Telescoping Ballbar Speeds up CNC Testing

Swedish machine tool maintenance company NC Service was one of the first to use Renishaw's QC20-W telescoping ballbar, which incorporates Bluetooth wireless technology to test CNC machines. Speaking recently about his experiences of the new system, Peter Jonsson, managing director of NC Service, said: 'Since switching over to QC20-W ballbar the setup time has been greatly reduced, speeding up our operations. 'We no longer have trouble with the cable anymore, which ensures a safer operation as we can operate the test from outside the closed safety doors,' he added.

NC Service utilises the device's volumetric analysis function in most of its testing. According to Jonsson, Ballbar20 software was easy to use and my operators found the transition to the new software very smooth due to its similarity with the QC10 software. The QC20-W data is analysed by the software to find machine errors that might otherwise go undetected, such as the loss of ballscrew preload, and therefore provides you the option of a repair instead of a costly ballscrew at a later date. A key feature of QC20-W is the use of Bluetooth wireless technology, which allows simplified and consistent ballbar testing in three orthogonal planes.

A single, simple hardware setup gives quicker testing and the ability to produce a representative volumetric measurement of positioning accuracy. Renishaw's ballbar enables the user to quickly diagnose and quantify machine positioning errors, and also to give an overall circularity error value as per ISO and other standards. Language support is currently being extended to cover Portuguese, Romanian, Turkish, Swedish and Hungarian. Software and hardware features ensure backward compatibility for QC10 system users, by providing upgrades and minimising the costs of moving to the new system, or working alongside existing QC10 systems.

Renishaw offers an exchange QC20-W upgrade kit to QC10 ballbar users at a competitive price. The upgrade kit is supplied as standard with an insert for fitting into the current QC10 case, with options for a new system case and for carrying out the new three-plane testing.

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