Steve Frazier, Nascote's quality engineer, evaluated several calibration management software programs. He selected DataMyte's EnGage! because of its ability to manage and control all of the company's metrological instrumentation.

Nascote uses a number of large checking fixtures to simulate the mounting of bumper systems to vehicles. The company has more than 200 of these fixtures to check the gap and alignment of painted and finished bumpers that bolt to the vehicles in the final assembly process. Due to the high visibility of these products, quality is extremely important.

Nascote also employs hundreds of micrometers, calipers and gage transducers connected to data collectors in its checking systems. Its maintenance and tooling department uses various micrometers; torque wrenches; and depth, height and radius gages. Its analytical lab maintains a wide variety of test equipment. All of the instrumentation must be periodically calibrated. Knowing where each gage is and when it must be recalled for calibration is a time-consuming process, one in which the company had come to rely on computerization.

Frazier installed EnGage! in the spring of 1997. Upon receipt of a check fixture, Nascote's technicians certify it to ensure it was correctly built. They record the manufacturer's name, customer's name, engineering level, date of receipt and whether the fixture was acceptable. They record the fixture's condition after making any necessary adjustments and recall each fixture at regular intervals, to determine whether anything has changed that would affect the products' dimensions.

Frazier particularly likes EnGage!'s ability to compensate for degree of error in calibration masters. "We have some masters we send to a metrology lab to be certified," he explains. "Each of these masters has a degree of acceptable error. We can enter that variable into the software, and it automatically compensates for the error when we use that master to calibrate one of our instruments."

Because the company can accurately capture and track gage calibration data, it knows where every gage is located throughout the plant. When it's time to recall one for calibration, it's easy to locate.

Additionally, quality technicians can give departments advance notice when their gages need to be recalibrated. That way, if they must have a backup or build a backlog of checked parts, they can do that before they have to recall the gage.

Installing EnGage! has produced considerable labor savings--about $10,000 a year. But there's been another intangible benefit. "The one thing you can't put a dollar value on is the confidence we have gained with the QS-9000 auditors," says Frazier. "Our people know they can go into the system and quickly recall any information an auditor needs."

Amherst makes precision tools, dies, gages, fixtures, automated special machinery and a range of custom machinery; it also provides engineering services. Recently, the company has attained much faster inspection by adding the new and highly versatile Swiss-made Fowler/Sylvac Z-Cal Height Gage to its arsenal of measuring and inspection devices.

A key advantage of the Fowler/Sylvac Z-Cal is its ability to be used both in the inspection laboratory and directly at the lathes, grinders and other milling machines producing the parts, says Michael Kretz, Amherst's vice president of plant operations.

Thanks to the new height gage, Amherst can perform these inspections up to 10 times faster than before, particularly on smaller parts with a 12" envelope, the gage's largest measurement capacity, reports Kretz.

Robert Schuler, an Amherst inspector, cites a typical measuring routine to illustrate this point. "When you want to assess a hole diameter, all you have to do is hold on the button diameter and the Z-Cal automatically reads the lowest portion of that diameter," he explains. "Then you raise the pointer to the top of the hole and obtain the actual diameter. It tells you the height if you zero-set from the table, giving you the reading from the table to the center of the hole automatically.

"If I have to take a diameter reading on a lathe or grinder, I just bring the gage right to the machine and measure, instead of taking the part to the gage. And it gives a true reading."

The new instrument is particularly useful for close tolerances to 0.0001", which constitutes half of the workload in measurement and inspection, notes Schuler. The gage's resolution is 0.0005"-0.00005", and it's easier to use than the previous instrument, which required pressing an airlift, he recalls. It is also lighter (11.6 lbs.) and therefore easier to move around. The gage uses a 3 mm probe that Fowler claims makes all measurements (height, depth, slot, ID and OD, and distance between centers) within an accuracy of 6 microns for the 12" range instrument used by Amherst.

And that carries through from the very first step in its manufacturing process: the toolroom. At Wainwright, the toolroom currently incorporates 10 Bridgeport mills and three lathes, a Webb and two LeBlonds, used periodically throughout three shifts. The company employs 23 toolmakers to build the tools that support the pressroom where the stamping dies are run. Those tools must be accurate from the very start.

Through early 1990, the Wainwright toolroom machines operated adequately with lead screw dials, direct mechanical rotary dials and other brands of digitals to mark equipment accuracy. However, this equipment didn't stay accurate for long and required constant adjustment. A decision in 1993 to retrofit one toolroom Bridgeport with a Heidenhain digital readout and glass scale linear encoders to better monitor their accuracy proved fruitful.

"Our initial measurement systems were old and failing regularly," explains Les Wendell, Wainwright's tooling manager. "Lucky for us, we had recently installed a Heidenhain Retrokit on one of the mills in place of a mechanical rotary dial, and it was working great. In fact, we won that Retrokit in a raffle at the IMTS trade show in 1992. We were thrilled, and measurement-related downtime was no longer an issue with that machine."

At that time, Wendell decided to standardize all their machines with the Retrokits, including kits for five Bridgeport mills and the three lathes. The Heidenhain Retrokit consists of two glass scale linear encoders, a digital readout, brackets and mounting hardware.

"The Retrokits have proven extremely durable against coolant and chips," says Wendell. "The glass encoders have a lip on them that is great at keeping chips out. They are reliable because they just don't get contaminated, and their quality is exceptional. Also, we found the digital readout to be very efficient. Its functions are easy to use and simple to program.

"Overall, the whole thing is very easy to handle. We especially noticed this when we had to take the original retrofit off a machine and move it to another. Our guys handle it themselves."

Now that the retrofit has been complete and in use for a few years, Wendell wouldn't have the machine equipped with any other system. "In fact, we recently added two new Bridgeport mills, and we insisted that they be delivered to us with the Heidenhain system already installed," adds Wendell.

Wendell wants to be sure his toolroom is up for the job. As a supplier of tooling to Robert Bosch, Delphi, Boeing and GE, there is no room for error.