The hydraulic casting components made at Rexroth Guss, a subsidiary of Bosch Rexroth, are characterized by their complex, core-intensive construction and many free-form surfaces. These costly parts, made of cast iron or spheroidal graphite iron, are invariably designed in 3-D CAD software. The transition from 2-D to 3-D design prompted the quality department to look for an appropriate measuring solution to inspect their parts.

“ The requirements for quality assurance have increased with 3-D technologies,” says Frank Mill, quality manager at Rexroth Guss. “Earlier, all major dimensions could be taken from a 2-D drawing for tactile measurement, which is no longer the case. Modern 3-D drawings include little in the way of explicit dimensions. The curves of the free-form surfaces are almost impossible to verify using traditional tactile measurement techniques.”

Rexroth Guss chose the Shapetracer from Wenzel Knotenpunkt as its 3-D measurement tool. Shapetracer is a compact high-precision line scanner that can be connected to the Renishaw PH6M or PH10M probe head via the Renishaw Autojoint connection. Consequently, both can be adapted to almost any coordinate measuring machine (CMM). In conjunction with the PH10M rotary swivel head, five axis measurements are also available.

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