This week, I had the pleasure of visiting the Advanced Engineering show in Birmingham. It's a huge show, with many exhibitors across a wide range of industries, but of course I was there for any metrology, quality assurance and inspection applications.
It was the first time that I've been able to meet directly with some of the companies that I have written about in the past. With only a few hours to spend, I didn't get to stay for long at any one stand, but nonetheless it was a terrifically valuable experience. The most important part for me, besides the general networking and meeting with people, was seeing the machines in person and watching product demonstrations. It's one thing to write about a machine and how it's especially good at a certain task or application, but when you've only ever seen photographs of it, you don't realise how big the machine is, or what it sounds like or how fast it moves.
It took me a while to find a Coordinate Measuring Machine, but I eventually found a sizeable one on the Zeiss/GOM stand. By now I know fairly well how they work, but I didn't really have a clue as to how fast the probe moves, or even how big the probe actually is (if you would have asked me last week, I would have guessed the little ball on the end to be anywhere between the size of a marble and a pin-head). I was especially surprised how quick the probe moves, as well as how smoothly it tracks the outside of a circle.
3D microscopes are not something I've really written about yet, but I got some wonderful demonstrations from Keyence. Seeing miniscule objects magnified and displayed in such high detail, on a crisp monitor is quite impressive in itself. It gets especially impressive when the microscope is then moved to show the object from different angles, which has a strong cinematic feel to it, with the flawless panning around the target without losing focus. I was then given a very extensive demonstration of the IM-series visual inspection system and I have to say I was shocked at how easy it was to use. So much is automated that I (who knows nothing about operating any measuring device more complicated than a set of callipers) could place any random object and just press a button, for the machine to then get accurate measurements of all the dimensions of that object. The real beauty of this was that I did not have to bolt the piece down onto a work surface, such as with a CMM, but I was told to put it down anywhere I want, which worked incredibly well.
Optimax's stand also proved very interesting. I was initially drawn to them because of a machine that I thought looked a lot like a WWII-era aircraft sight. I now know it's a horizontal bench profile projector, which may not sound as interesting, but it's an impressive piece of technology nonetheless: what looks like a somewhat analogue system at first is actually a highly automated, computerised system that gives very accurate measurements. Optimax also gave me the joy of holding a micrometer for the first time, which I wrote an article about some time ago. They were one of a few companies to offer setting up a site visit, which I eagerly look forward to.
As I said, there were too many companies to cover them all in detail, but I would like to mention a few others:
LK Metrology (thanks for remembering my article on your Lotus case study), MSL, Manchester Metrology Ltd, Status Metrology, T3DMC, and The Sempre Group. I'm sure I've missed some, so my apologies for that.
It was an incredibly valuable experience and a fantastic show to visit. I'll look forward to the next one. Here's a video I edited of my visit: