Between 1985 and 1987, New Venture Gear of Syracuse, New York, a joint venture of Chrysler and General Motors, installed eight PCR process control robots for the gaging of precision gear cases. Since that time, the company has become an avid proponent of flexible gaging on the shop floor. By monitoring and controlling manufacturing processes in real time with the PCRs, the company has saved tens of millions of dollars by eliminating fixed gages.

By monitoring and controlling manufacturing processes in real time with the PCRs, the company has saved tens of millions of dollars by eliminating fixed gages.

"What the PCRs have done," said George Lisi, Gage Engineer, "is to make us truly competitive in the drive line business. When we quote a new job, we don't have to include the cost of new fixed gaging. We owe this cost advantage to the commitment our management team made in 1985-87 to go with flexible gaging." He said, "Hard gages lock you into additional costs, and they don't give you the ability to control your process because you also lock your operators into manual data gathering, which is unacceptable."

Ken Conklin, Quality Systems and Services Supervisor, notes that the PCR was the first "CMM" to be used right beside the machine tools where they could give real-time feedback. "They are built like machine tools and they hold up like machine tools. What's more, Brown & Sharpe is staying current with the industry, making it affordable to add more equipment and software."

New Venture Gear employs 2250 people. Since 1987, the company has controlled a major portion of its production with PCRs. Recently, New Venture Gear purchased a MicroPCR to reduce some of the tasks now performed on the PCRs. Lisi observed that the MicroPCRs are three to four times faster than the much larger robots and cost less.

"Today, we program the MicroPCR (with graphics-based Micromeasure IV software) and away we go. We now have graphs and target charts, so the data is easy to manage. "Hard gaging" is a thing of the past. Flexible inspection, real-time statistics are the only way to go. With the cost of a MicroPCR, I would find it difficult to justify any hard gaging."

What is the next step in shop floor flexible gaging at New Venture Gear? "Off-line part programming in CAD and networking PCR-generated data to the "back office" where Engineering and Quality can call up the status of any manufacturing process in real time. New Venture Gear has no intention of giving up its leadership position in data-managed manufacturing," said Lisi.

Process Control Robots have been used at New Venture Gear since the mid-1980's to measure precision gear cases. Real time dimensional and tolerancing data gathered by the PCRs is used by machine operators to control process variables.