VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Metrology Done Right with Tony Almeida, Mitutoyo

Narrator: This video is brought to you by Mitutoyo, the world's largest metrology company. Welcome to Tooling Up, a series by MSC Industrial Supply Company, the show that provides real world insights and is brought to you by leading industry experts aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of your operation. And now, the host of Tooling Up, Mitch Free.

Mitch Free: Hey, everybody, Mitch Free here with MSC Industrial Supply Company’s Tooling Up, the series that's built to make you a better, more efficient and more productive operation. Here we feature new products and technologies from leading suppliers, but we also do industry expert interviews just like this one. So if you're new here, consider subscribing.

So today I'm excited to be speaking with dimensional measuring guru, Tony Almeida of Mitutoyo. Tony's been in metrology for 35 years now and he's seen it all. He's an expert in CMM, vision systems, form solutions and thousands of measurement tools and instrumentation products that Mitutoyo offers. If it needs to be measured, Tony's the guy. Welcome to Tooling Up Tony.

Tony Almeida: Thank you, Mitch. I'm glad to be here.

Mitch Free: Wow, 35 years is a long time. How did you get into metrology?

Tony Almeida: Well, I was 19 at the time, and I actually uh, this was back when they had the ads in the newspaper. My dad saw an ad for caliper repairman and I thought it was brake calipers, alternators and starters. And I was an auto mechanic at the time and we went into this beautiful shop. At the time it was in Paramus, New Jersey. It was Mitutoyo and it was very interesting to me, and they hired me for their small tool repair man. And that's how I started at Mitutoyo.

Mitch Free: What an interesting coincidence. You never know these turns and twists life's going to take. Yeah, I bet in that amount of time, you've seen an incredible amount of change. I mean, ISO and AS9100. Those things weren't even around back then, were they?

Tony Almeida: No they were not. We didn't even have computers on our systems. They were graphs for our machines and overlays and stuff like that. Yes. Big, big, big changes.

Mitch Free: Yeah. Yeah. And SPC has come along since then. Do you guys have any innovations related to SPC?

Tony Almeida: We do. We do. We have a new Bluetooth and wireless technology that can adapt to our Mitutoyo hand tools, our form line, our vision line, our CMMs as well, and all the other tools as well.

Mitch Free: Well, you know, thinking about quality, you know, one of the big elements in any quality system is consistent calibration. Does Mitutoyo offer calibration services?

Tony Almeida: Yes, Mitch we do, Mitutoyo has a lab in Aurora, Illinois. It has the second lowest uncertainty in the country.

Mitch Free: Did you say second lowest uncertainty in the country. That's a huge point.

Tony Almeida: Yes. Yes, it is. The lower the uncertainty, the more precise your artifact will be.

Mitch Free: So that's a great point. I don't know that I've ever looked at the uncertainty on my certs. I'm going to do that now.

Tony Almeida: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely important, especially when you're dealing with manufacturers or OEM manufacturers. They will always give you a good uncertainty. But if you're dealing with third party calibration houses, you want to make sure that their uncertainty has a low factor.

Mitch Free: That's a great point. And what's the fastest I can get tools calibrated with Mitutoyo?

Tony Almeida: You can get them in less than five days, expedited.

Mitch Free: That's fantastic. So with all the innovation that Mitutoyo brings to bear, what's the product that you're most excited about now or one that you just love to demo?

Tony Almeida: I love demoing our new SMS smart measuring system coordinate measuring machines. They're nice systems. You can monitor all the data. It's got real-time air temperature as well as scale and tool temperature. It also has the scales where it's true shop floor machines, where you can go up to a millimeter of crud in thickness and oil without any degradation of accuracy or errors.

Mitch Free: So it's truly a shop floor machine.

Tony Almeida: True shop floor machine.

Mitch Free: And what's the language to program that?

Tony Almeida: We are programming in MCOSMOS. It's been around about 25 years.

Mitch Free: That's excellent. And as people start ramping up, there's always a lag in getting your programmers trained. You guys offer any assistance in programming or do contract programming?

Tony Almeida: We do. We do offer contract inspection programming. We are starting off with CMM and we're going to gradually move on.

Mitch Free: That's great. That's great. Now let's talk about some of the, you visit a lot of companies, I bet, jobs shops, OEMs. What are some of the common challenges that you hear or are they different between job shops and OEMs? Or is there a common theme?

Tony Almeida: There's a lot of common themes, really. A lot of times they'll ask us, hey, we have some parts fail on us and we need some assistance in trying to figure out a solution. That's a common one. And also, they have bottlenecks or they've got a bottleneck in your QC lab.  Maybe they're measuring everything manual or they're just looking for the new and latest, greatest instrument to measure their parts.

Mitch Free: Yeah. So bottleneck I think is a challenge that everyone experiences, especially in these days when it's hard to find skilled labor, where we're relying more and more on automation to help get through those bottlenecks in the QC lab and as you know sometimes on a, on a machine part, it can take the QC time and the CMM time can take as long as, as long as the machining time.

Tony Almeida: That is true Mitch. And so we did develop what we call a my CAD planner where it's if you have a CAD model, you can bring in a CAD model. And if you have all your GD&T tolerancing you know, automatically actually make a program for you, saving you hours, sometimes days on complicated parts.

Mitch Free: So, Tony, is there anything coming from Mitutoyo that you can share with us? Give us a glimpse of the future?

Tony Almeida: The million dollar question, Mitch? Yes, we have some very nice new products coming. But I am sworn to secrecy. So we do our R&D. We spend so much money on R&D in Japan, and it's also headed over in our Seattle offices as well. So I'm pretty excited about what Mitutoyo is bringing to the future. We only do metrology and I mean, I love metrology. I thought it was a weatherman job when I first started, and everybody knows that. But no, Mitutoyo is coming up with some really nice products.

Mitch Free: So we'll just have to wait and see I guess?

Tony Almeida: Yeah, Mitch, we’ve got to wait and see.

Mitch Free: You know whatever Mitutoyo comes up with will be first class.

Tony Almeida: Thank you, yes.

Mitch Free: Thank you, Tony, for being on the show today. You're leaving us with a cliffhanger about Mitutoyo’s up and coming products. But we look forward to engaging with you again and learning more about those when you're able to share the details.

Tony Almeida: Well, thank you Mitch. Thanks again for having me.

Mitch Free: It's my pleasure. And remember, some of the best suggestions we get come from you, the Tooling Up community. So absolutely connect with Tony and please check out Mitutoyo at mscdirect.com/mitutoyo. Let's keep the conversation going, so leave your thoughts in the comments section below. Thanks so much for joining us. And absolutely subscribe for videos like this. Until next time, Tooling Up is here to help you be a better, more efficient and productive manufacturer. See you soon.

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the MSC Tooling Up video playlist to hear tips that can take your company to the next level. And subscribe to our channel so you won't miss out.