Outside Calibration services

[[Da...]]

In an effort to reduce costs, Management wants me to review outside cal services for our 4 micuras. 

Has anyone used CMM calibration and Service? They are based in Rockford Il.

[[Wo...]]

We've used outside calibration service before (because of scheduling issues mostly) and although we've had certs saying that the machine passed specs I wasn't confident in the machine. Couple of years ago we've had issues with bearings on one Accura. I've noticed the Masterprobe references with much higher sigma (around 0.0006mm). The machine passed outside calibration at that time. We've had the machine serviced, which brought the sigma back to 0.0001-0.0002mm on new bearings. Zeiss tech has admitted that the machine with old bearings wouldn't pass the Zeiss calibration. Another thing I've noticed was that the tech from 3rd party was using our production probes to validate the machine. There were some other things I found questionable, but I can't remember them now. In general, it looked like the savings weren't worth it.