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Bogus Inspection Program

InspectorJester
Greetings!
So I started working at this company this year that had a CMM since 2013. They paid a chunk to get a couple programs out to us.
They used these programs (at least 3 of them, but there were around 7 in total)
I started working here with little/no experience in a shop. As in no CNC, no CMM, no quality, hell I was barely qualified to sweep the floor!

Well I love to program and literally the second I saw our Optiv 443 I wanted to see what it did.
It sat for almost 4 years as a glorified paper weight!

The individual who was responsible for programming it was our former Quality Manager (who has since moved to Materials manager or something)
She would run the inspection program until the part was good, then give it back to the machinist to say "Good job sir!"
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I don't like this mentality. I like to program! And I like things to be right, not just "look good" on paper just to find out the customer rejected them again.
So after I got put into quality and got the ball rolling in that department (for about 6 months or more) the CEO of the company asks me if I like my job.

Well, let's say he appreciated my honesty and let me move out of quality and onto the CMM!

So I get some guy who was probably from Hexagon to come down for a day and run through the basics with me (which I already knew from genuine curiosity)
Then ol' Roger Conway comes down and calibrates it and I get more or less free reign from then on.

I can make or break programs, build or destroy!

Anyways, I was looking into the programs we purchased, and I thought they were garbage to be honest.

The vectors weren't perfect, was my biggest issue, along with extra nitpicky stuff.

So I rewrote them and now we have these really nice programs that are neat and concise.

To check a feature that we don't have the tools to verify....
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My question is, how can I know if I'm getting good data if there's no way I can verify the CMM is measuring this feature correctly?
It's not necessarily off topic, but we are able to accept these parts from the measurements we get so I moved it here
  • Roger Conway. He's a great guy. He used to do all our CMM servicing and even took training at his place in Canandaigua.


    So, how do you know if the CMMis giving good data? You have to go old school and set the part up on a granite surface plate and break out the needed tools. Indicators, transfer stand, height gauge, gage pins, gage blocks, calculator and go at it.
  • As far as I'm told we don't have the necessary equipment to measure the feature. (Why we didn't just get some is beyond me...)

    I won't give actual specs out, but it's essentially a 19.38° ± 0.17° angle meaasurement. We get readings in on or around that range, but heres my problem.
    Sometimes for whatever reason there will be one angle that is out of spec by like .05°. We, for instance, measure the angle, rotate, measure, rotate, measure until, well, they're all measured. It'll spit out a report that 5 are dang close to split, 2 are .05-.08 from split, and 1 is out.

    The way the alignment is done on this part leads me to believe that is not the problem.

    I just want to know if it's in or not. The customer accepts them so I won't complain, but if it turns out they are out and have potentially been out for awhile it will be nice egg on their face!
  • What would you recommend? I mean I could google "Inspection equipment angles and see what comes up but if I don't have to get them to spend any money that'd certainly sell it. We have all of the standard inspection tools, height gage, mics, comparator.. I mean we have a CMM.
    Could I get a sine bar and trig out the angles to get them to be something like that and measure it, giving me a repeatability field test?
  • in reply to dph51
    Gosh to be honest I can't remember his name... Disappointed He left me some good footnotes on the view path line feature, but no card!
  • in reply to dph51
    Sorry, I meant the training in Canandaigua. I know the place.
  • Roger had a couple of trainers working for him. I "think" maybe Mike Lee (?) did the last training I had there.

    I remember he used to play this badger, badger, badger video to break up the classroom tedium.

    Random, do you work in the RhaChaCha area?
  • ±0.17°(0°10'12") is pretty TIGHT! Well first of all it depends on the size of the part. If you can try to measure it on a comparator or sine plate. Can't really suggest much as it greatly depends on the nature of the part.

    For sure as dphh51 already menioned...Ol' skool methods are a good route to take that's if you have decent hand tools.
  • in reply to dph51
    1) Level
    2) Offset
    3) Origin

    I wonder how he feels about his legacy being the Badger Badger Badger song
  • I agree! Hence the CMM. I'm pretty sure these specific parts are the whole reason we got a CMM in the first place.
    So what do I do when I get a measurement that's bad, and then re measure and it's good?
    I take the liberty to hand deburr all the angles for posterity's sake so I don't think it's hitting anything unusual. It takes the points perpendicular to the surface (aligning to 19.38° and measuring Y line from Z; XPLUS workplane) so the vectors aren't an issue (the whole reason I rewrote the program)

    Would that be because it's taking a hit at a non-standard angle and poorly compensating for it?
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