Renishaw supplies a wide-range of precision metrology products to COORD-3 and both companies benefit from a long-standing and successful partnership.
COORD-3 CMMs make use of the following Renishaw solutions: touch trigger motorised probe systems including the 3-axis PH10 PLUS and 5-axis PH20 heads, universal CMM Controllers (UCC) and software, laser calibration systems such as the XL-80 laser with XC-80 environmental compensation unit and TONiC high-performance optical encoders with FASTRACK™ mounted RTLC stainless steel scale.
Renishaw enhances the COORD-3 customer solution with products that increase CMM throughput, accuracy and automation, resulting in increased sales backed by a strong global support network. Renishaw has also built valuable synergies with COORD-3 to support its demanding product design strategies.
COORD-3 is one of the few suppliers to manufacture its CMM structures from aluminium alloy and silicon-carbide, offering maximum metrology performance and productivity.
Even in a lab with environmental control, traditional granite CMM frames have significant thermal mass and take much longer to absorb and dissipate thermal changes, whereas, aluminium’s high coefficient of thermal conductivity allows the machine structure to respond more rapidly and linearly with temperature fluctuations.
This is important as it is necessary to predict CMM thermal behaviour and compensate for it in order to ensure machine accuracy over its operating temperature range. CMMs that expand linearly without induced constraints are easier to compensate for, which improves measurement repeatability.
The low structural weight of aluminium also improves the CMM’s acceleration and deceleration – enhancing overall traverse speed and ultimately increasing measurement throughput.
This allows the CMM to operate at relatively high speed, which is particularly important for in-line applications where inspection operations need to keep pace with production.
Renishaw provides real-time temperature compensation with its 3-axis UCC S3 and 5-axis UCC T5 controllers, allowing temperature monitoring of up to 16 different locations, using sensors which can be fixed to the X, Y, and Z axes of the CMM and to the workpiece being measured. The thermal data is then combined with axis feedback from the TONiC encoder system to produce high fidelity measurements that allow the machine to minimise thermal error and reduce measurement uncertainty.
A TONiC readhead, with 0.1 μm resolution, and RTLC FASTRACK scale, is installed on each CMM axis. FASTRACK is a scale carrier system, comprising two miniature guide rails, that securely retains Renishaw’s 8 mm x 0.2 mm low-profile stainless steel scales and allows them to freely expand at their own CTE (Coefficient of Thermal Expansion) with almost zero hysteresis (for example, <1 μm on a centre-clamped 2 metre axis over the entire operating temperature range). Another advantage of this system is that damaged scale can be quickly removed and replaced, even when access is limited, thus reducing machine downtime. This feature is also ideal for large machines that need to be sectioned prior to transportation.
COORD-3 CMMs can also feature a Renishaw PH20 touch-trigger system, which allows easy access to features at any angle and can deliver a 3-fold increase in measurement throughput over traditional systems. Unlike conventional touch-trigger measurement methods, which rely on speeding up the motion of the CMM to measure quickly, PH20 utilises head motion technology developed for the multi-award winning REVO® system to minimise the dynamic errors of the CMM at higher measurement speeds.
A great strength of COORD-3 is its after-market service, since the real value of CMM products is in the customer experience and overall lifetime costs. High-quality and rapid customer support enhances the customers’ perception of value and trust in the COORD-3 brand.
