Customer's Challenge

A subsea equipment manufacturer needs support from Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) to provide the Geometric Dimension & Tolerance (GD&T) for machining and assembly of a critical component. The component has a piston head which is 1.6m in diameter and the entire workpiece spans around 4m in length as shown figure 1.

Figure 1 Flexible Joint Production Piston

As the client does not have the suitable CMM in the workshop, the workpiece needs to transport back and forth to a 3rd party CMM laboratory which is very costly due to logistic support as well as unforeseen downtime as most laboratories adopt “first in first out” queuing system.

Solution

Based on the tolerance specification, Faro Vantage laser tracker was selected for the assignment. As our client needs to manufacture 3 set of components based on a production schedule, the portability of FARO Vantage laser tracker enable back-to-back measurements for each pistons at different production stages:

• The laser tracker was used to conduct verification on the bottom flange before final machining. With the laser tracker connected to Spatial Analyzer metrology software, dimensions were generated on the spot and provide “as it is” conditions to the machinist before the finishing cut as shown in figure 2.


Figure 2 Verification before final machining

• The laser tracker was leveraged to check the alignment between the top and bottom flanges to enable the product specialist to monitor the result trend, refine the welding process to achieve the required tolerances as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Full Assembled of Flexible Joint Production Piston

An acceptance report was also conducted on the component using the FARO Vantage laser tracker via Spatial Analyser software as shown in Figure 4 as well.

Figure 4 Screen shot from Spatial Analyser

Benefits

Extra manpower and downtime were greatly minimized as transportation of workpieces to 3rd party laboratory was no longer necessary. By taking dimensions with the work piece remain mounted on the CNC machine, the productivity of the manufacturing workflow was greatly enhanced due to the do away with resetting of workpiece. The whole production process took around 5 days to complete within client’s premise.