Resource Review—

Santa Clara, CA’s HS&S, Inc, was founded in 1978 by John and Henry Servin Sr., primarily as a machine tool remanufacturing facility and designer of custom machinery and automation.

In the year 1999 Angus Taylor, Director of Business Development for Hexagon Metrology, approached HS&S with a vision of a Northern California Metrology Technology Center to cover sales of new equipment and demonstration of the latest technology of Hexagon Metrology. Five years ago HS&S began selling Hexagon, Taylor Hobson and Micro Vu Equipment. The goal was eventually to create a contract inspection business to demonstrate equipment and aide the sales organization

In early 2005 John Heal, an experienced programmer and inspector, joined HS&S to launch the HS&S Contract Services Division. We recently visited HS&S for an interview with John to learn more about the company’s new service. The results of that interview are presented here for your consideration.

                                                                      C. H. Bush, editor                                             .                                                                     

CNC West: John, what’s the name of your new undertaking? Is it still HS&S, Inc.?

Heal: Yes, it’s part of HS&S, but we operate under the name of HS&S Contract Services Division.

CNC West: So you’re not involved in equipment sales?

Heal: Only to demonstrate equipment as required to potential customers looking to buy machines. However, that’s not the primary thrust of this division. Our main job is to provide a variety of contract inspection services to job shops and manufacturers who don’t have the facilities or the time to do the work themselves. Our second principal service is to provide training on the equipment people buy from HS&S.

Services Offered

CNC West: I see, you said a variety of inspection services. What types of services do you offer?

Heal: Well, the list can get kind of long. We do CMM contract inspection, both first article and production runs. We offer contract programming and training on Brown and Sharpe’s PC-DMIS software and—

CNC West: Wait, you mean if someone has a Brown and Sharpe CMM, you’ll go in and write a program for them?

Heal: In a nutshell, yes, but for the most part we take on the really tough programming jobs on complex parts, things the customer’s in-house staff can’t handle. But we also handle a lot of overflow inspection, too. And, we offer temporary staffing services if someone is out sick or if a company loses an inspector for some reason.

CNC West: Is that it?

Heal: No, as I said, we offer a lot of services. We check roundness, profiles, thickness down to .0000001”. We have a rent-a-lab program where a customer can rent a machine and an operator. We do non-contact surface topography and on-machine-too inspection programs for Fanuc, Mitsubishi, Heidenhain controls and Renishaw probes.

CNC West: I see a Romer portable CMM over there. What do you do with that?

Heal: We use that for on-site inspection of parts. We also have a laser tracker for large parts and structures. But that’s not all either. We offer SPC data gathering, charting and reverse engineering as well.
CNC West: Reverse engineering?

Heal: Yes, if a company or a shop has a product or a part they want to make, but they don’t have drawings, we can create them for them or give them a model.

Inspection Equipment

CNC West: That’s a broad range of services for basically a shop just getting started. Do you have all the equipment needed to do all that?

Heal: Well, we’re pretty well equipped. I don’t think you’ll find many places with the variety of capabilities we offer. I mean, most contract inspection shops tend to specialize. But we sell a variety of quality inspection equipment, so we decided to offer more than sales. For instance, suppose someone wants to buy a Brown and Sharpe, but just isn’t ready to handle the expense just yet. We offer them a way to get their work done until they are ready.

CNC West: That makes sense. What types of equipment do you have in house?

Heal: Well, it’s another long list really. We have equipment that can inspect very small parts to very large parts. We have two Brown and Sharpe Global image CMMs with work envelopes of 28” by 40” by 28”. We have three 2005 Micro Vu non-contact optical vision measurement stations for inspecting small to medium parts. The Micro Vu Vertex 120 is equipped with a Renishaw probe to supplement its vision capabilities.

CNC West: That’s a lot of equipment.

Heal: Yes, but there’s a lot more. You already mentioned the Romer Portable CMM Arm for on-site inspection, which is ideal for large structures and reverse engineering. We also have a 2005 Leica Laser Tracker with a range up to 100' and accuracy of better than .001” per 20 feet. That’s for the really big stuff. On the other end of the spectrum we have a variety of Mahr Federal surface roughness, profilometry and roundness systems. And for reverse engineering and high density data gathering, we have contact and non-contact scanning equipment. We use VX Technologies Large Field Scanning systems for reverse engineering. Oh, I almost forgot, we have licenses of QC Calc SPC software for data analysis and SPC Charting.

CNC West: So there’s really not much in the way of inspection you can’t do.

Heal: Not much.

Customers Served

CNC West: So, you’ve been at this for about eight months or so, I gather. How’s it going so far?

Heal: Luckily we’ve been really busy so far. We’re getting customers from the aerospace, automotive, semiconductor and medical industries. As our reputation for service grows, we expect to expand our base considerably.

CNC West: What about turnaround time? You don’t have a large staff yet, it seems.

Heal: (smiling) Well, Chuck, so far we’ve met our delivery promises. We’ve done that by working hard and efficiently and by putting in a lot of long hours. Also, we’ve hired another full-time worker, and we’re looking at the possibility of hiring another.

CNC West: With a few months under your belt, how do you like it? It’s quite different from your previous employment as inspector with giant machine shop, isn’t it?

Heal: Actually, I love what I’m doing now. In my previous job it was very routine, repetitive. We get a lot of inspection challenges, and I like that. Here there’s never a dull moment.

CNC West: John, how do you see the future for contract inspection? You think this will be a dead end?

Heal: Absolutely not. There’s really a growing demand for contract inspection, and I don’t see that demand diminishing anytime in the foreseeable future.

CNC West: Good luck and thanks for the interview.

Heal: You’re welcome.

—30—