Production Measurement Challenges
Recently BrakeView has shown up in some unexpected places - manufacturing areas. And we aren't talking about brake manufacturing areas!
BrakeView is the perfect portable system for measuring roundness, flatness, runout, eccentricity and harmonics of just about anything that you can spin. In many cases, parts can even be measured right on the machine that produces them.
Check out these recent examples of BrakeView in action...
Exhaust Component Concentricity
The control of engine exhaust is very important both environmentally and in terms of engine performance. An exhaust component manufacturer recently installed a BrakeView system with custom “concentricity” hardware and software for the control of critical sealing features. For this application, two measurements are required to establish an axis and then a third measurement is compared to the axis for the assessment of concentricity.
To accomplish this task while minimizing costs, the BrakeView system drives a reconditioned Talyrond 150 spindle (www.EMIGage.com) and incorporates 3 probes. (2 on the datum feature and one on the measured feature). The system quickly and accurately measures the datum and then the feature. In addition to the concentricity value, the custom BrakeView software also reports the roundness for each of the three measurements. The system has been well received and is said to be "Extremely easy to use, calibrate and quickly change over to other product numbers. The graphics and setup screens are very user friendly."
Shaft Straightening
The straightening of long shafts can pose quite a challenge. In many applications the straightness of the shaft is much more critical than the roundness of the surface. This poses an interesting challenge: How do you easily measure the straightness of the centerline when the surface isn't perfectly round? The answer is to measure the surface and calculate the center - something that can't be done with traditional dial indicators.
That was exactly the case at MasTech Wind a manufacturer of wind turbines for Mariah Power. MasTech Wind implemented BrakeView in place of their dial indicator-based approach for straightening their 20' pole. With BrakeView and its roundness/eccentricity analysis they have been able to achieve a 3x improvement in straightness and have cut their straightening time in half!
Crankshaft Roundness and Harmonics
The pins and journals of a crankshaft must be very round and smooth in order to properly carry loads and maintain a lubrication film. The roundness of these features is critical and must be properly measured in order to predict performance. In this application, BrakeView was integrated into an existing fixture - which took only a few minutes. The existing setup rotated the crankshaft and BrakeView easily measured the surface.
BrakeView's roundness and harmonics measurement capabilities make quick work of measuring and helping you understand the shapes of these surfaces. Furthermore, BrakeView's data can be analyzed offline with software packages such as BrakeViewDesktop and OmniRound.
