Founded in 1980 as a specialist grinding company, Luton-based Pact Engineering Ltd recently bought its second Aberlink co-ordinate measuring machine (CMM).
The company has continually grown its range of competencies; and while grinding remains a key strength, it now describes itself as a ‘one-stop shop’ for sub-contract engineering services that include CNC turning, CNC milling, wire erosion and CNC universal grinding — all supported by a comprehensive inspection capability.
Its reputation for machining complex components has resulted in a customer base that includes technically demanding sectors such as aerospace, automotive, Formula One, oil and gas, pharmaceutical and medical.
The mainstay of Pact’s inspection capability had been an Aberlink Axiom Too CNC CMM that was bought two years ago from Gloucestershire-based Aberlink Ltd (
www.aberlink.com).
In addition to this CMM being used by the company’s inspection department for final-inspection routines, its ease of use meant that Pact’s machine operators also had access to it.
They could instantly recall the appropriate pre-written program and measure ‘first offs’ before beginning a production run — and make regular in-process checks when undertaking long production runs. Recent rising levels of production began placing increased demands on this CMM, resulting in delays in verifying first-off components and the loss of valuable production time.
The accuracy and ease of use of Pact’s Axiom Too CMM meant that the company again turned to Aberlink for a solution to its mounting inspection capacity problems. The answer was found in the Aberlink Xtreme CMM.
Pact director Steve Banfield said: “Having recently installed the Aberlink Xtreme in our inspection department, our machine operators have access to it for measuring their first-offs and for in-process checks.
“It also helps that the Xtreme uses the same software as our existing Aberlink CMM, which has now been freed to concentrate on final-inspection routines, putting an end to bottlenecks in our inspection department.”
The Xtreme features a novel non-cartesian structure that uses linear motors and mechanical bearings — an arrangement that maintains high levels of accuracy at very fast measurement rates; moreover, it does not suffer the cumulative inaccuracies that occur in conventional three-axis cartesian arrangements.
This CMM also features Aberlink’s 3-D CNC software, which creates a picture of a part as it is being measured and highlights differences between the measured dimensions and those that appear on the component drawing.
Aberlink says this software is the easiest to use and most intuitive CMM software currently available, adding that the high level of demand for practical demonstrations of the Extreme CMM at its headquarters and regional demonstration facilities has resulted in it manufacturing a number of quarter-scale machines that its sales engineers can carry in their cars and demonstrate at customers’ sites.