Aberlink recently launched its Extol shop floor hardened CMM to perform in the most challenging environmental conditions.
To reliably gauge performance, pre-production models were installed at a selection of manufacturing companies. One such company is Somerset-based MetalTech Precision Ltd, one of the South West’s largest subcontract facilities. MetalTech Precision operate out of a 50,000sq/ft space with a plant list of more than 60 CNC machines.
Producers of precision components, MetalTech manufactures anything from valves and couplings to flight recorders and submarine dry dock carriers. As a long-term Aberlink customer with 3 Aberlink CMMs, MetalTech were keen to trial Aberlink’s Extol.
Quality Manager, Rob Taylor, comments: “We started by carrying out a series of cross-comparison measurements whereby we’d inspect a first-off on the Extol, generate a report and then re-run the same part through our tried and tested Axiom too CNC CMM, just to make sure the results correlated. They did, every time. We’re now running 100% inspection on production parts and saving the completed inspection reports from the Extol to a networked server, so anyone in the office can access the data. The results have been accurate, so much so that we’ve been running our aerospace components through the CMM, illustrating just how confident we are with the machine already.”
Rob concludes: “We need the CMMs to be easy to use so that anyone on the shop floor, not just skilled inspection staff, can walk up to the machine and press a button to run an inspection program – making it almost an automated process that can’t go wrong. With the way MetalTech is expanding and our workload is increasing – we may get to a point where we’ll need an Extol in every cell.”
Aberlink is now able to offer remote online demonstrations for the entire range of CMMs, measurement software and accessories to customers who are unable to travel to a regional demo facility.
