VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Smart Manufacturing Solutions: Tools for the Future

Narrator: This video is brought to you by Mitutoyo. Precision is our profession. If you're looking for real world insights, tips from leading industry experts, the latest trends in products and technology, you've come to the right place. From MSC Industrial Supply, this is Tooling Up.

Toni Neary: Hello and thank you for joining us on Tooling Up. I'm your host, Tony Neary, and we're so glad that you're here with us on the MSC YouTube channel. If you're new, make sure to click that subscribe button and like this episode as well. Now today, we have not one but two very special guests that are joining us. Special guest number one is Michal Grosenbach, product manager, at Mitutoyo. And then we have a returning guest number two, and that is Patrick Sullivan, also with Mitutoyo. Thank you both for being here with us today.

Patrick Sullivan: Thanks, Tony.

Michal Grosenbach: Thanks for having us.

Toni Neary: Michal, can you start by telling us a little bit about your path and how you really got started in this industry?

Michal Grosenbach: So basically, I was always interested in how things work and taking things apart and sometimes I actually got things put back together. But that interest in seeing how things worked transferred over into eventually into engineering in college and that led to working for Mitutoyo. I work with a lot of different applications, so I get to see how things work for all these different customers. So and I'm happy to be able to help everyone out.

Toni Neary: And I love that curiosity brought you into this because I used to take stuff apart when I was little and I generally never got it back together. Now, Patrick, I know that you're the national account manager from Mitutoyo and you're no stranger to Tooling Up. But for our audience that maybe didn't catch that other episode, tell us a little bit about your background as well.

Patrick Sullivan: Sure. Yeah. I've been in manufacturing sales, I guess you could call it, for well over 10 years. And I've been with Mitutoyo for almost seven years now, so it's great to be back on Toni.

Toni Neary: Awesome. And Pat, what's your favorite part about what Mitutoyo really does bring to our industry?

Patrick Sullivan: Sure. You know, Mitutoyo has a really unique culture. Yes. We're a somewhat big global corporation, but really, we really have a family atmosphere. We're still owned by the Numata family, started the company back in 1934, and now we're run by his grandson. And we're all about making great tools and equipment for our customers.

Toni Neary: Pat I think that is the perfect segue way into really talking about the usability of indicators and how that's really driven product development at Mitutoyo. Michal, I think you're going to lead us a little bit into some of these new innovations.

Michal Grosenbach: Yeah, absolutely. In the market, we saw a lot of need from customers for gages that had a lot more features but were also easier to use for their operators. So with these, that's what we've done. We've added a lot of features but also made it easier with to see, for example, we have a larger display, we have a large analog digital bar on it, so it has more of a feel like a dial indicator. Plus, some go/no-go features in it to make it obvious at a glance if a part is in or out of spec. So you've got arrows on it, you've also got the complete display changed from in or out of spec.

Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, best of both worlds right, now with the digital.

Michal Grosenbach: Right.

Toni Neary: I think it's fantastic. And what I want to understand a little bit more, just because our audience for Tooling Up. Can you talk a little bit about IDC versus IDF and really what the difference is and what drives that? What different problems are they solving?

Michal Grosenbach: Sure. So the IDC is a battery operated unit. So what's nice about this is it still has the same display essentially as the IDF, but it's battery operated. You've got the LCD here. So you can have this remote, you can have it without any access to wires. The IDF, though, solves the problem of having, even from a distance, it's a backlit AC powered unit. So it changes from green to red. So you can see all the way across the shop floor if a gage is in or out of spec.

Toni Neary: All right. So not just new designs, but we have new functions, improved read out, more usability. Tell us a little bit more about what else you're bringing to the table.

Michal Grosenbach: So some of the other features, we increased the resolution. So now you have better resolution at 20 millionths or half micron for it. It also has a calibration warning function. So you can see on the display when the gage is ready to be, like a warning function, when it's ready to be calibrated and when it's past the calibration date, the whole display starts flashing. So you can see that at a glance. Plus, with this additional information that's being stored in the gage, such as calibration date, serial number, we added a new output format. So it's a bi-directional digimatic format, which we're calling S1, and that allows data to be stored on the gage or features and parameters to be stored on the gage, but accessible through commands. So we have free and paid versions of the software that you can access this or through serial commands, you can access this, which is important for companies that need that traceability. In some cases, they need to be able to pull what the serial number is so they can track that gage through their measuring and manufacturing processes.

Toni Neary: And that's the perfect segue. I know smart factory, smart manufacturing...huge buzz right now. Everybody's talking about it. But really, I mean, this is what it's all about, right? That data, the storage, the communication, the ability to track all of that information.

Patrick Sullivan: You know, the way we see it, the factories of the future all are going to be connected. So that's your hand tools, your machines and beyond that, maybe even multiple locations, all sending that information into a centralized database. So we have hand tools that can send information, and then we have our new height gage, the LH, that can also send information as well.

Toni Neary: So, Pat, I was going to say, knowing Mitutoyo continuous improvement in my mind, those two synergies really go together. You don't come on without teasing at least something new that's happening. So what's next on the horizon?

Patrick Sullivan: Yes, I'm glad you ask. We're going to grab our new LH height gage and put it up on our table. Just came out maybe a month ago. Super excited about this gage and want to show a couple of some of the features and new exciting things about our LH height gage. So Toni, this is our new LH height gage. Both Mike and I are super excited about this product. If you don't mind, we're going to nerd out a little bit on you, on this thing. It is not only super, super accurate, most accurate in it’s class, but really easy to use. It's so user friendly and we couldn't be more excited about this gage coming out.

Toni Neary: Well, you know, I'm all about nerding out. That's like my favorite thing ever. But how easy is it to use? So like any anybody off the street could come in and work this?

Patrick Sullivan: Sure. Mike.

Michal Grosenbach: Yeah, exactly. So what we've done is added a touch screen to this and we've added steps through each process. So if someone comes in to measure a diameter, it tells you touch up on the bottom and then it shows you another icon to the scan, another icon to move up to the top surface and scan. So it really steps you through everything. So 95% of all the features in this, I just walked up to it and started poking around. So you can access all the menus. You can instantly change the units from inch to metric, you can change the resolution very easily. Everything is from the screen, from the result screen. Plus you can still take measurements between previously taken data and measurements as well.

Patrick Sullivan: The funnest feature is the air bearing here. If I can reach around, but too bad you're not here, Toni. You could take this thing out for a test drive, but air bearing let’s you move the height gage around. The motorized feature, so when you're making a measurement, you press the button, it does it for you so you can get better accuracy and better repeatability. And, not to mention we're going to talk about 2D measurement, right?

Michal Grosenbach: Yeah. So the 2D mode, basically it's like a two dimensional CMM. So you can walk up to this though and just hit buttons and the approximate locations of the dimensions that you want to measure and you measure those, you rotate the part, measure them again, and it can give you those two dimensional measurements. So for example, if you had two inside diameters and you wanted to measure the angle between them, you could instantly just hit one as a datum, hit the second hole as a measured point. And it would give you that angle, or it can give you the X and Z location for that. So you can get coordinates, both whole circle, all sorts of really cool features.

Toni Neary: I want to take a minute to thank you both for joining me, because this has been an absolute blast learning about the product. But more importantly, Pat, having you back and Michal meeting you for this episode as well.

Michal Grosenbach: I appreciate you.

Patrick Sullivan: Okay. I'm looking forward to the next one, Toni. Let's set it up.

Toni Neary: If you've enjoyed this conversation with Michal and Patrick as much as I have, and trust me, you need to see the outtakes to see why we're all kind of chuckling as we're finishing this up. Usability in the market, continuous improvement, and just having the best products for your value longevity. You want to make sure that you go to check out the Mitutoyo tools on www.mscdirect.com/mitutoyo. Thanks so much and catch us next time on Tooling Up.

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the 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.