Comparison

Competitive Comparison

Competitive comparison of Measurement technologies from leading manufacturers

MEASUREMENT COMPARISON NUCLEAR LASER CONTACT UA

Corrects for fixture movement no no no yes

Measure all material colors yes no yes yes

Measure optically clear material yes no yes yes

Measure shiny reflective surfaces yes no yes yes

Measure non-reflective surfaces yes no yes yes

Operate reliably in dirty environments yes no no yes

Measure distance no yes yes yes

Requires precise standoff yes no yes no

Measure broad thickness/distance range no no no yes

Large spot size no no no yes

Fail safe features no no no yes

Measure soft materials/surfaces yes yes no yes

Ignore surface debris no no no yes

Measure leading and trailing surfaces of panel yes yes no yes

Affects surface of material measured no no yes no

Requires heads to retract no no yes no

Affected by product vibration no no yes no

Automatically detect if gages are incorrectly operating no no no yes

Scan in the cross machine direction yes yes no yes

Requires hazard warnings yes yes no no

Requires special regulations and permitting to install yes no no no

Requires expensive disposal yes no no no

Customer can purchase individual gages and components no yes yes yes

Measure product thickness and distance no yes yes yes

Full systems and system components available yes no yes yes

Requires high contact pressure no no yes no

Thickness measurement affected by density variation yes no yes no

Affected by background noise and radiation yes yes no no

Gage software prompts if gage is misaligned in collision no no no yes

Requires long sampling time to reduce affect of noise yes yes yes no

Quality Assurance

Ultrasonic Arrays gaging systems and software are used in plants, throughout the world, to eliminate shipping defective product that arises due to manual measurement and statistical sampling. Many quality conscious customers do not want to ship any defective product.

The goal of a quality assurance process is to only ship good product. The quality assurance process is based upon the accuracy of the measurements. The photo at the right shows an accurate digital hand caliper with Ultrasonic Arrays transducers. A hand caliper or hand micrometer measurement is based on using contact force on the surfaces of the product to be measured. The accuracy of this measurement depends upon the skill of the operator. In the photo are also some precision gage blocks. These gage blocks are traceable to the National Bureau of Standards and are accurate to 1.6 millionths of an inch (equivalent to about 500 atoms placed side by side). Measurements of the hardened gage blocks with a hand micrometer, can result in 0.002" of measurement error due to variations in contact force/torque, on the micrometer thumbwheel. Softer or less dense material (wood, plastic, foam, etc.) will have greater measurement variation. Ultrasonic Arrays sensors do not touch the product, there is no error from contact force.

Manual inspection methods take a small number of samples, at sample intervals, to estimate the overall process population. Every process has variation about a central mean. In order to prevent defective product from being transferred to a follow on operation or of being shipped to a customer, the process mean is shifted (increased) to minimize the quantity of defective product produced. Increasing the product size over target, requires increased process inputs (material, energy, process cycle time, etc.). In many cases the process will produce product that is too large and a secondary operation must be used to return the product to specification. A normal industry method is to shift the process mean by three standard deviations. Increasing the process mean by three sigma will ensure that 99.73% of production will be above the minimum specification, (this is a mathematical certainty). Conversely, 0.27% will be out of specification, these units will be shipped to the customer or to a follow on process which will be shipped to the customer. In a production run of one million units, 2,700 defective units will still be shipped.

UAI systems measure every unit of production and use sophisticated alarms to grade the product, in specification or out. UAI software provides grading logic that can be configured to accept and mark only good product. Accepting only good product is very different than rejecting defective product. In that it provides a fail safe method of ensuring rigorous inspection.

UAI Measuremate software provides full SPC information, history, reports and a database for analysis and Quality Assurance. Some customers print a measurement report of every unit produced and provide this to the customer. Measuremate software also emulates the incoming inspection procedures used by your customer, to accept/reject full loads.

UAI systems take the guess work out of the manufacturing process by ensuring that every unit has been inspected and is within specification. Taking the guess work out of the process permits decreases in process inputs, including material and energy.

Albion Devices, Inc.
538 Stevens Ave.
Solana Beach, CA., USA
Tel: 858-792-9585