The engineering department at Weymouth College (www.weymouth.ac.uk) has received an XT digital bore gauge set from Bowers Group (www.bowersgroup.co.uk).

Lecturer Geoff Williams said: “This is of great benefit to my students, allowing them to measure internal dimensions — including bore diameters — to exceptionally tight tolerances.

"We are delighted that Bowers has kindly donated it to the college. The students understand that ‘time is money’ in industry, and that investing in a decent piece of kit can eliminate expensive mistakes, therefore reducing scrap.”

As part of their engineering qualifications, the students must demonstrate that they can carry out a range of measurement tasks and use the equipment competently.

One such project is the inspection of a shallow 40mm bore that previously could only be measured with digital calipers.

Unfortunately, in relatively inexperienced hands, they were not nearly reliable enough. With a measurement capacity of 20-50mm a large LCD display and IP67 electronics protection, the XT digital bore gauge has proved to be the ideal solution.

Its proximity output allows bi-directional communication, giving greater flexibility for data acquisition and storage, which can also be useful for the collection of SPC data in a later part of the students’ course.

Located in West Dorset, Weymouth College is a further-education establishment with over 3,000 students.

It offers a range of practical and academic courses in a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional subjects, and it is a partner institution of the University of Plymouth.