Vast Gold vs Vast XT Gold

[[Ch...]]

Lets compare scanning heads here for a minute. Does anyone have any thoughts on the difference between the performance/quality of these two types of heads?

I use two Vast XT Gold heads, less than two years old a piece, and personally I believe they suffer from chronic quality problems. Does anyone agree?

Id love to hear people thoughts on the Vast gold heads. I know they are bigger but worth the extra size?

[[Da...]]

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What problems have you had?

[[To...]]

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Are you sure that's not supposed to be "chronic operator problems"? 🤣 I hope you're not the only one that runs the machine.

What I was getting at was many times it is operators crashing the head that shorten the life of a probe head.

[[Cl...]]

I had the Vast Gold on one of my three Conturas. That one was crashed pretty hard in Z It was replaced with the XT Gold. I see little difference in accuracy/repeatability, both very reliable. Our biggest problem was our stylus configurations. Some are very complex, and near the 500 gram weight limit. The programmer that runs that machine periodically checks and adjust the squarness of the individual stylus. We think the operators have minor crashes that they don't tell us about?

[[Ch...]]

On the two year old one, it has a problem with not recognizing the stylus when you manually insert it. I know the remedy is to put it in the holder then automatically pick it up, but this is annoying. Also, proved out that a perfectly clean adapter plate and head contacts did not help. The same old one has problems with the dark grey metal housing on bottom doesn't like to stay in place. Held in place by scotch tape.

The one that is less than a year old has always acted screwy. 'Forgets' that it can scan and requires restart of the controller. Sometimes when scanning gage rings/ blocks the data gets noisy requiring a controller restart. And finally, sometimes it will stop working when probing in the -Z direction. When it does this, as soon as it makes contact, the probe will just start floating away then alarm out. Again, requires controller restart. All of this takes time that I don't have.

[[Ch...]]

I know its easy to blame the operators and I am sure that there are accidents that I don't know about. But the problem with picking up the probe has always been there since day one and its not getting any worse. Its just like, it came that way.

[[Ow...]]

We had an Accura-I with the Vast-XT (not gold) at the last company I made great and only replaced 2 heads in 10 years.

Been where I'm at now for 4 years with a Vast Gold head and haven't had any issues,

You can use longer stylus's with the Vast Gold and hold more weight (500g to 600g?) and also get the full functionality of the Navigator package. On the older vast-xt, we couldn't use the navigator option but, you may be able to with the vast gold XT.

The Gold supposedly has more probe deflection allowed too.

One thing I didn't like about the Vast-XT we had on the Accura-I was that the Z-axis would only go down to within about 8" of the granite table and I had to use drop-down extensions off the probe plate with probes in the x and y direction to be able to get closer to the granite. The Vast Gold get's closer and extensions are not needed.

[[Da...]]

I have an XTR head and an XTG. I haven't seen any of the problems that you describe. These heads are on Micura's . The XTR head took a MASSIVE X axis hit when it was relatively new. The hit actually pushed the machine out of square. We had Zeiss come in and laser align the Z axis. I run extremely Tight tolerances on pretty simple parts. Most of my probes are simple down probes.The combination of heads and machine are the tightest of any CMM I have ever seen. I had to rethink procedures and applications, But this is the tightest setup ever. So, I don't see any of the problems you describe.

[[Ch...]]

I'm not denying that whey they work, they work fantastic. Also, they work great about 98% of the time. it's just that when they do give you problems it is always at the worst time.

On a side note

Dave, any good secret places to eat in Tinley Park? I'm going to be staying there tonight and be in Chicago all week. My son will be having surgery at Lurie's in downtown.

[[Ri...]]

I have been working with VAST heads for over 20 years now. As Zeiss Customer, I was responsible for keeping 2 nice big Prismos stocked with programs and stylus systems. I did the bulk of my part programming with the offline UMESS package called ACE. Those machines were awesome. We ran a lot of product through our inspection department and those machine typically ran 20 hours a day, 6 days a week. We had gone through our growing pains with these systems and a significant collision was rare. When I began working at Zeiss, my training room had 4 Contura's. There would be times when the arrangement was 3 Active, 1 RDS/RST trigger, then XXT came along and we had 2 Active and 2 Passive. I never had any trouble with any of the VAST Activ heads. Now that I'm on my own, if I ever get to the point where I am going to buy a machine, I'll be looking for a VAST or VAST Gold. If you buy a VAST head and it doesn't function perfectly from day one, call somebody and get a replacement.

[[No...]]

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Sounds like a taring problem, meaning the head is faulty. The other symptoms you describe point in that direction too. I would have it replaced.

We have two machines that had VAST XTs and one of them (running in 3 shifts) had many head replacements over the past 15 years. The problem IMO is that unless you explicitly order a new head, you'll get a refurbished one. And those are sometimes of questionable quality. Only recently we had to replace one of the heads again and had to buy a Gold one because they don't sell old XTs anymore (at least here in Germany). And like so often before, it went belly up only 2 weeks later.
Later the other machine needed a new head too, now also a Gold. It still works after two months, but we'll see....

[[Da...]]

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Sorry Chad, Tinley Part is WAY south of me, but, the Chicago area has some of the best food in the country !

[[Ri...]]

When probing in the -Z direction...

Chad, does this happen in CNC mode or does this only happen when collecting a point by driving the joysticks? I have seen this type behavior with VAST heads when one is being too "gentle" with the probing. You don't want to put a dent in the part but you do have to drive the probe to the point like you mean it.

[[Er...]]

We have a vast xt head on the accura 2. It has taken more abuse then Butterbean. Still going strong, built like a tank..

Guess we got a jackpot after reading this thread 🙂

[[Ri...]]

I did quite a bit of Calypso phone support when I was with Zeiss and problems with the VAST head, Gold or otherwise were rare. The first couple versions of the XTR had some problems but those were dealt with fairly quickly. If you are getting repeated failures in your VAST head replacements, it could be you are just unlucky, or karma is punishing you for some terrible thing you did in a past life, or it could be a un-diagnosed problem you have upstream from the sensor. I've worked on VAST heads that were ten years old and still functioning beautifully.

[[Ow...]]

A lot of variables probably go into how long a Vast probe head last, including the weight of the probing systems used on it, the type of features and strategy measured with it and also whether the probe head was manufactured on a Monday....lol.

I'd say a probe head using 500g of weighted probes, maybe even lighter but with very unbalanced stylus's, scanning a lot of helical features...wouldn't last a long as a system using smaller weighted probes and typical circular strategies.

Throw in a system used congruent with rotary tables, maybe scanning a lot turbo/helical/double pitch rotors, might last even less time.

[[No...]]

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Well, have a look at this: 🤠
This was our situation after a head replacement at our Contura in 2005. When I showed this to the service guy, he said "maybe something's wrong with your probes". I answered: "Do you really think something's wrong with all our 50 probes? All twisted in the same direction?". After some discussion he checked the new head again and found it was the probe receptacle that was twisted.
Now comes the funny part: The service guy left and returned with a new head, put it in and - same situation again!
He checked again and the new head had the same twisted receptacle. I was not amused.
He got a third head which was ok.
But don't laugh yet. Some days later somebody from Zeiss called me and after many apologies he said something like "From now on we will check the refurbished heads for twisted probe receptacles. We didn't do that in the past because we had to cut costs. I'm sure you know that too." I was quite speechless 😱

[[Ri...]]

Norbert, that is shocking. Were these refurb's done in the US?

[[No...]]

Since I live in Germany, I doubt they'll send used heads from here to the US just for overhaul. But I don't really know.

[[Ch...]]

Hey guys,

Back from surgery and happy to report that the boy is doing great. 9.5 hours in surgery about killed Me and his Mom, but we made it. We are still downtown, but will be heading home shortly. Okay, now back to business.

First off, can anyone tell me how to access the 'crash history' in Calypso? I used to be able to find it if I looked long enough but I apparently forgot how.

Thank you, to whoever had the idea to regularly check the the probe angles. I do this for my angled probes made with rotary adapters/knuckles but never thought to check it on my regular probes. This is a good idea.

Owen, you might be right. Pretty much everything I measure is on the rotary table. Everything is scanned. Nothing is a 'normal' shape or flat, every part used either curve for free form, and everything is a point heavy measurement. I'd say I definitely put the head to work.

[[Da...]]

Good to hear the surgery went well !! 😜

[[Ch...]]

Dave,
I don't know why I had it in my head that you were in Tinley. I remembered that you were a northerner. A lot of my college friends went to Stevenson HS and I spent some time in your neck of the woods back in the day.

Just so I don't bring us too far off topic. Does anyone know where to find the 'crash report' in Calypso?

[[Er...]]

I made a small program that plots collisions and temperature. It's gives the info in Swedish, but if you like, I can send it to you?

[[Ch...]]

Eric,

I'm interested and would love to take a look at it. cawatton@gmail.com

I remember from the old forum, someone pulled up a history of events in calypso that included major and minor crashes. I haven't been able to access the old forum for a while though.

[[Ow...]]

There used to be a place you could review errors a little more specific than the status window but, it was still a little vague if I remember correctly. The fact that I can find no record of where it was tells me I didn't use it often.

You probably already know you can pay for it but, if not, here is the link.

https://www.zeiss.com/metrology/product ... rver1.html