VIDEO: HOW TO Maximize Efficiency in Process Measurement

JACOB SANCHEZ: In any other trade, perfection is just looked at as some lofty goal. It may happen. It may not. You know as well as I do and metalworking precision and perfection are necessities. There's so much smart technology now, sophisticated, intelligent pieces of equipment that can help you inspect and measure your parts better than ever before. Back in the day, the best piece of advice you would have got would have been to slow down. Be patient. Don't rush the quality control process. But times have changed. Slowing down isn't an option anymore. Machinists need to be fast and mistake free. How is this possible?

I'm here in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, at the Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence facility. And when I say intelligence, I'm talking about smart pieces of equipment. We're going to be bringing out a piece of smart technology in the form of a height gauge to the manufacturing floor here. And you're going to be learning how to maximize efficiency in process measurement.

You're running 2 to 3 machines a day on your manufacturing floor. You know what it means to chase that energy, chase the money, and that equals productivity. So I'm going to stay on the move today, well, I'm looking around for our machinist and toolmaker, Eddie Wilson. Hey, brother. Good to see you. I heard you're the man of this shop.

You've got 35 years experience. Tell me a little bit more about yourself. What industry do you come from?

EDDIE WILSON: Well, from the machine tool industry. I said over 35 years, so I've seen a lot of changes. That's for sure.

JACOB SANCHEZ: That's so cool. I don't want to say anything about the 35 yet. Yeah, I heard that you're bringing something to the aerospace. This is it. You're bringing. You're bringing this to aerospace shops, medical shops to the factory floor. This is so cool.

EDDIE WILSON: Yeah. Having the Micro-Hite in the shop floor has been a huge asset for us.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Nice, this is sweet. I use something similar. Similar to this. Not as nice. What this does for manufacturers in aerospace and medical is it lets me take this part straight off of my machine without having to go to inspection first. Right here.

EDDIE WILSON: Yes.

JACOB SANCHEZ: What was it like you said 35 years? Yeah, I'm 24. I know nothing about that.

EDDIE WILSON: We had nothing like this. We had manual gauges, height gauges, indicators that we would use.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So I knew calipers, micrometers and height gauges. That's the only manual thing I know. What else did you guys have when you had to do maybe a little more high-precision stuff?

EDDIE WILSON: Yeah, well, we had a height indicator over here. We use an indicator to take a measurement off the part. Then you'd have to verify it off the indicator.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Oh, my gosh.

EDDIE WILSON: Yeah, that's what we had. Yeah.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So this is technically now in there.

EDDIE WILSON: Yeah. And about eight other gauges that it replaces.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So you took probably eight of the most manual, tedious things and they put it into this. And now I got this.

EDDIE WILSON: Look at this.

JACOB SANCHEZ: The Roomba of metrology.

EDDIE WILSON: Yes.

JACOB SANCHEZ: We've learned about the past, what it meant to inspect a part on your factory floor and in the inspection room. And now it's time to learn more about the Swiss Army knife of height gauges. I'm here for a meeting in Switzerland with Lee Kirtlink. I'm a little confused, brother. This isn't Switzerland.

LEE KIRTLINK: No, we’re meeting with Switzerland.

JACOB SANCHEZ: With Switzerland and Stefan correct? How's it going?

STEFAN PITTRICH: Hello, guys. Great to see you. I'm talking to you from our production plant here in Switzerland. As you can see, we are producing our height gauges here. And, I mean, Switzerland is known for many things, but everybody knows the Swiss watches and they are standing for high preciseness and high quality. And this is actually what our products are standing for.

We have in our employees' DNA is high quality and high preciseness a must. So that's, we have even watchmakers employed here.

JACOB SANCHEZ: I love that you said that the Swiss, the Swiss machining, the Swiss watchmaking is in your employees' DNA. I'm going to start rolling with that in the States, talking about how I have machining in my DNA.

STEFAN PITTRICH: Yeah, I mean, here it's almost a must. People are very focused on preciseness and we have a lot of orders worldwide. I mean, we work in three shifts now just to fulfill the market because we have a great product here.

JACOB SANCHEZ: That's amazing. We were talking about your product. Give me a little rundown on TESA and Brown and Sharpe. Two separate logos all under the Hexagon branch. Right?

STEFAN PITTRICH: Very good question. I mean, we have customers asking us when we come, Who are you guys? Are you Hexagon, TESA or Brown and Sharpe? And it's simple. I mean, the Hexagon Group is a Swedish group and they acquired Brown and Sharpe and TESA together in 2001. So whenever you buy a product from us, it's a Brown and Sharpe slash TESA product, high quality, high preciseness.

JACOB SANCHEZ: You heard it here first. No more miscommunication. Hexagon, Brown and Sharpe, TESA. It's all the same umbrella supplying you with high-precision equipment so you can make your parts. Stefan, you've been amazing here in the States. We still got a lot of daytime left. I know it's late for you. I got this part for me and Lee to work on. We're going to head out.

Thanks, man. Give me a little intro for yourself real quick.

LEE KIRTLINK: I'm the national accounts manager for Brown and Sharpe TESA Products. I've been working with the company for 35 years, and I basically help MSC get the products to the customers.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And when you say customer, you're talking about the machinists, the people out in the shop like Eddie. We were talking today and we hit on some touch points that this brings. One being that you're bringing the equipment out to the shop floor 10 feet away from my machine, to aerospace and medical, they've been getting pretty complex. It's always been complex.

But lately, as technology has progressed on the CNC side, that means that they can request new features. That means new tolerances on your prints that he said 20 years ago he had no clue how he would have ever tried to measure it. With something like this you can. And then number three, it's something that we can do on our end to help our inspectors instead of I'm sending a part there and it's there for a week now with this being like eight manual processes or inspection piece of inspection equipment in one.

Now I can do a lot of my first article before it gets to my inspector's floor and it collects all the data.

LEE KIRTLINK: Well, a lot of thought went into the design of the Micro-Hite because when you're on a shop floor, you could get three or four machinists all doing measurements in different ways, getting different results. So a lot of the thought in in the design for the Micro-Hite was to overcome that challenge. Yeah. So you've got a number of things that do that.

You've got the display which has a backlit keypad and a touchscreen so that you can the machine that can enter the information, get this process started and on the touchscreen you can work with the measurements. Nice. You've got a quick center technology which gives you an audible beep and a light that tells you when you're making the hit correctly.

So you're taking your measurement correctly.

JACOB SANCHEZ: I love that it's motorized too, it looks like.

LEE KIRTLINK: And this one's motorized. Yeah. So this one is even easier. It applies the right amount of pressure when it's taking the measurement. You can perform different functions, more advanced functions with the touchscreen. You can you can create reports, you can send the data to a computer, things like that.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And we're back on the shop floor here at Hexagon, wrapping up everything in a bow. Eddie and I, when we were out here, we talked about, number one, what it means to have a piece of equipment like this for machinists out on the shop floor. You're 10 feet away from your machine. Number two. You have aerospace and medical constantly advancing their processes in their parts.

That means new tolerances for you and new ways that you have to measure a piece of equipment like this does it for you. And then number three, the biggest thing of them all is that we took basically eight old manual processes and put them into one machine. No more are you running around grabbing around different pieces of material, different equipment pieces? You agree?

EDDIE WILSON: That's right, Jacob.

JACOB SANCHEZ: What else would you add for our viewers to really set this home?

EDDIE WILSON: Well, you said it's just been a tremendous asset having the Micro-Hite on the shop floor. But time is money. They get back to production, measure our parts and get back to working.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Time is money, man. The simplicity. You measure it, you get it good, you get going. Thanks Eddie. Lee, we talked a lot on that shop floor about how when you start getting into the higher end height gauges too, with the motorized motors, there is no more of the he said, she said when it comes to I got this measurement, they got theirs.

What else would you add besides that to let our viewers know just what the theme was for today?

LEE KIRTLINK: So for me, in addition to consistent measuring results from the Micro-Hite, the fact that you have the Micro-Hite right on the shop floor on a granite plate means the production moves faster because the machine it can go up, measure two or three features and not have to go to the QC lab and wait.

JACOB SANCHEZ: I love it. Lee, I appreciate your time today. And it's not about taking out the inspector. We're going to need them forever. They got to help us do our jobs right? Well, we can help them do theirs too. So I hope, you know, at the end of the day, what you learned was how to maximize efficiency in process measurement.

Narrator: For more metalworking tips and industry best practices, stay tuned for the next How To episode and subscribe to the MSC Industrial Supply YouTube channel, a source of original manufacturing content Built to Make You Better.