Portable measurement devices are also another common inspection tool used widely within the automotive sector for inspecting components and tooling patterns. The FaroArm is a portable, multi-axis measurement arm (portable CMM) that has the flexibility to take measurements where you need it. The arm is available in a variety of sizes, reaches and accuracies, custom made to fit the inspection requirements. Designed mainly for the shop-floor environment, the FaroArm is constructed from high quality aluminium, aiding in temperature compensation as well as machine durability. It can be mounted in a large variety of ways, from sliding rails, rolling stands, to actually on the parts or tooling. A picture of a typical Faro Arm is shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: A picture of the FaroArm platinum
The portable measurement arm has very similar capabilities as a traditional CMM, however, while it boasts of being portable and that it can be utilised anywhere around the shop floor, it is a manual operation. With an automated CMM, once an inspection program has been created, it can proceed with minimal aid from the operator. Therefore the FaroArm is very labour intensive, but can achieve the same inspection output.
Like the CMM it can also produce a wide range of output files (depending on software used), and by creating manual inspection programs, the structure of output files can be made less likely to miss any vital inspection data.
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