Christine gets a facelift

When faced with increased production at John Deere's construction and forestry products US manufacturing facility, the company had to address capacity problems to keep up with component verification.

When faced with increased production at John Deere's construction and forestry products manufacturing facility in Davenport (Iowa, USA), the company also had to address resultant capacity problems to keep up with component verification.

John Deere's high quality standards meant it also needed to measure more features, in the same amount of time, than before.

To meet these challenges, including the measurement of very large parts, an upgrade of its existing coordinate measuring machine (CMM) by Renishaw has led to a capability for lights-out inspection coupled with a major increase in productivity.

The company originally faced two choices: it could order a new CMM tailored to the job, or could attempt to improve the productivity and performance of its existing large CMM, a Leitz PMM 60 38 25 bridge machine.

Affectionately nicknamed Christine, this machine has x = 6000mm, y = 3800mm and z = 2500mm axes.

The new route would take ten months to come on-stream at a large cost.

The complete retrofit based on the firm's UCC controller would breath new life into Christine by updating to the latest technologies at a fraction of the new cost and timescale.

The retrofitted machine has now been running successfully since early 2005.

Mike Heard, Supervisor of Measurement Services at Davenport, said: "Our machine is quite large, however the UCC controller is handling the machine well".

"With the flexibility the PH10M/SP25M probing system provides, we now have the reliability and flexibility required to keep up with the changing demands of our customers".

Successful pilot trials were carried out at the John Deere Technology Centre in Moline, Illinois, USA.

There, Cory Leland, the Lead Project Engineer, evaluated the Renishaw controller and the SP25M and SP80 scanning probe products over several months.

Leland is an experienced metrologist and put the entire system through its paces.

The retrofit included the UCC2 universal CMM controller and SPA2 multi-axis servo power amplifier, which together run the dual y axis drive system (four-axes under control).

Flexible tape scales and digital read-heads were fitted to the axes, while a PH10M motorised indexing probe head and the SP25M compact scanning probe system provide the feature accessibility and sensor flexibility.

This permits accurate measurement of a wide variety of part features in numerous orientations.

The SM25-4 scanning module, with its 400mm long styli reach, has proven to be particularly versatile for reaching deep features.

Just six SP25M styli/module configurations, used with the simple, compact and automatic flexible change rack system (FCR25), has replaced some 30 bulky fixed-styli configurations.

This has freed up significant working volume allowing even larger parts to be measured.

Christine is now running efficiently on extended shifts.

John Deere can also run inspection tasks unattended during the night, which has further aided productivity.

Maintenance interruptions have been reduced, increasing up-time.

The UCC controller family is compliant with the I++DME protocol standard.

This is seen as core to aiding interoperability throughout John Deere's CMM installations.

John Deere has also ordered several CMMs, which are to be supplied with UCC2/SPA2 control, and PH10M/SP25M or SP80 probing systems.

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