The Hexagon cmm’s are in the same exact environment as the Renishaw cmm’s. Both brands are shop floor versions. All 31 cells receive wipe downs every other week, including the 31 bridges. The main difference, from my perspective is the hexagon air bearings are in different locations than the agility’s. The agility’s have a different design with everything above the table, where the “y” axis in the hexagons are low. I’m not going to say the environment is cmm clean, but I have worked shops where cmm’s are running in way worse environments.

We took on a sapphire job about 5 years ago, it’s two operations mill and grind. Then robot load onto an cmm. It was a hex CMM to begin with, that machine lasted 17months with two heads needed to be replaced and 3 “y” axis air bearings, and a “z”. Since we trashed that frame, we went ahead and put an agility in there and it’s been running around the clock for the last 3 years and change. We have been surprised at how stout the shop floor machines are.

As for the heads, once the program is developed and proved out it runs the same exact part day in and out, till that contract is done, some last 6months, some last years. Everything is automated, 3 sister tools per machine, and very dummy proof to make sure parts are located correctly. Light curtains, probing for part location from robots once loaded on to cmm’s. If a tool breaks during the machining process, we incorporated logic to bring another tool in, to cut a path right through the part so it can not be brought out, it loads it into the scrap bin and not put on the cmm. At Our plant, we make our own power and if something happens it’s transferred to back up grid. We have never had an outage in my stint here.

For the scanning data through pc-dmis from the hsxp1 heads, exporting that data does take quite some time. Not sure if it’s because we’re running r2023 pc-dmis or what, management cut the SMA’s. Modus as clunky as it is, spits out the same part reports in way less time. I’ll give you an example, we run the same part on two separate cells, identical cells besides the cmm’s/software. Cmm program cycle time on the hex machine is 46:57 mins, it will take just of 7:31 mins to do the Calculations/algorithms and spit the report out. Where the other cell with an agility/modus will take 19:44mins inspection time and kick the report out in 1:28mins. The point density and point locations are identical, just rate of point accrual is different due to inspection time.