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.
We have a FARO Laser Tracker with CAM 2 Software, though I have some issues with the software there is 1 huge advantage.
New versions cost less then $500.00.
As they say below, watch our for sharp blows. The salesman tell you this is a rugged piece of shop floor equipment. About the third trip in for repairs and you will agree it is a piece. . .
Faro Software; cam 2 measur x is totally inferior to the pcdmis software.
No matter what the "glitches" you may have, or find in pcdmis, it is nothing in comparison to the cam 2 software.
i) as stated above, you can only have 1 alignment. If you have multiple datum schemes, the solution that I was told was to make "multiple" reports.
ii) during measurement, if you add notes to the "note" tab they do not show up in your report.
iii) extremely irritating is the fact that the rotation of the cad file on screen can drive you totally insane.
iv) mirroring of a cad file does not work as it should. Aslo, you can not delete cad features as you can in pcdmis.
v) you are not able to measure all features, and then report them in the order that you wish to. This is easily done in pcdmis.
vi) you can only have one crappy view of your part in the cam 2 software.
vii) many of my cad files will not "function" as they should. Not able to pick up surfaces etc. Also, many times I have to consctuct a nominal for each feature and then associate it manually. (What a waste of time that is, espedially if you have many features).
These are just some of my observations over the past few months that I have been subjected to this software.
I would love to be back programming in the "demon".
When I had to use a Faro arm, we went through a lot of encoders. The place I worked at the time had two Faro arms and one was always in for encoder repairs. The cam 2 software did not work correctly on a large mold with shrinkage bulit into the die. It could not balance the error equally around the part. We had Faro out and they could not get it to work correctly. The die had to be put on a machine with PCDMIS to get it to iterate correctly. Also always use a surge protector with a battery back up. because it is easy to fry your arm with a power surge.
We have been using Faro arms for about 5 years in our office. We just bout a Romer arm with Laser scanner about a month ago. The Cam 2 software is very simple to use out of the box for simple setups and quick measurements. The software is very limited to their caned measurement features. Also we have had a lot of encoder problems with our arms. They have never made it from one annual calibration to the next without having to be repaired. I am just starting with pcdemis and have been impressed so for. The cad capability is much better the Cam 2. It picks up the nominal without any problem. With Cam 2 you must define all of them first and then measure them. I hope this helps. Jeff
We've got 3 Faro Arms & another that I've had access to for about 2 months. Of our arms, two are older "Gold" arms that do not have the 'infinite' range encoders. The other arm & the one I have access to are both Titanium arms.
The two "Gold" arms have only had one encoder go out one of them in 4 years (a few months ago).
The older of the two Titanium arms has had two encoders replaced, then the next time one went out, they replaced the entire arm (completely new arm - serial number & all - not just new sections). Now with the replaced Arm, we've sent it back twice - just boxed it up to send it today - we hadn't had it back a month.
The other Titanium arm I have access to is basically unused except for testing out by programmers - no shop floor techs. It's too new to have had problems and thankfully, it hasn't.
I'm just starting on PCDMIS for our CMM & didn't even realize it was available for Faro Arms. I'm still using Cam2Measure & SoftCheckTools (SoftCheckTools should be named MajorPainIn@$$).
Glad to see our new Arms are as "good" as everyone else's.
