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Hexagon wont help me, so now i ask you for help

Hi guys & girls & friends & family.

I have a bigboy problem with my CMM, or well, rather a problem with the relationship between our 6 tips in our rack.
I've called hexagon support and they couldnt bring any help (also the good guy at support wasnt available today)
So now i want my friends (you guys) to help me! Cos i know some of you have the best knowledge n experience of this stuff!!
And... i cant wait for the other hexagon guy to help me, cos we have a big measuring error now..

So...I have two programs for checking our tips: a short & a long one.

Short one: I place a calibrated ring on our fixture plate. I measure & align to it with the master tip (with the rings top plane as Primary/Z-orgin and a circle with XY orgin).
Then it swaps to A0B0 for the next tip in our rack and measures the ring with a circle to evaluate Diameter, XY, Z(using a vector point on the face of ring) and also roundness to check for wear/dirt. I repeat this for all the other tips in the rack.
I get a big deviation in XY between the tips (0.05mm in X, 0.05mm in Y) and <0.01mm in Z. (I'll post the PDF report named "ring check")

The long check program uses the calibration sphere, where i use the same principle. Bolt the sphere to the fixture plate, Measure the sphere with mastertip A0B0 and align to it. Switch to another angle for the same tip and evaluate diameter/XYZ. Then swap to the next tip in the rack which measures the sphere and evaluates diameter/XYZ.
And I get the same big deviation in XY as in the ring check program. (Ive posted PDF report called "sphere check")

I have used these check programs for a long time and they've worked good so far.

So now....How do i get all the tips to show 0 in deviation (or at least <0.005mm per axis)?

Ive tried so far:

1. I ran our whole autocalibration program for all tips (which i also havent made any changes to) with good results, low STD, normal diameter deviation and the master XYZ is "perfect".
( ill post PDF report called "Autocalibration").

2. "Manually" calibrated the tips for the check program, i.e. I go into probe utlities for the first tip in our rack & calibrate A0B0 (master tip) saying "yes , sphere has moved". Then I go into the probe dialog for the 2nd tip in the rack and only calibrate A0B0 saying "no sphere hasnt moved". Ive done this for all tips in the check program with good results in the calibration results. But still bad results in the check program.

3. Ive reseted all tips to nominal and ran the autocalibration program again with good cal. results (But bad "check" results).

4. Ive inspected all tips for damage & cleaned them from dirt (also cleaned sphere/ring)

5. Played around with the calibration parameters for the tips, number of points & levels. And i acctually got sucess from this for the 2nd tip (Which you can see in the reports).
But i dont know why it worked, because it change anything for the other tips.

The only other thing i can think of that i havent tried is deleting the all probe files & build up new ones (If they became corrupt for some reason).

Anyone else has any ideas?
Just ask if u want more info, i can post code of the programs and show calibration settings etc...





Parents



  • OK GUYS! IM BACK... to square one...

    I tried fixing this tip relationship problem yesterday. And eventually (as you may saw in my latest post) i seemed to finally fix the problem.

    I deleted all probe files, and built them from the ground up, using our acctual hardware (and not the hardware we used 10 years ago, tho the old hardware were pretty much the same..
    I calibrated the tips, got good values (yay) I checked the tips on the sphere and the ring & the deviation was only a few microns!! Slight smile YAY it measures correctly!

    Now that we we're all set and im ready to measure some parts. I welcome the operators kindly into the CMM room, proud of my self, showing them how good it measures now.
    So they ve been eager to measure all day, so we run our first part.
    And we have fixtures for all parts, so no manual alignment is needed.

    So the tip moves to the part (just a cylinder sitting on a v-block with the faces pointing in machine axis Y) . And it kinda goes to the centre to take a circle, but only in X/Y, but in Z it goes way down.. thinking the part is basically like 20-30mm lower than it should be..So i ran manual alignment again andt it measured the part correctly. (small yay)

    And it was like this for all other parts we tried to run, the machine always thinking the part was much lower in Z than it is.

    Anyone has any idea why this is? Maybe it has something to do with the machines zero? Or maybe its not a coincidence that before when my tips were showing a bad deviation in my check programs, it was only in bad in XY, but in Z it was just a few microns difference...and now its right in XY but not Z....hmmmh...

    Ok well whatever and i manually align the parts that were gonna be measured during night shift and went home...


    And now, this morning, what do u think happens?
    I run the daily check programs: AND ALL THE BIG DEVIATIONS ARE BACK! Even worse than before, like 0.1mm in X&Y!

    So today none of the tips relates to eachother again...for some reason...it just happend overnight..

    I need help again please
Reply



  • OK GUYS! IM BACK... to square one...

    I tried fixing this tip relationship problem yesterday. And eventually (as you may saw in my latest post) i seemed to finally fix the problem.

    I deleted all probe files, and built them from the ground up, using our acctual hardware (and not the hardware we used 10 years ago, tho the old hardware were pretty much the same..
    I calibrated the tips, got good values (yay) I checked the tips on the sphere and the ring & the deviation was only a few microns!! Slight smile YAY it measures correctly!

    Now that we we're all set and im ready to measure some parts. I welcome the operators kindly into the CMM room, proud of my self, showing them how good it measures now.
    So they ve been eager to measure all day, so we run our first part.
    And we have fixtures for all parts, so no manual alignment is needed.

    So the tip moves to the part (just a cylinder sitting on a v-block with the faces pointing in machine axis Y) . And it kinda goes to the centre to take a circle, but only in X/Y, but in Z it goes way down.. thinking the part is basically like 20-30mm lower than it should be..So i ran manual alignment again andt it measured the part correctly. (small yay)

    And it was like this for all other parts we tried to run, the machine always thinking the part was much lower in Z than it is.

    Anyone has any idea why this is? Maybe it has something to do with the machines zero? Or maybe its not a coincidence that before when my tips were showing a bad deviation in my check programs, it was only in bad in XY, but in Z it was just a few microns difference...and now its right in XY but not Z....hmmmh...

    Ok well whatever and i manually align the parts that were gonna be measured during night shift and went home...


    And now, this morning, what do u think happens?
    I run the daily check programs: AND ALL THE BIG DEVIATIONS ARE BACK! Even worse than before, like 0.1mm in X&Y!

    So today none of the tips relates to eachother again...for some reason...it just happend overnight..

    I need help again please
Children
  • OK. step one..
    1. I shut off the machine and make zero it (Cos maybe me changing the head from tesa-star to hh-as8 makes a difference for the machine origo(?).
    2. I reset all tips to nominal again and check tips for damage (incase anything happend during night shift). No damage.
    3. I run a short autocalibration program, using just a few angles per tip. and it goes well, good calibration results.
    4. Run the Ring Check program again, checking all tips in A0B0. And now they re good. .....Besides the 2nd tip which shows 0.2mm dev in XYZ. (which is funny cos the 2nd tip was the only one relating to master before...)

    I see in probe utlities that that tip2 is D4 L40 D2 shaft.
    But in realiity it looks a bit different. Its D4 L10 D2 SHAFT + L30 D3 SHAFT.
    I changed so the tip is accuratly representing the acctual tip, and the results got better Slight smile

    Really i dont know why it would matter tho..