[ad...] Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 Hi Guys! The company i work for is asking "how can we prolong the life of our CMM's?" I am guessing this may be hot topic in current climate to cut costs of extensive outside calibration. What Calibration techniques do you use & equipment for instance artefact. Do you have a certain type of SPC set up or monitoring system? how often do you have a full service and calibration? 1,2,3 years? Open to discussion to hear your views! Best Regards Adam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Me...] Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 Due to Covid, we have been forced to delay calibration by 6 months past the calibration due date (total 18 month from last calibration). We continued to use the CMM until calibration and it still passed calibration (Full calibration from Zeiss). We do not have artifacts or the likes of such. only "Master" parts used to verify programs. We have a full service calibration done every other year. I'd also like to note we are only an automotive plant and do not need extensive certifications that our equipment is current. Every plant is different, It may be up to you to decide what your needs are to pass an audit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Cl...] Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 Invest in a good airline filtering system. One of the best ways to shorted the life of your CMM is with dirty air. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Ch...] Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 I literally have a tech coming in today to do one of my CMM's. I keep all of mine on the complete and do them yearly. Covid delayed one of my CMM's by less than 60 days or so but I don't like to let them get any past that. I would say that a clean lab and like Clark said, some very clean air, will do the most to prolong the life of your CMM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Lo...] Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 Clean air, correct temp, correct humidity and clean parts. Replace your air filters when dirty. Basic PM will help between yearly calibrations. Qualify probes often and note any changes. We fell a few months behind because of Covid restrictions but remained confident in our measurements because of our PMs and Probe Qualifications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Am...] Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 We do a full calibration and service every year for each machine which is 7 machines right now. Have had 1 go over a couple weeks once because of the scheduling available. The amount of use they see daily Zeiss suggested maybe thinking about going to 6 months for the service but that its not a must. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[La...] Posted December 15, 2020 Share Posted December 15, 2020 Please sign in to view this quote. This 100%. My husband is a service technician and I've seen pictures of some machines in terrible condition. Why you would spend so much on a CMM and take such poor care of it is a mystery to me, but ok. Also, make sure your air dryer is actually turned on. If you have a shutdown, make sure you turn the air dryer back on. Make sure you have the air pressure regulator at the back set to the right setting. Also, clean your guideways. Sparkling clean. Take the time to clean and replace the air filters on your controller. It's such a shame to have your controller components overheat because you were too negligent to simply make sure they aren't plugged with dust and debris. Get your machines PM'ed. And most importantly: give your employees the proper training to do their job so they don't have collisions that can compromise the life of your probe head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Ow...] Posted December 15, 2020 Share Posted December 15, 2020 I forget who originally posted it but, attached is a fairly conclusive CMM preventative maintenance document. It's for just one type of CMM and some of it may be taken with a grain of salt (especially the pushing of axis to test) but, it covers most everything. I'll reiterate the importance of "cleanliness" on air bearing CMM's. If any foreign partials get under the 3 to 6 micron clearance between the air-bearings and granite, you'll pay for it. As clean as we keep our CMM's, I used to just pay to have a the PM calibration done about every 3 years on older air-bearing CMM's that traveled at a max speed of 300 but, since going to the newer version using 460 speed, I have the PM done every year. They clean in areas you'll never get to without removing a lot of parts and shields.CMM_Preventitive Maintenance_Procedures.docx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[Mi...] Posted December 15, 2020 Share Posted December 15, 2020 Please sign in to view this quote. I wonder if I can guess where some of these pictures were taken... 🤣 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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