Chesterfield-based Ondrives Ltd is a precision manufacturer of gears, gearboxes, bearing housings and a wide range of associated products that it supplies to a large UK customer base.
The company also distributes its products world-wide through a network of agents; and in addition to its range of standard, off-the-shelf products, it designs and manufactures ‘specials’ to customers’ individual requirements.
With its ‘state of the art’ design facilities and machine tools, Ondrives can design and produce parts ranging from just a few millimetres in diameter to more than a metre. Indeed, the company is one of Europe’s leading gear designers and manufacturers, having started back in the 1960s.
Over the past decade, the business has undergone a period of intense development, employing highly proficient engineers, regularly up-dating staff skill levels and making frequent investments in the most recent design, production and inspection technologies.
In its final-inspection department, Ondrives has the latest in specialist gear inspection equipment, a large-capacity CNC co-ordinate measuring machine and optical measuring equipment.
Moreover, all production staff are supplied with the best available metrology equipment, so that they can make regular in-process checks. That said, to further increase its shopfloor-based measuring capabilities, the company recently purchased a Faro Gage portable CMM from Coventry-based Faro Technologies UK Ltd (
www.faro.com).
Managing director Andrew Higgs says: “Our all-embracing inspection procedures and material traceability checks cover ‘goods inward’, all stages of production and final inspection. Our production operatives take responsibility for the quality of their own output and have access to a wide range of measuring instruments, including the Faro Gage.
“Not only has this instrument improved the accuracy and repeatability of our on-machine checks, it also allows us to correct errors at source.
"Furthermore, the Gage’s ease of use has considerably shortened the time required for our in-process inspection tasks, resulting in reduced machine down-time and increased productivity; and because the Gage is so easy to use, the operators who underwent the original product training have been able to explain its use to all the other machine operators that need to use it.
“Because of its popularity with our operators and its highly portable nature, the Gage is now used throughout our facility. Moreover, in addition to the inspection-related use for which it was purchased, we have found many other applications, including undertaking dimensional checks on our jigs and fixtures and performing build-up checks in our assembly area.”
Historically, the inspection of a machined component required its removal from a CNC machine and transfer to a temperature-controlled inspection area.
Now, many companies have eliminated this time-consuming and costly routine by the use of portable CMMs, such as the Faro Gage, which allow consistent and accurate measuring routines to be undertaken quickly — on the machine producing the parts.
In addition, these portable CMMs can quickly capture data relating to the geometric features of a prototype part or first-off component and compare it to data in a CAD file.
The Faro Gage bought by Ondrives has a spherical working volume of 1.2m. Designed specifically for use by shopfloor personnel, it can be set up in seconds, and it replaces a wide range of traditional measurement tools such as calipers, height gauges and micrometers.
Furthermore, the Gage’s intuitive software can quickly create custom routines for repeat part measurements, with its accurate (0.018mm) shopfloor use aided by the temperature and overload sensors that allow it to detect and react to change. Also featured are Bluetooth cable-free operation and internal counter-balancing that minimises operator fatigue.