Any thoughts as to the benifits of Romer over Faro? My shop is thinking of getting a portable CMM and I'd like to get some imput as to which you think is better. Also do you have any suggestions in gereral for what to be careful about with portable CMMs?
Scott was right, the CAM2 software that Faro comes with is driving me crazy. Just one example is the fact that you can only have one alignment active at a time. This means if you have a lot of features that come off of different datums, then you have to change the alignment print the features in that alignment, then change it again and print those features, etc. You can incorporate all that in a program, but it's still a pain in the rear.
Also there aren't any polar coordinates, its all XYZ. If you want to report the angular position of something you have to create a dimension of the angle of two lines that you have to create. It's so cumbersome.
Also to have nominals for a feature you have to create a nominal feature to link to the measured feature. If you want to edit the nominals, your out of luck. You have to create another nominal feature and then link the measured feature to the new nominal.
I do have to say it works pretty good with a CAD model. You can create your nominal features right from the CAD, but you have to do that before you wright your program so you can link them to the measured features.
As for accuracy, if you don't have to articulate the head much it can be pretty accurate. If you use the full range of motion it can be off a couple of thousandths of an inch. It all depends on how many joints you move and how much you move them. It's pretty good for rough castings or laying out a counter top.
Sorry for the long post, but the guy who was using the arm just quit so I've been doing a lot with it over the last week and have learned a lot of it's quirks.
Scott was right, the CAM2 software that Faro comes with is driving me crazy. Just one example is the fact that you can only have one alignment active at a time. This means if you have a lot of features that come off of different datums, then you have to change the alignment print the features in that alignment, then change it again and print those features, etc. You can incorporate all that in a program, but it's still a pain in the rear.
Also there aren't any polar coordinates, its all XYZ. If you want to report the angular position of something you have to create a dimension of the angle of two lines that you have to create. It's so cumbersome.
Also to have nominals for a feature you have to create a nominal feature to link to the measured feature. If you want to edit the nominals, your out of luck. You have to create another nominal feature and then link the measured feature to the new nominal.
I do have to say it works pretty good with a CAD model. You can create your nominal features right from the CAD, but you have to do that before you wright your program so you can link them to the measured features.
As for accuracy, if you don't have to articulate the head much it can be pretty accurate. If you use the full range of motion it can be off a couple of thousandths of an inch. It all depends on how many joints you move and how much you move them. It's pretty good for rough castings or laying out a counter top.
Sorry for the long post, but the guy who was using the arm just quit so I've been doing a lot with it over the last week and have learned a lot of it's quirks.
