Success in the modern manufacturing industry requires businesses to carefully choreograph a large number of variables. In order to deliver high-quality product in a timely and efficient manner, manufacturers need to establish functional supply chains, hire a competent and reliable workforce, negotiate trade, workplace, and environmental regulations, and coordinate timely delivery of parts and products.
This requires a great degree of flexibility, and the most successful firms are those that can adapt to sudden disruptions without reducing quality or incurring massive increases in overhead.
In many cases, this means equipping a production line with multi-purpose machinery that can be adapted to handle a variety of different jobs. Having a reliable, custom-made assembly line designed to turn out a highly specific part may be necessary in some industries, but such assembly lines are costly to maintain and can quickly become obsolete if new technology becomes available.
Smaller operations that are trying to break into a market need to be much more nimble, and should avoid investing heavily in single-purpose equipment whenever possible.
Portable CMMs Provide A Versatile Alternative
For this reason, firms that need high-quality metrological data for quality control, design, or prototyping purposes should consider purchasing a portable coordinate measuring machine rather than one of the more traditional gantry, bridge, or cantilever CMMS. The latest portable CMM equipment allows manufacturers to use a single CMM machine to undertake a number of different tasks, from quick measurements of particular parts to reverse-engineering existing products to handling complicated metrology jobs off-site.
One of the key things that make portable CMMs different from most stationary models is the technology they use. Many portable CMMs use white light or laser scanners to gather measurement data instead of tactile probes, which makes them faster and less sensitive to distortion from temperature changes or humidity than stationary CMMs.
This is why portable CMMs powered with the latest software can quickly be adapted to different needs in different locations. Because they are less cumbersome than traditional CMMs, it is easier to train your employees to use them effectively, which reduces the need for contract metrologists to write programs for every new part.
Portable CMMs Now Out-Selling Traditional Models
Due to their flexibility and performance, portable CMMs are now some of the best-selling CMM models worldwide, and this has led to an explosion of different makes and models. It is now possible to find a wide variety of different portable CMMs designed to meet general or specific needs, which has proven a boon for manufacturing companies that are trying to find CMM technology that can meet all of their metrology needs.
If you want to ensure that your manufacturing business is equipped to deal with every possible challenge that might arise, purchasing a new portable CMM is a great way to ensure that your assembly line is equipped with one of the highest performing metrology tools on the market today.
With a portable CMM, you will be getting a multi-purpose tool that gives you the flexibility you need to compete in the 21st century.
