VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Mitutoyo Provides High-Accuracy Measurements, Right On The Shop Floor

Narrator: Welcome to Tooling Up, a series by MSC Industrial Supply Company that provides real-world insights brought to you by leading industry experts and aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of your operations.

Eddie: Hey everybody, this is Eddie with MSC and welcome to this episode of MSC's Tooling Up featuring Mitutoyo. On today's episode we're going to be demonstrating some handy tools that can help you more accurately and efficiently collect your measurement data, and to give us all the insight on the amazing tools we're going to be talking about today we have an industry leading expert from the Mitutoyo team, our good friend Pat Sullivan. So Pat, thank you so much for joining us for today's episode of Tooling Up. But before we get started why don't you tell us a little bit about you and what you do for the team at Mitutoyo.

Pat: Sure Eddie. My name is Pat Sullivan. I'm the national account rep for Mitutoyo.

Eddie: Wonderful. Hey, well again thank you so much for joining us today and let's get started. We've got some really cool little hand tools here on the table so where are we going to start?

Pat: Absolutely. The first one we're going to start with is our calculation type indicators. These already have nice little fixtures on them. This one here is for countersink depth. This one I like a lot. This is for radiuses and it already comes with this nice fixture here. So as you can see you can do inside dimensions like so and then turn this piece around and then we can do outside dimensions. Now, these are all customizable so if a customer wants to come in with his own fixture, they can program that in the gage but the nice feature that our customers really dig is this lockout function. So if you want to program tolerances or like your fixture programming all in there and it's locked out so no one else can come in later and mess with your gage. Everything's already in there. And we also have a nice cable that you can plug into the gage and a free software that comes with that cable so you can program that gage from a nice little laptop right there on the shop floor.

Eddie: Oh very nice. Well where in the field are we going to see tools like this?

Pat: Well you're definitely going to see it in line and that's the benefit of having these gages. So rather than walking the part over to a profile projector or maybe the quality lab doing a CMM application, just use these gages right out on the shop floor, put it on the part, maybe even the machine itself. Do your measurement and boom you got it, you're good to go.

Eddie: That sounds convenient. What's the next tool we're going to be covering today Pat?

Pat: Yeah, so the next one I brought in here is our offset jaws caliper. We have all kinds of specialty tools at Mitutoyo and there are for you know that unique application maybe have some kind of weird orientation and you're going to need a specialty gage. This one comes with a flexible jaw here so you can move it up and down and get that right measurement. What we're looking for is to get that perfect sweet spot on the jaws. If you're misaligned on your caliper you can get a bad measurement, so that's why these jaws can now be moved up and down and get the proper placement for the measurement.

Eddie: Okay, so with that how are we capturing the data and then what are we doing with the data once we've collected it?

Pat: Yeah absolutely now that's where the industry is going. It's all about capturing data. If you look at what Mitutoyo really does is what we do is we provide valuable information to the customer. Yes it's measurement but that's valuable data so we want our customers capturing that data not writing that measurement down because there's chances for a mistake and then what are you going to do? You're going to throw it on a file cabinet and never look at it again. So what we're doing is putting a transmitter on our gages so once you make the measurement, boom you hit a button, it goes into an Excel file, some kind of Excel template or maybe even better yet an SPC program.

Eddie: No again, added layers of convenience hitting the tools with the technology as well. That being said, what's next on the list?

Pat: So the next one I brought in is our MDH high accuracy mic. This is an extremely accurate mic, very sensitive because it's so accurate. So what I'm going to have you do is take our ceramic gage block here and I’m going to have you place it in the gage and we'll see how your measuring skills are. See what you got.

Eddie: Look at that, rocking it out, look we got ourselves what is it .750. Did I do it?

Pat: Yes, you got it, yes. So this goes out to the millions. I mean you can see lots of digits here right, but that's a pretty good shot right out of the gate. Good job there.

Eddie: Okay, it is the tool definitely not the operator by any means but now we see how easy this is to use tell me what's so unique about this specific tool?

Pat:  Yeah, so twice as accurate as a standard mic. So a 0.1 micron resolution, half a micron accuracy. So you can use it for high-accuracy applications or maybe you're using it for calibration. So a very versatile tool and it's nice to have that and it's you can walk it around the shop floor and you can calibrate maybe something on the shop floor. I wouldn't recommend it but you certainly could do that if you wanted to.

Eddie: There we go. So we've covered the gambit of your world-renowned hand tools but it looks like we have another unique device right next to us. What is this and let us know what we need to know?

Pat: Yeah, this is one of my favorites. This is our Cadillac of our height gages. You’ve seen the standard manual height gages out on the shop floor I’m sure, they're all over but what I like about this it's extremely accurate. So it's 1.7 micron accuracy. Great price tag for that accuracy. It's unprecedented there's nothing else out there and what I like about it is it’s motorized so with a touch of a button boom you're getting your measurement and what that's going to give is it’s going to give a better, more accurate measurement as well as you're gonna get more repeatable measurements. You don't have to worry about the operator coming down too hard on the part and maybe perhaps affecting the measurement.

Eddie: So where are some areas where this type of tool and technology will really shine?

Pat: Yeah. Well they're great to be on the shop floor. You know high accuracy on the shop floor that's a fantastic part of this gage. Also it's great for ID/OD measurement, 1D measurement. You can also do 2D with this. It's a 2D gage so by orienting the part differently you can then do a 2D measurement. So it's versatile, also programmable as you can see all these buttons on here. You can actually program and save jobs. So versatile gage on the shop floor, fantastic accuracy.

Eddie: And with all these tools we're talking about high accuracy and relative ease of use which is wonderful to be able to provide those end users, but for those who are wanting to learn more about what we've covered today or all the other amazing tools that you're bringing to the market, where can we get more information?

Pat: Yeah. If you have questions or would like to purchase some of the products we talked about in this video, please reach out to your local MSC rep or visit mscdirect.com\mitutoyo.

Eddie: Wonderful. Hey Pat, thank you so much for providing your passion and expertise on today's episode and we thank each and every one of you for joining us on this segment of MSC's Tooling Up featuring Mitutoyo.

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