My company is starting to look into alternative inspection software to try and speed up the programming process so we can get things checked and out the door quicker. With PC-DMIS, I feel like I'm spending hours programming a part just to spend a few minutes inspecting it and it feels like there's got to be a better way. I used Verisurf at my old job and loved it. My boss started looking into it and found Inspire. It looks promising, but it's so hard to find information on it outside the Hexagon sales gimmick to learn from any actual information about it. does anybody here have any first hand experience with it, and is it preferable with a Romer Arm over PC-DMIS?
One option is to get the software as a Demo/Trial for a length of time and try it. This way you can compare the two software's at hand. Just trying out Inspire might give you a different view on how to program in PC-DMIS.
My company is starting to look into alternative inspection software to try and speed up the programming process so we can get things checked and out the door quicker. With PC-DMIS, I feel like I'm spending hours programming a part just to spend a few minutes inspecting it and it feels like there's got to be a better way. I used Verisurf at my old job and loved it. My boss started looking into it and found Inspire. It looks promising, but it's so hard to find information on it outside the Hexagon sales gimmick to learn from any actual information about it. does anybody here have any first hand experience with it, and is it preferable with a Romer Arm over PC-DMIS?
What aspect of doing it with PC-Dmis seem slow, perhaps there's some techniques you don't know about that might make things quicker.
What sort of things are you measuring, and how are you measuring them?
I assume you know about point only mode/find noms/update noms during execution? I find it incredible quick on an arm.
Maybe your definition of slow is not that slow... especially if you are evaluating that by a managers expectation from what a salesman has told him. My manager once asked me if I thought I could have a series of programs done by the end of the day with 4 hours left,,, he was talking about a half dozen or so programs and I immediately challenged where he would even get such an idea
I've heard people say stupid things like.... but all you have to do is touch touch touch, they seem to think PCDMIS can read drawings and evaluate all the hits too or some crazy %*$#
Douglas That's my problem. My definition of slow here isn't necessarily slow,
for PC DMIS. However, what the Hexagon salesperson told my company when we were looking at investing the arm, is that PCD is great for production jobs. Take the time to program once and then check over and over in no time flat. What they didn't say, is how much of a time sink it is for a job shop. Check one or two parts and never touch the program again.
In my experience with Verisurf, I was able to import the CAD, touch off a few places to align the part to the model, then create and throw dimensions into a report as I go with live feedback right there on the screen. In PC DMIS I'm doing all the touch points and dimension reporting in advance. There's almost a 4x difference in time compared to the two methods. So I know there's more efficient methods for a job shop environment. I just can't seem to find any real-world information on Inspire.
Douglas That's my problem. My definition of slow here isn't necessarily slow, for PC DMIS. However, what the Hexagon salesperson told my company when we were looking at investing the arm, is that PCD is great for production jobs. Take the time to program once and then check over and over in no time flat. What they didn't say, is how much of a time sink it is for a job shop. Check one or two parts and never touch the program again.
This is why many smaller job shops do not have CMM machine machines. It's not that they can't afford the equipment, although it is expensive. It is because they and their customers don't want to pay the cost in either dollars or hours. I always thought it was 'interesting' that folks who accept it as part of the necessary process and plan for the CNC programmer to spend __hours writing and debugging the CNC code turn around and express outrage that the CMM programmer can't regurgitate perfect programs instantaneously. It almost sounds like most of your pain is from misaligned expectations. Don't let them fool you into thinking the problem is the tool you are using when true root cause is lack of acceptance of and planning for CMM machine machine programming time.
Job shop onesies and twosies ain't production work. A production job either runs constantly or runs large quantities each time run, essentially the opposite of most job-shop work in my experience.
All that said, about the only good thing I say about salespeople in general is they ain't lawyers.
In my experience with Verisurf, I was able to import the CAD, touch off a few places to align the part to the model, then create and throw dimensions into a report as I go with live feedback right there on the screen. In PC DMIS I'm doing all the touch points and dimension reporting in advance. There's almost a 4x difference in time compared to the two methods. So I know there's more efficient methods for a job shop environment. I just can't seem to find any real-world information on Inspire.
Pc-Dmis can do it the way you say you did it in Verisurf. You do not say why you have chosen to write the code off-line in advance in Pc-Dmis instead of doing the same way you did in Verisurf. Different methods on the same software will produce different results. Different methods on different software will produce results that are even more different from each other. You can compare apples to oranges, both are round, but they squish different now matter how you go about squishing them.
I think you need to dig into the why the 4x difference? Where is the time? Is it in loading and manipulating the CAD? Is it in alignments? Is it in creating feature measurements? Is it in dimensioning? Is it in debugging? Is it in report formatting? Then look at why each of those sub-tasks differs in time required for each platform. If everything takes longer in Pc-Dmis it could be the difference is more how much experience you have on each platform than in the two software platforms themselves.
How long did you use Verisurf?
How much faster were you at the end than at the start?
I had programmed CMM machine machines with Geopak 3000 and MM3 before I ever touched Pc-Dmis. After about 2 years I thought I was pretty proficient. A new important super hot job showed up. . . of course it was already past due, but now the customer was insisting it had to have a CMM report and they wanted it yesterday. It took me 10 hours of programming. There was a lot of discussion and bruised egos about how long it took, so I remember it clearly. Fast forward 8 years, now I have been programming Pc-Dmis for 10 years and we had not made that part for the last 5, but now it's back, somewhat more than slightly changed but not significantly more complex or more dimensions. Just enough that along with the jumps in demonversion over the years it made more sense to start over than try to revise the old program. It took me 2 hours flat that time. One of the folks who also remembered all the gnashed teeth a decade prior asked me why I was so much faster this time. I said 3 reasons, (1) I already did this once before (2) 8 more years experience (3) newer, mostly better version of the demon.
Until you have worked with Pc-Dmis for nearly as long as you did Verisurf, you need to factor the amount of experience on each platform in mind when comparing your speed with each to the other.
I had 3 years consecutively with both programs. PC_DMIS on the stationary CMM and Verisurf on the Romer arm. Even though I took the 101 course with Hexagon for the arm, there was always so much extra crap to do compared to Verisurf.
