Calibration in a Small Company with Employee Owned Measurement Equipment

M

MNMachinist

#1
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.:eek:

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:
 
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B

BadgerMan

#2
Re: Small Company with Employee Owned Measurement Equipment

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.
 
J

JHagani

#3
Re: Calibration 7.6

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:
 
G

Grizz1345

#4
Re: Calibration of Employee Owned Measurement Equipment

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:
 
Last edited by a moderator:

errhine

Involved - Posts
#5
Re: Calibration of Employee Owned Measurement Equipment

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.
 
#6
Re: Does your Company Supply Calipers for Employees?

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
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
 

BradM

Staff member
Admin
#7
Re: Small Company with Employee Owned Measurement Equipment

Here's another thread that may be of interest:

Does your Company Supply Calipers for Employees?

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.
 
G

Grizz1345

#8
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.
 

BradM

Staff member
Admin
#9
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.
 
J
#10
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
 
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