Fine Forge — an Indian company specialising in the forging of steel turbine blades — has installed a multi-sensor CMM at its Hyderabad facility.

The tactile probing and laser scanning data acquisition system, which is used for quality assurance and reverse engineering, has helped to increase productivity and support the expansion of the company’s product portfolio.

Comprising a large percentage of Fine Forge’s production, turbine blades are made from X20, X10 and X22 stainless steels.

The company manufactures 95 types of moving blade and 24 types of guide blade, all of which have different and complex geometries. A system that could simplify 3-D scanning of the wide range of varying shapes and sizes was required.

The multi-sensor Altera CMM with Camio software — from Nikon Metrology (www.nikonmetrology.com) — combines touch probing, SP25 continuous scanning and laser scanning, giving Fine Forge a complete ‘inspection toolbox’.

In terms of accuracy, the Nikon LC15Dx laser head is closing the gap with tactile inspection systems, delivering the most accurate results possible for a laser scanner — a probing error of just 1.9µm.

Meanwhile, the SP25 is said to be an “ideal partner” for the laser scanning probe when gathering data on difficult-to-access areas such as internal features and diameters.

Camio changes between the laser scanner and tactile probes with just a few clicks of a mouse.