Dimension Measurement Tool Recommendation

[OneMoreCouch]

Hello all,

I am information systems manager that has been newly tasked with overseeing the Quality Control team next month and I'm trying to learn as much as I can.

I wanted to quickly ask what is our best option on which measurement device to use for our QC team - currently they are using calipers.

Our factory makes Ferrite EMI cores that come in rod shapes or core shapes (circular or block) some photos for reference. Our volume is at about 500k piece (in combination of different products) per day.


The factory is very old fashion and the Quality control team currently takes samples from our carts after sintering and brings it back to their desk for measuring. They then document their measurements on a paper in preparation to be inputted into excel. I see a few risks and inefficiencies here that I'm hoping to find answers to here.

1. Measuring with a Caliper is slow and accuracy is dependent on the operator. An example of one of our stricter tolerance is 3mm x 16mm+- 0.005cm
2. Using the Caliper seems tiring to me for a QC operator to do all day. Fatigue will lower their accuracy and with the volume that we have I find it very risky.
3. Redundancy of operator writing down measurements and then inputting into a computer in a separate step

I feel like our quality control is really limited to the sample size due to the inefficiencies of what's listed above. To help us improve, we must increase efficiency so we can sample more products (in ratio to our production amount) From a quality control novice, I believe there must be a better way to provide the team to measure these products in bulk. Is there anything that is laser based to measure our products in bulk?

Any ideas or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[dwperron]

A few questions:

How many pieces are measured each day.
What is the size range.
What are you measuring, outside diameter, inside diameter, length...
What kind of accuracy do you need for the measurements

 

[optomist1]

yep, a drawing hopefully per ASME Y14.5...GD&T, would be nice

 

[Michael_M]

On a generic level, most companies have a 10 to 1 rule. The device used to measure should be 10x more accurate than the listed tolerance. In some very rare cases, this might need to be reduced to a 4 to 1 rule depending on the actual tolerance level (Imperial ±.0003 inch for example--sorry, not very good at metric). In this case, I do not believe the calipers are accurate enough for this measurement.

I know that Mitutoyo (no affiliation) had a software that allowed for direct 'SPC' input that would sit at the machine or travel with the inspector and digitally record the measurement. I used this system about 15 years ago so they probably have something much better now.

 

[OneMoreCouch]

A few questions:

How many pieces are measured each day.
What is the size range.
What are you measuring, outside diameter, inside diameter, length...
What kind of accuracy do you need for the measurements

Sorry for the late reply:
1. Currently we are employing S3 inspection level so I believe its about 32 per 150K
2. Size Range is about <0.15 mm
3. For cylindrical product, we measure length, diameter. Other products we measure length, height, outside diameter and inside diameter.
4. The finest accuracy required is about 0.01 mm but it is less common. Products with scale, we have tolerance of about 0.03mm

I hope my answers make sense as I'm still new to this. Please let me know if I can bring any more information to you guys.

 

[OneMoreCouch]

I found this really quick. Don't know if it helps

 

[dwperron]

2. Size Range is about <0.15 mm

I believe this is incorrect, the 2 drawings you attached show sizes of 15 and 30 mm.
Knowing how large these parts are will help determine appropriate equipment to make the measurements.

 

[Golfman25]

Ask the inspectors. A caliper could be just fine. Or you could spend lots of money on fancy machines. It all depends what you need.

 

[OneMoreCouch]

2. Size Range is about <0.15 mm

I believe this is incorrect, the 2 drawings you attached show sizes of 15 and 30 mm.
Knowing how large these parts are will help determine appropriate equipment to make the measurements.

Sorry, I thought you meant the range of our max and min products from this product spec. What I meant was 0.15mm is usually the largest range between the largest product and the smallest product.

The product I posted specifically was 3mm x 15mm +- 0.1mm

 

[OneMoreCouch]

Ask the inspectors. A caliper could be just fine. Or you could spend lots of money on fancy machines. It all depends what you need.

What I would like is having the ability for us to measure most if not all of the products. WIth our volume, using a caliper is not possible (unless we hire a lot more people). I also want to be able to measure all products to collect the data on the size to see how our production people are doing.

Fancy machine or not, how can one go about achieving being able to measure out the dimensions of a product? This specific product (the one i posted) is at around 150k-200k piece manufactured per day.