I saw a couple questions similar to mine but not quite what I am looking for, so here is my question. If I overlooked the Thread that would answer my question i am sorry to clutter up the forum.:o

My company has just begun ISO 9001:2000 and I am wondering about calibration. We are a small Job Shop focusing mostly on CNC milling services. We have many many inspection gages. Every Machinist on the floor has his/her own set of tools (couple mics, caliper, depth mic, and more for some of the older guys), plus we have many shop owned tools in the inspection room. To calibrate all of them outside we are looking at a bill of over $40,000.

I am wondering if anyone else has run into this problem and what they did about it.
I have seen shops that have a couple calibrated gages and say everything else is for reference only. Generally these shops are still using the ref only gages for inspection either in process or final. I am thinking about a set of master gages calibrated outside and then the rest of the shop calibrated to those. We are looking at a Super Mic tomorrow and are thinking of using that wherever it applies.
What would a registrar think of this?

Thank you in advance for your feedback.:D

Peter

By the way I really like the forums you have setup here!:cool:

Welcome! :bigwave:

Here's my two cents on the subject.

We use a sticker on some equipment that states “No Cal Required, Not for Product Acceptance”. If you do this, you need to ensure that the equipment is not indeed used for product acceptance which may be tougher (and possibly more costly in the end) than just including it in your calibration recall system.

Once you have calibrated the necessary equipment and can build some history, then you can justify extend calibration frequencies which will lower your costs. However, until the history is established, it is hard to justify exclusion of select items or even extended cal frequencies.

Peter,

Most of us small manufacturing shops have the same delima as yours.

You need to establish an in house calibration system to comply with the provisions of ISO-10012-1 or another accepted spec, in order to be able to calibrate some gages in house.

That's easier said than done though. Now you need a temp and humidity controled and charted environment to conduct your calibtration to start with.
and so on....

This issue is something that needs to be decided per case. You need to figure out the yearly cost of outside calibration of all gages, verses the cost of establishing a calibration system, and calibrate some of gages in house, remember you still need to send some for outside calibration.

In our case, we decided with in house calibration, which NOW I wish we didn't. too much time consuming, but it has started to save us money at the end. :nopity:

Welcome to the Cove.:bigwave:

At my company we faced the same issue. Initially we sent all tools out for calibration. As I built the database and had the time I started to do in-house calibration. I have a set of ceramic gage blocks grade 2. This I use for all mics, calipers, and such tools. I also have a P&W Supermic Mocel C and do all of our thread plug gages in-house. What does all of this save us in dollars? If you check around with people in the know the general consensus is nothing. It costs about the same in dollars to calibrate in-house as to send items out for calibration. The saving in time is another story. I can give immediate attention to a HOT item and get it back in service alot faster than sending it out for repair and calibration. Also I am able to use a little "kentuckey windage" on what passes and what needs repair or replace. I will probably get alot of guff for that comment but it is the way it is done in the real world. Unless you are going to be doing gage pins or thread plug gages I would think long and hard about investing in a supermic.

Have a great day.:cool:

We have a set of master blocks and a master micrometer and a few other master tools that are sent out for cal. We calibrate most tools to those and never take them out of the calibration area. We have never had a problem. Then again we are not ISO, but regulated by FAR 145 and airlines.

Welcome to the Cove :bigwave:

If I overlooked the Thread that would answer my question i am sorry to clutter up the forum. Nothing to worry about. There are a few threads to sift through after all, and your question is a good one. Perhaps this is what you were looking for? Monitoring and Measurement - Small shop making tooling for the foundry industry (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=6692)
By the way I really like the forums you have setup here!:cool:Glad to hear it. I have been with the Cove for years, and I am slill awed by the collective knowledge assembled here.

/Claes

Here's another thread that may be of interest:

Does your Company Supply Calipers for Employees? (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=19110)

Whether that $40,000 is outrageous or a bargain, will be entirely up to you.

There are pros and cons to both approaches.

In-house: Establish proper standards and procedures, provide training, documentation, not getting behind. You would have to assure that calibration of instruments is always a top priority; it's easy to cut corners when doing it in-house. It does cut down on the time an instrument is out due to calibration. The actual calibration costs (or savings) may not actually be known.

Send out: Instrument may be out for a week or two. Given a competent vendor is chosen, they should do you a good job each time. The actual calibration costs are known.

Possibly consider a mixture of both approaches.

The $40K number is a pretty sizeable number. I don't know if that is due to your chosen calibration interval, the # of instruments, or the vendor chosen. I'm just throwing this out, so please just take as an example. But I'm thinking a calibration every six months at $60-100 each. If you have a lot of instruments to be calibrated, you should be able to negotiate pretty sweet pricing.

Calibrating in-house is always a shiny lure, easy to bite at in the hopes of saving big $$$. After careful analysis between in-house/send out, that huge cost savings may evaporate.

One of the biggest costs in sending out my thread ring gages is that I have to have duplicate sets to cover the 4-5 week period it takes to get a set calibrated. I have found no way to speed up this process.

One of the biggest costs in sending out my thread ring gages is that I have to have duplicate sets to cover the 4-5 week period it takes to get a set calibrated. I have found no way to speed up this process.

slightly off topic here, but here it goes. Have you staggered when you send your ring gauges sets out, so that you don't have to have so many back-up sets? Also, would expedite charges be more/less than the additional cost of multiple back-up sets? What about an on-site service, where they come to your facility?

I know these are basic questions. Just brainstorming a bit; these all may be old news to you.

Welcome to the Cove:bigwave:

I have been doing the lions share of our calibration ever since joining this company almost 14 years ago.

I use a set of steel gage blocks that I send out every three years for verificaton.
I track our gages in a MS access database, but I started with hard copy check sheets. Our system is kind of down and dirty but has served us well. No rejections tracable to bad instruments. We would never pass a certification for our lab, but our ISO registrar has never had a problem with it.

I agree with the comment that in house cal means quick turnaround for instruments. In addition it is safer for employee owned tools if they stay in the house. Less chance of loss or damage intransit.
I also agree with the "windage" comment. you could be spending a lot of money for "nth" degree accuracy that you don't need. Only you can decide that.



Do you have a quality dept/individual? Is this person capable of doing checks on gages?

Hope this helps

James

Wow!!!:mg:

I cannot believe the responses this thread recieved over night. Thanks again to all that replied.

I am hoping to calibrate my set of gage blocks, my new supermic, and my inspction machines through an outside service. Then I am going to look into setting up an internal lab with which I will calibrate all tools to those outside calibrated gages. If I understand correctly I need a properly trained calibration specialist and a temperature controlled environement. Tell me what you think.:D

Also I am wondering about the 4X accuracy for calibration. Does this mean I need to be able to measure to .0001 in order to calibrate a gage to .0004?

One last thing. Does anyone have a suggestion on where I could find good calibration training? I am in MN as you may have guessed by my name. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Peter

I am hoping to calibrate my set of gage blocks, my new supermic, and my inspction machines through an outside service. Then I am going to look into setting up an internal lab with which I will calibrate all tools to those outside calibrated gages. If I understand correctly I need a properly trained calibration specialist and a temperature controlled environement. Tell me what you think.



I would suggest training as many people as you possibly can afford. What happens many times is when calibration goes internal, they get an internal specialist to do the work, and be the go-to person. Then.... that person leaves the company (or reassigned) and the calibration program begins to suffer due to no one else knowing exactly what to do. Yes, you will need an environment where you can assure that environmental conditions are constant/controlled and do not bias the measurements you are making. Temperature/ humidity affects gauge blocks and instruments; to what extent can vary significantly.


Also I am wondering about the 4X accuracy for calibration. Does this mean I need to be able to measure to .0001 in order to calibrate a gage to .0004?


Instead of me totally messing this one up, you might want to perform a search on this site under accuracy ratios, ISO17025, TUR, etc. for the multiple threads on this subject.



One last thing. Does anyone have a suggestion on where I could find good calibration training? I am in MN as you may have guessed by my name. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.


Sorry, never been to Minnesota. Hope to get there sometime.:)

There are some extremely competent metrology professionals on the Cove that I greatly respect. I feel confident they will come along and offer you some help also. Too, many of your concerns have been covered fairly extensively. So, be sure and use that search function.

Look forward to hearing from you again!

Peter,

I also suggest getting a copy of ISO-10012-1, to set up your calibration system.

Have just completed and been recommended during a registration audit with a procedure for 7.6 Control of monitoring and mesuring devices that has a very simple yet effective approach. The application may be similar dependant on the level of accuracy required on your customer requirements.

1).Have a complete set of certified gage blocks with applicable grade and current calibration certificate. Due date for recalibration of this master set is dependant on the environment in which they are used. In a quality room environment where the blocks are kept clean and maintained, a 5 year interval for recalibration of this set is probably adequate. If they are to be used for other purposes than just calibration you may want to decrease the time period between recalibration. My suggestion is keep 1 set for calibration only and control this set.

2) Write a simple calibration work instruction that tools are calibrated before each usage and a few other general phrases to comply with the standard. Most machinists do some form of this already!!

3) Keep records of training all relevant personnel on that calibration work instruction and evaluate the effectiveness of that training.

4) Done!

Using this approach you minimize the risk of having calibration logs, stickers, and equipment that is out of calibration. Also you are made aware of potential problems with tools immediately and minimize the risk of using equipment that was calibrated 11 months ago and dropped 10.5 months ago and has been rendering incorrect readings since the last calibration.

Dave

Good day,
We have faced that same problem before so we decided to have our own Internal Calibration. At first we made a list of all equipments which required to be calibrated. Then we made a list for every type of equipment and get the calibration cost for external laboratories. Then we looked for Reference Materials (calibration procedures) and Reference Stadards used for calibration of these equipment and attended various Calibration Trainings from various Calibration Agencies. We then gathered all the datas (also the cost comparisons) and presented it to our superiors. They immediately approved the project and started our own Internal Calibration Laboratory.

The hard part is the justification of the cost of Reference Standards since Reference Standards cost too much. But actually, they easily saw the difference if we send it to External Lab. For example, the Turn Around Time of the equipment, the quality of the calibration data, the safety of the equipment (transportation, storage, etc.) and especially the cost.

Up to now we already have 70% of our equipment Calibrated Internally. We are still trying to increase our Internal Calibration Capability since we still have more equipments comming from our Headquarters.

Hope this helps you to create your own Internal Lab.:applause:

I am hoping to calibrate my set of gage blocks, my new supermic, and my inspction machines through an outside service. Then I am going to look into setting up an internal lab with which I will calibrate all tools to those outside calibrated gages. If I understand correctly I need a properly trained calibration specialist and a temperature controlled environement. Tell me what you think.:D



Before you put a lot of money into a controlled environment you may want to dig into the material composition of your gages and your measuring equipment. If you don't need an extremely high precision you may be able to justify not controlling temperature and humidity. The thermal expansion of for instance quality blocks and gages are very small. We had a situation were we investigated this in relation to optical Keyence measuring units (measuring to 0.0001 cm with an accuracy of .15 my). Variation in temperature showed not be measurable- relating to the master gage - in this instance (+/- 10 degrees celsius). You may monitor humidity, but you will normally get a long way by simply taking good care of the measuring equipment, i.e. remember to apply oil and clean it thoroughly.

Not knowing how much measuring equipment you have, this is just of the top of my head:
Are you sure that it is all being used? Often you will se gage sets being bought and just a few are actually being used, but they are all being calibrated......
Have you tried to make a complete list of the equipment you need to have calibrated and passing that to various suppliers of calibration services to see who will provide the best service at the best price?

Good luck on the assignment

Let's just remeber that in Calibration, we have to reduce or eliminate errors to have an accurate measurements and it is traceable to higher standards. Computations too is a source of error. We have to justify first if our results is not very much affected by these errors.

Before you put a lot of money into a controlled environment you may want to dig into the material composition of your gages and your measuring equipment. If you don't need an extremely high precision you may be able to justify not controlling temperature and humidity. The thermal expansion of for instance quality blocks and gages are very small. We had a situation were we investigated this in relation to optical Keyence measuring units (measuring to 0.0001 cm with an accuracy of .15 my). Variation in temperature showed not be measurable- relating to the master gage - in this instance (+/- 10 degrees celsius). You may monitor humidity, but you will normally get a long way by simply taking good care of the measuring equipment, i.e. remember to apply oil and clean it thoroughly.




Well said, Gert. FWIW - I do most of my calibration in house. The extent of the controlled enviroment in the air conditioned QC office. We are a sheet metal shop and work to some pretty loose tolerances. We set tolerances on our gages at +-.001.

Peter, I too work at a business with a small machine shop with 2 CNC machines and support equipment. We have 2 machine operators that have some of their own tools.

We have given them the option of having their tools calibrated through our system or not. If they decide not to have them calibrated by us, they must have them labeled "for reference only" which I think someone said earlier.

Bob

Peter, I too work at a business with a small machine shop with 2 CNC machines and support equipment. We have 2 machine operators that have some of their own tools.

We have given them the option of having their tools calibrated through our system or not. If they decide not to have them calibrated by us, they must have them labeled "for reference only" which I think someone said earlier.

Bob

Bob,

Do you still allow your machine operators to use the "for reference only" measuring instruments?

What prevents the operators from using these instruments?

I would be very cautious with "for reference only." This concept has led to some interesting heated debates here at The Cove Forums. :)

Stijloor.

It has been my experience that most companies (in a variety of industries) who allow employees to use their own equipment (and this applies to my current company also) INSIST that all personal equipment be given a unique ID and tracked in the company database. The trade-off is that the company saves the money on the purchase/repair of the equipment, but they pay to have it cal'd and adjusted if necessary. This eliminates a lot of the hassles of traceability with I&MTE.

My company has just begun ISO 9001:2000 and I am wondering about calibration. We are a small Job Shop focusing mostly on CNC milling services. We have many many inspection gages. Every Machinist on the floor has his/her own set of tools (couple mics, caliper, depth mic, and more for some of the older guys), plus we have many shop owned tools in the inspection room. To calibrate all of them outside we are looking at a bill of over $40,000.

I am wondering if anyone else has run into this problem and what they did about it.
I have seen shops that have a couple calibrated gages and say everything else is for reference only. Generally these shops are still using the ref only gages for inspection either in process or final. I am thinking about a set of master gages calibrated outside and then the rest of the shop calibrated to those. We are looking at a Super Mic tomorrow and are thinking of using that wherever it applies.
What would a registrar think of this?


By the way I really like the forums you have setup here!:cool:

Lots of folks do run into this, and the solution varies.

You mentioned a $40K bill, and also mentioned looking at a supermic. To do calibration properly including traceability, you will need a controlled environment, which for dimensional means 20 deg C (68 F) +/- 2 deg C; personnel trained in the procedure and especially in use of the supermic; calculation and documentation of uncertainty; documentation of the specific chain of calibration for your calibration standards, and remember that the so-called "NIST numbers" are NOT considered valid for traceability unless that specific NIST number can be shown to apply to that specific calibration of that specific item at that specific time. Now do the internal costing of getting all this together and set up and the cost of the time involved to do the calibrations, and it is likely that your number will well exceed $40K.

The $40K should however include the calibration of your items being done on-site, that is at your location, and include the accreditation information of the calibration lab and include the uncertainties. If it does not, run a competitive bid process (which I have done several times at a previous employer) that specifies that.

Hope this helps.