In the old days of manufacturing, you would have a quality room with all the measurement equipment. As goods were made, they would come off the line and have to be taken to the quality room in a separate area to determine if a part was in spec and good to go in order to continue production. The product would sit on the shelf in a queue waiting to be inspected, someone would pull the work order, and get it back to production. There might be a dozen different parts that have to get measured. It took time, and would create a huge burden. Needless to say, it wasn’t very efficient.
These days, typically, measuring machines are right in line with production machines, allowing every piece to be measured and ensure accuracy across everything being made. However, this created a new, but very solvable problem. When CMM’s (Coordinate Measuring Machines) were moved to the shop floor, there became a much higher need for vibration isolation. Why? When you have additional machines and equipment running all in the same place like the entire machining line, cleaning equipment, high pressure sprays, and more, there is a lot of added vibration. Even in the case of adding plexiglass rooms to help control the climate, you need to consider vibration as an essential part of controlling the environment.
There are four main areas to consider when control the environment for a CMM:
Vibration can be tricky to identify. Sometimes it’s hard to measure because until the line is installed and running you don’t have vibration to measure. In some cases CMM’s can’t operate correctly because of the vibration and operators and owners weren’t expecting it.
When you get a measuring machine, the manufacturer has specs that should be met for floor vibration during installation, but in a lot of cases they are installed without verifying the measurements which can lead to problems later on.
Solution
There are solutions to issues with vibration isolation in these environments!
vibration site survey- if you aren’t sure vibration is the issue with your production, we can determine that by doing a vibration site survey.
Bi-air air springs – Adding proper vibration isolation is fairly easy. These are expensive machines, and it’s worth the investment to ensure you get a long life out of your machine.
Are you struggling with vibration issues on your production line? Bilz can help!
