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Are the actual results showing large positional deviations, or is it just the nominals not matching the print specifications?

@Darci Burch Is this just a one off verification or an ongoing production check? Might be worth it to just outsource it to a third party inspection laboratory if you have the budget.

We also have a Keyence IM but its an older one and I haven't had much luck with small parts like this in the past so I don't know if that will be any better.

@Darci Burch Yea the juice is probably not going to be worth the squeeze with the CMM. This is a light/vision system job, maybe with some professional putty.

QC-Calc has weaknesses. But for cheaply gobbling all cmm data its great. I don't do much analysis in QC Calc. I pretty much only use it to export ASCII files then run python scripts to get the data how I want it.

The angles radii both directions on the slanted indents, as well as the angles of the slanted indents to the top of the part. I agree the CMM might not work out well, but I was asked to try.

I used QC-Calc many years ago when PiWeb didn't exist and I needed to data crunch a lot of CMM data (and I had been previously hand typing it). It was a great solution at the time, but as soon as PiWeb came out, we went that direction and never looked back. QC-Calc pretty quickly got messy with keeping data nice-and-tidy (I remember the big thing was it kept databases together based upon number of characteristics, so it was a mess if you ran via current selection or mini-plans).

I was able to get probe deviation, stylus diameter and reference sphere diameter into 2 probe qual programs. Question.....what happens if a timer get set for probe qualification. I'm think of set a 24hr limit on at least 2 probes so that if they don't run qualification of the 2 probes they can run parts. The 2 I would set this limit on are the 2 most used probes on this Duramax. They measure ID's and OD's of cylindrical parts that all have a ±.00025" tolerance. We want to make sure they do it, so a CMM that wouldn't work for them is the poke-a-yoke for required probe qualification.

UPDATE: Calypso program editor Direct link: (v0.2-alpha) https://github.com/justyand/zeiss_pgm_editor/releases/tag/v0.2-alpha Changelog: corrected parsing file - now it should show correct treeview

WATCH YOUR MOUTH RICHARD . Just kidding by the way I love my QC Calc. For this, it will depend on what your goals are. For a single part from a single cmm, then great, use PiWeb. But if you want to combine data from multiple cmm's then they want you to buy the SBS version. That turns PiWeb into P$Web real quick. Or P€Web for my European folks.

What probes do you have available? I'd use a 1.0mm star probe to extract all the features. clocked with the dimple. add in circle scans and recall into lines for the funky angled mill areas. secondary alignments for each of them. or space points all around and calculate deviations.

@Darci Burch What are you trying to measure? What are the tolerances for those characteristics? I would argue the CMM is not the best way to inspect this piece.

I have been asked to make a program for the attached part. It is very small (OD is .486 inch) The only way I could think to fixture it is by mounting it with a screw onto a milled down scrap part. (see photo) But now I am struggling with how to align it for the following reasons: No flat spot on part to use as a Z zero I have never tried using a torus as the X and Y zero. Is this even allowed, and if so, are there any special considerations when doing this? I don't know what kind of strategy to use on a torus. Just a bunch of random points? I considered using the shoulder of the fixture as the Z zero and the cylinder on the fixture below the part as the and Y Zero. I believe I would then have to make a secondary alignment using features of the actual part in order to get the angle of the indent features, but that takes me back to the original problem. I was going to clock it to the dimple, but it is very small and I don't know how to probe it. Is there a better way to clock it? If I did want to clock the dimple, how would I do that when the probe hardly fits inside? Is there a way to have the probe find the center of the dimple like it does when you are setting the probe rack location? Contura with XXT. I only have base Calypso. No curve or freeform.

I have tried this, and feel I am doing something wrong, as I cannot get the rotary table position to change, after changing the vector as described.

I’m not understanding how the new GD&T engine functions when doing a best fit. It’s putting the center of the bolt circle out in left field somewhere so when you look at the nominals they’re not even in the ballpark. I can go into the special functions and offset each feature back to where it’s supposed to be according to the print, but then the actuals really aren’t going to be respective of the best fit. What am I doing wrong?

Oh no. Not QC-Calc. Just an FYI - you can also just directly export data out of PiWeb Reporting Plus without the need of a modified PiWeb Report. Though - saying QC-CALC is less painful than simply dropping in a Measurement Table, and a button is a far stretch.

@Cory HeiligYour snippet is 6-10 bar from the air source. The attached snippet is how much air the CMM consumes. So your digital readout at the back of the machine is correct, do not adjust it. The cover is held on by hex screws, you can't really mess anything up by removing it to get a look under the hood. I wouldn't operate the CMM with it leaking at all.

Pulled it from another Zeiss Forum post here - https://qualityforum.zeiss.com/migration/images/3301_42e56fb432f8730173a16496301be092.pdf and it can be seen on Page 3. Have never removed any covers / probably not the most confident in removing them and checking this out. I have two others on site pretty familiar with CMM's so we will have to group together to see how we feel about it. We have a yearly calibration coming up in November so if the machine is still operating as it should, just with a snake inside that hisses now and then, I guess we might be able to hold off a few more months and let them take care of it while on site.

I agree. A position dependent leak would point me towards a bad air line or a fitting starting to come loose.

@Cory Heilig I am pretty sure the digital air readout at the back of your Contura should be 5±0.1 bar. Where is the snippet in your post from? Are you confident enough to remove the mast covering to look at the lines/connections? I believe they are all push fittings too.

Sounds like you have a crack or hole in an air line. We had a Micura that cracked an air line (1 month after delivery). It was easy to replace. But I could be wrong. lets see what other peeps say.

Morning all, Everything has been working great on our Zeiss Contura G2. Someone decided to shut it down over this past weekend. I powered things up this morning and now I am getting a hiss from the top of the machine whenever I drop the Z axis to anywhere from about 0" to 12" above the granite. Anything above 12" doesn't hiss at me. I took a look at the Zeiss specs and I see that they say Air Supply "Minimum pressure 6 bar, max pressure 10 bar." Air Consumption of CMM "Max 30 I/min at 5 bar" I went to the back of the machine and took a look. The digital gage on the CMM reads "5.1 Bar" and the dial at the wall for incoming air is at about 85 PSI. Has anyone ever made an adjustment to the dial on the machine that is currently reading 5.1? I'm wondering if I increased this (if I can) to 6, if this hissing would go away? Some AI searching is telling me that my pressure could be too low or that I could have a loose or cracked fitting. Says that my best route right now is to increase my pressure to see if the hiss goes away. Thanks in advance for any advice!

Use a rotary joint, then align by eye. After use an indicator from stylus radius to stylus radius, rotate until the indicator is as close to zero as possible for both spheres.

We see this all the time and it's typically with programs that we do not have official Base Alignments and are using a common Load Alignment. In my opinion is it solely a CAD issue because Calypso is expecting the physical results (points) to be in the same area as the CAD model after a Base Alignment. I figured it was the Base Alignment/Load Alignment because when I would see this same scan points similar to what you've shown, I'd do a quick program with a Base Alignment and not see that issue with the CAD.

Great. 🙂 And while you're at it, I think there's enough room for another button: "Make list go away FOREVER" Ok, I'm kidding here - a bit. But not everybody is happy about this list. In my case I have several folders with programs on the network, each folder has identically named programs, but with slightly different content. Each of them is dedicated to a certain CMM. Now if I see a program in that recent list, I am unable to distinguish which version from which folder I'm looking at, so I might open the wrong one. That's why I always use the classic open file dialog anyway and would like to deactivate that list. I know how to do that, but it comes back after every update, so I stopped trying.