The company is committed to a strategy of investment in state-of-the-art equipment, including CNC grinding, turning, milling and EDM and CNC inspection facilities in a dedicated Quality Laboratory.
As an ISO 9001accredited company GB Precision is constantly looking for ways to improve quality across the range of its activities, which is why, after thoroughly researching the options available on the market, the company recently invested in a Starrett HD400 profile projector with internal edge-detection.
As director, Paul Turner explains; “Our customers come to us because they know we offer a truly quality focused approach to everything we do. In many cases that means it’s all about the detail and, in fact, it’s often all about the edge.
“To take just a couple of recent examples of difficult to measure features, one component was recently specified with a very large blend radius between adjacent surfaces. Even though the radius was large the surfaces were only slightly angled resulting in a very small area of radius (less than 0.010mm). Another included a partial ellipse cut out, where the radii of the ellipse were 2.5m in one direction and 11mm in the other. The Shadowgraph technology proved the ideal solution for checking such difficult dimensions.”
One of the key benefits of the Starrett HD400 is its simultaneous accuracy and simplicity of operation, making it particularly useful when production staff need to carry out in-process checks on components – which is why GB Precision has located the equipment on the shopfloor to allow easy and rapid access by the everyone on the team, reducing time taken for measuring and eliminating the possibility of operator subjectivity and manual errors.
Another major advantage of the HD400 is its ability to capture and store images, with added text if required, of the component measurement data, as well data point sets. These can then be filed with digital copies of drawings and other information to build a complete digital record of the job, satisfying the increasing demand for complete component documentation in a variety of industry sectors.
Technical features of the HD400 include a dual mirror design to allow a vertically erect image and dual lens slide for instant magnification changes, together with fine adjustment for X- and Y- axes with fast traverse and zero backlash mechanism for the X-axis. In addition, the all metal construction ensures optimum stability and robustness for shopfloor use, while the 50kg load capacity allows for the measurement of larger components.
Mr Turner concludes: “The great thing about this technology is that it is easy to learn and easy to use and it does exactly what is required, in the most effective way. The precision optics, versatile lighting and large screen give us the ability to measure a wide range of components with challenging features including very small and very large radii, complex runouts, difficult corner breaks, threads and varying shaft lengths and also the ability to spot any imperfections such as burrs and indentations.
“Our customers are seeking evermore extreme geometry and stringent tolerances and they are looking for perfect parts, every time. So not only does our machining technology have to be second-to-none, but our inspection system also needs to be first class, with the ability to check critical dimensions rapidly and reliably, whether it's a batch of 2 or 200-off. The HD400 provides us with far more than simple dimension and form checking – it’s an essential production tool on our shopfloor.”
GB Precision www.gbprecision.co.uk
Starrett www.starrett.co.uk
