Results from Probe Qual program

[[Li...]]

We had an issue last week where the new operator in a cell ran an "ALL" probe qualification program and he didn't clean the balls of at least one of the probes.  This specific probe gets used alot in comparison to the other probes in the rack on this Duramax.  So as you could imagine the cylindrical parts that he run, although "in spec" on his CMM because a contaminated probe qualification were all in face oversized for the OD measurements and undersized for the ID measurements.  We had a meeting about this today because we now 96 parts that or out of spec...OD/ID. Tolerance for these diameter are ±.00025" 

I did some investigating on Friday and found that the CMM thought the ball of the stylus was about .0004" bigger than is supposed to be.  These are bronze parts and the residue/dust from the machined parts coated the ruby ball stylus. 

I was asked in a meeting today...

1. Can I make a program that measures the reference sphere, and it reports the diameter of it. Which I could probably do, I'm thinking.

2. Can I somehow report the radius of the probes as it runs the qualification program.  

We want more information to be shown after the qualification program is done. It does show a presentation pdf, but these types of programs don't show anything. 

I attached the reports that get saved. The operators only see the presentation pdf, not the .txt file.

-Anyway to add stylus ball radius and radius or diameter of the reference sphere? 

 

Lincoln 

Probe Calibration06_22_2642862026-6-22.pdf Probe Calibration52026-6-22.txt

[[Iv...]]

I would check out the "Set Limit Values" option inside the Probing System Qualification. The attached screenshot shows the deafult values which are very loose. I think a reduced sigma and potentially radius would've have flagged this error. 

Additionaly, it can also allow a max time between qualifactions.

Since these options are all built in Calypso, it looks a great place to start and might satify your needs. 

[[Ri...]]

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https://portal.zeiss.com/knowledge-base?id=443334

This will help you create a program with report output, so you can verify sizes. 

[[Li...]]

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I did set all the probes at .0001" from the default of .00039" We want to catch the "bad"/"contaminated" qualification and make it fail with a low limit value. We are normally hanging around .00002" to all zeros.....millionths in "S" are normal for our Duramax's 

[[Li...]]

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I looked through this... I like it.   

[[Li...]]

Do you think I could pull in the sphere diameter or radius?

using result element?

[[Sv...]]

Use the result element and select the formula option. You can then enter the values shown in the image to obtain the results. I output sigma and the radius. It involves a huge amount of work at the start, but it pays off in the end.

 

Good luck!
Greetings from the Black Forest, Germany 😉

[[Ri...]]

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In addition to this instruction, I recall the current stylus values in my reports and then report the after qualification in the same reports.

(Ignore the tolerances, I rely strictly on deviation of before and after results). If we see deviations of .0001, it is automatically investigated with disc styli being an exception.

_Micura_252_26.6.29_2026-6-29_8_27_22 am_.pdf

[[Ch...]]

I posted a slyli roundness check program is this thread.  the one I use is highly modified from the one posted.  So feel free to customize it as needed. 

 

I highly recommend buying a separate reference ball from Bal-Tec.  That way you're not wearing out your reference sphere by running probe checks all day.  I record the styli roundness, diameter, and XYZ values in a database to see trends over time.    

[[Jo...]]

My understanding is that Sigma values on zeiss are always in millimeters regardless of the machine units setting. 

[[Ja...]]

I’ve found going strictly by the values Calypso gives you immediately after the requalification aren't reliable if you’re looking at part tolerance windows of anything less than +/- 0.001” (.0254mm). Here’s my experience.

For every program I write, I also write a probe qualification program for whatever probe tips are used within the part program. The probe qualification program sets the X, Y, & Z origins of the artifact to “0”. I have the program go through and qualify all the tips first (so there’s always a minimum of at least two physical probe changes), then it goes back through and grabs each tip (even the master probe) and re-probes the artifact to see if the tip is still seeing the location and size of the artifact are still at “0”, “0”, “0” and 30mm Ø (or whatever size artifact I’m using). Reasonably often I’ll see results significantly different than the  “0”, “0”, “0” and 30mm Ø that I was expecting.

There are a few reasons that can cause this, but regardless the differences will still pop up at least once a week. If I wasn’t checking for this, or if I was only going by numbers Calypso gives me on the qualification page, I’d be introducing measurement error and wouldn’t even know it - I would be thinking it was the manufacturing process that wasn’t stable. From time to time I even find the master probe gets a bad qualification.