CNC CMM opens doors
Subcontractor businesses in the UK need to differentiate themselves from competitors abroad by producing complex parts, and providing the inspection reports to prove they meet the high standards required
A new CMM at Dawson Precision Components is changing the company’s business offering and allowing it to take on new, more complex work.
The Lancashire based engineering subcontractor took delivery of a new Mitutoyo Crysta 7106 CNC CMM in July, moving walls to get it into the inspection room.
Sales director Paul Dawson recalls one recently completed job producing mounting brackets which would have been impossible without the new machine. The parts had 160 different features with very tight tolerances, and had to be produced from complicated drawings. Machining such complex parts has long been within Dawson Precision Components’ capability but without a CNC CMM, the job would have been impractical.
“The whole thing needs to be checked in one go”, says Paul Dawson. “With a manual CMM this is extremely hard and producing a sufficiently accurate report would be very time consuming, probably taking several hours. This would mean considerable production downtime while we waited for inspection to be completed. Six months ago, we wouldn’t have even taken this on because we wouldn’t have had confidence we could provide sufficiently accurate inspection, and because it would impact on our ability to deliver on other jobs.”
The new CNC CMM, on the other hand completed each inspection run in under 15 minutes, enabling the job to be delivered quickly with full inspection reports.
Having such capability also speeds up other jobs and increases capacity in the inspection room. “Even when we’re doing jobs that can easily be done manually, we’re speeding up production and making our lives easier” says Mr Dawson.
Such machines mark an increase in capabilities and require new skills. Dawson Precision Components bought in an experienced quality professional and put him and others through measurement courses, to ensure the company fully benefits from the machine’s capabilities.
The team is especially well placed to take full advantage of advanced measurement technology, having undergone dimensional measurement training from the National Physical Laboratory. This taught understanding of geometric symbols and tolerances, how to interpret drawings and an appreciation of conditions and inaccuracies that affect measurement. The outcome of the course is an understanding of the measurement process, not just an ability to use a machine, which improves accuracy and decreases the chance of error.
“Simple parts are becoming less and less in demand” concludes Mr Dawson. “UK manufacturing will increasingly focus on advanced technology and this will require complex, bespoke parts. Producing these parts requires advanced manufacturing technology and better understanding of manufacturing processes.”
“Subcontractor businesses in the UK need to differentiate themselves from competitors abroad by producing these complex parts, and providing the inspection reports to prove they meet the high standards required. This means ongoing investment in the latest machinery and training to be able to deliver ever more advanced jobs.”
More from Aluminium: bend, roll or form? ...
Images for this article - click to enlarge
Unless otherwise stated, all images copyright © Mercator Media 2012. This does not exclude the owner's assertion of copyright over the material.
