Checking Fixture - Smart Gage

Control calibres for industry 4.0
New generation calibers, made with new technologies and computerised management.

 

 

 

• SMART GAGE project was conceived to combine new-generation technologies with modular solutions, such as Additive Manufacturing (AM).
• The so-called additive or "Additive Manufacturing" technologies, commonly identified in 3D printing, allow the grouping of several machining processes traditionally realised with "subtractive" techniques (chip removal, cutting and drilling), replacing them with a single additive manufacturing, capable to "create" the desired objects in one step, starting directly from digital models.

 

Key advantages of Additive Manufacturing:

• Construction of not feasible structures with traditional processing technologies.
• Material saving and greater lightness of the piece.
• Similar or higher mechanical performance.
• Realisation times greatly reduced..
• AM (Additive Manufacturing)world has evolved considerably in recent years and is able to produce objects in heterogeneous materials. Thanks to continuous research, new alloys can be used and exploited almost daily.

 

 

 

In the control equipment production, there is often the need to create customised groups which, with traditional methods, would require very high time and costs.

Thanks to the use of modular components and AM technologies, this criticality has been overcome: very small structures and components can be produced very quickly, without having to carry out laborious fusions and long milling operations (often with 5 axes).

In this way important results are achieved such as:

• Production times and costs minimisation.
• Increase in product lightness.
• Ease in the project making changes.
• Measuring equipment versatility, whose "multiple" morphology allows it to be easily used for testing more details, by means of a quick reconfiguration of the modular groups that compose it.

 

The project also provides the possibility to collect and monitor data through a dedicated software.

A measure "part-program", dedicated to every caliber, allows to have:

• Guide for the operator during measurement phases.
• Automatic archiving of measurement results, both locally and remotely.

This allows to obtain the following advantages:

• Risk of procedural errors reduction by the operator.
• Registration errors reduction of measurement results
• Recording times reduction of measurement results.
• Makes fast analysis of any remote data on the quality of the production.

A specific software module allows an easy and efficient logistic management of the calibre.

• Increased accessibility to measurement, if the calibre is used as a support and reference piece.
• Metrology world is constantly evolving and the latest generation systems, such as measuring arms, laser scanners, and photogrammetric tests, are increasingly used in production lines. Often, with the traditional gauges, the excessive encumbrance of some elements make it difficult to pass the probe of the CMM, the optical or laser sensor. This obliges to carry out rather complex measuring cycles or even to give up the measurement of some elements.
• Through the use of "lighter modular groups" and in rapid prototyping elements with "forms specifically designed" Smart Gage is much less "bulky" and, therefore, allows the feelers passage and relief/measurement sensors.

Goal achieved with SMART GAGE: