re in a first-class company, a quality product company – for the future you’ve got to be able to invest in this type of technology.
Ben Hinchliffe
Chairman
Article of the official Vici & C. dealer: VICIVISION UK