The right option: Medical Manufacturing

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END USER: Southwest Greene International Inc., (760) 639-4960, www.greenegroup.com. CHALLENGE: Effectively measure small, complex medical parts.SOLUTION: A measurement system that combines vision and touch-probe inspection. SOLUTION PROVIDER: Hexagon Metrology Inc., (800) 274-9433, www.hexagonmetrology.us.

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Southwest Greene International Inc. specializes in metal part fabrication and has grown a healthy medical manufacturing business. As the manufacturer began to expand its client base, however, new challenges arose with each contract.

“We did not have a piece of equipment that could measure small, complex medical parts effectively,” said Robert Golightly, manufacturing engineer at Southwest Greene, Oceanside, Calif. “Using our in-house manual tools, such as optical comparators, was time-consuming, and repeatability was questionable. We had to look for new options.”

One “new option” turned out to be a Brown & Sharpe Optiv Classic multiple-sensor coordinate measuring machine from Hexagon Metrology Inc., North Kingstown, R.I. The metrology platform combines vision and touch-probe inspection. Because it is fast, accurate and automatic, the CMM is particularly useful for quick coordinate checks on parts, part programming on or off the machine tool and reverse engineering of older tooling, according to Golightly.

Driving the CMM is a special “vision” edition of PC-DMIS dimensional metrology software from Wilcox Associates Inc., part of the Hexagon Group. The software integrates CAD into the measurement process and provides tools to develop, debug and execute measurement routines. Users can program inspection programs offline using CAD models, with accurate simulation of camera view—lighting and magnification parameters using the CADCamera feature—freeing the CMM for inspection. Because the software automatically extracts information from the CAD model, manual typing (a major source of programming errors) is greatly reduced.

Prior to coming to Southwest Greene, Golightly had used other software interfaces for metrology equipment. He finds the PC-DMIS program menu similar to the feature tree of Solidworks CAD software, which makes it easy to set up inspection programs. A Solidworks native file can be directly imported into PC-DMIS, as well as other standard CAD and data file formats.

“About 98 percent of my programs are completed in advance of the fixturing and parts, as I can go offline and program the inspection program directly off of the solid model,” Golightly said. “Once I receive the fixture and parts, I go back into the inspection routine and program a couple of move commands to clear the touch probe around features and other needed controls. With other programs I have used, you cannot do that. Some of our customers already use PC-DMIS too, which makes it convenient.”