Ondrives gear up for quality with FARO

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2015-03-21 10:04:06

Chesterfield based Ondrives Ltd is a precision manufacture of gears, gearboxes, bearing housings and a wide range of associated products. In addition to supplying a large UK customer base, the company’s output is distributed worldwide through a network of agents.

Ondrives supply an all-inclusive range of standard, off-the-shelf products that feature in its comprehensive gear product catalogue, and also design and manufacture ‘specials’ to customers’ individual requirements. Through the use of the company’s state-of-the-art design facilities and machine tools, Ondrives’ skilled staff are able to design and produce parts ranging in size from just a few millimeters, to components of one meter plus.

The renowned family owned and run business’ commitment to manufacturing high-quality products at a cost effective price, allied to an expert knowledge of gear manufacturing dating back to the 1960s, has resulted in Ondrives becoming one of the Europe’s leading gear designers and manufacturers. Over the past decade, the innovative business has undergone a period of intense development, resulting in it now supplying a significantly expanded range of unique, specialised products. By refining and designing a range of new, innovative products, such as gearboxes and the company’s latest high-quality precision gears range, Ondrives has been able to remain at the technological forefront of the global gear industry and to continue to deliver the best possible products to its customers.

Ondrives’ ongoing policies of employing highly proficient engineers, regularly up-dating its staff’s skill levels and making frequent strategic investments in the most up to date design, production and inspection technology, helps to ensure that premium quality products are delivered to an ever expanding customer base.

To help ensure the continued high quality of the company’s output, Ondrives use a range of advanced inspection aids in its final inspection department, including a state-of-the-art gear inspection machine, a large capacity CNC coordinate measuring machine and an optical measuring machine. In addition, all production personnel are supplied with the best available metrology equipment to allow regular in-process checks to be made.

As part of Ondrives’ pursuit of continuous improvements the company recently purchased a FARO Gage measuring arm to help further increase its shop-floor measurement capabilities.

Through continuous investment and development Ondrives has established an excellent global reputation. Much of this reputation has been built on the outstanding quality of our products. Our all-embracing inspection procedures and material traceability checks cover goods-inward, though all stages of production and on to final inspection.

“Prior to final inspection, our production operatives take responsibility for the quality of their own output and have access to a wide range of premium measuring instruments. To help expand the range of accurate measurements our operators are able to make whilst components are located in the machines tools, we recently purchased a FARO Gage measuring arm.

“Not only has our new FARO product improved the accuracy and repeatability of our on machine checks, it allows us to correct errors at source. The Gage’s ease of use has considerably speeded-up our in-process inspection tasks and has resulted in reduced machine tool down-time and increased productivity.

“As the Gage is so user- friendly and intuitive, our operators who underwent the original product training have been able to explain its use to all other relevant colleagues. Now, each of our operators has become proficient in the Gage’s use. Given its popularity with our operators and its highly portable nature, the Gage is now used throughout our facility.

“In addition to the inspection related use the FARO Gage was purchased for, since issuing it to the shop-floor we have found many other applications, such as performing dimensional checks on our jigs and fixtures and performing important build-up checks in our assembly area.

“In the past, machine shop inspection required the removal of a component from a CNC machine to a temperature controlled inspection area for the dimensional inspection of the part. Throughout the world, many companies have ended this time-consuming and expensive routine by the use of portable CMMs, such as the FARO Gage. The portability of FARO’s advanced 3D metrology tools enable efficient on-machine and in-process inspections. Consistent, accurate measuring routines can now be undertaken quickly, on the machine producing the parts.

In addition, measuring arms such as the FARO Gage can quickly capture a prototype part’s, or firstoffs geometric features and compare them to nominal data in a CAD file, ensuring that they meet all engineering, design and specification requirements and adhere to first article documentation requirements.

The FARO Gage measuring arm, as purchased by Ondrives, is an accurate 3D gauge with a spherical working volume of 1.2m (4 ft.) and is an industry leader in portable CMMs. Ending industries’ reliance on expensive and difficult to use fixed CMMs, the FARO Gage provides high accuracy levels, improved measurement consistency, reduced inspection times, and the ability to generates automatic reports. Designed specifically for use by shop floor personnel, the FARO Gage can be set-up in seconds and allows shop-floor personnel to measure parts and assemblies easily, quickly, and accurately.

The flexible, multi-use nature of the Gage allows inspection areas that previously contained multiple measuring instruments to be de-cluttered through the use of a single tool. The FARO Gage can be used to replace a wide range of traditional measurement tools such as calipers, height gauges and micrometers, whilst the Gage’s intuitive metrology software is able to quickly create custom routines for repeat part measurements.

Accurate (0.018mm (0.0007 in.) shop-floor use is aided by the Gage’s use of temperature and overload sensors that allow it to detect and react to change. In addition to an easy to use operating system, the Gage’s provides a positive user experience through the use of Bluetooth cable-free operation and internal counterbalancing that limits user fatigue.

The FARO Gage is ideal for quality control tasks including GD&T (Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing) and exporting to SPC (Statistical Process Control). The advanced measuring arm is the ideal tool for tasks such as first article inspection, 3D inspection of a Body-in-White, or dimensional analysis of composite tooling. 

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