CNC West Dec jan 2019

36 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST December 2018/January 2019 chunk of aluminum casting that has to be parallel on the ends, and there is no support. You can take your fingers and press on it and see it movement. Five pounds of pres- sure can shift it a hundred thou. It requires some extra technique to get it machined. Clamping and indicators hold all the secrets to success on this particular part. “We use minimum of four indicators just to load the part,” ex- plains Ted. “It sits at zero in a free state and it still needs to be zero when it is clamped down. It is part of the Boe- ing program and they were way behind schedule when we got the job. We committed to the purchase of a six pallet Kiwa machining center and a Zeiss Eclipse fully automat- ed CMM to help them get back on schedule.” Twachtmann Industries is also on long term contracts for the growing 737. “Boeing is building a lot of planes right now and ramping up production,” details Ted. “It is good for our for business to be part of such great pro- grams. The issue with producing a lot more parts is we saw a bottleneck coming in our quality lab. We needed a way to verify our quality faster.” Twachtmann Industries already had two Zeiss CMM machines in use, but they needed something newer and much faster to keep up with their growth. “Zeiss has been great to us over the years so there was no doubt about what brand machine we were going to purchase to replace our oldest CMM,” touts Ted. “We stuck with the Zeiss because we were already famil- iar with them, but more importantly they keep produc- ing a better and better product. Art, my quality manager and I looked at what was available and decided the Zeiss Eclipse with the CMMManager software was the best so- lution for us. We added the Renishaw PH10T fully robotic head and it checks these parts in every way we need it to. Our older DCC manual CMMmachines were great, but a little antiquated. The Eclipse is fully automated and kicks out a report at the end of its scans. Zeiss has always been at the forefront in the CMM arena, but little things like the solid cross beams impress the hell out of me. They have that old school machining mentality of having a solid feel to it, and that really delivers results. Not just results, but ultra repeatable results. It is not uncommon to mea- sure a part 10 times and get ten different readings. All are in spec, but they are still different. The Zeiss Eclipse doesn’t have that issue. We measure and it gives us a read- ing, then we measure again and it gives the same reading. I measure it again and holy cow it is the exact same. We can go out 5 places on the decimal and it is the exact same every time. Sales guys lie a lot about capabilities, but this CMM delivers better than the brochure.” Via word of mouth Twachtmann Industries has become the go to shop for difficult parts others can’t machine. These castings present some unique challenges that require a little more time and effort than a standard “grip it and rip it.”