Quality assurance standards in the automotive industry continues to rise year after year. This, in turn, means that performing measurements requires more time and effort, including at the German automotive supplier Peter Wahl Metall- und Kunststofftechnik. In order to accommodate their growing quality assurance workload, the company acquired a ZEISS ACCURA multisensor measuring machine, which enabled them to significantly speed up the entire measuring process.
Speed up Measuring Process in the Automotive Industry with Optical Sensors from ZEISS
The challenge: an increasing number of measuring jobs
"Measurements require more and more time," says Peter Kerber, Managing Director of Peter Wahl GmbH & Co. KG. The period when automobile manufacturers approved components for several years following successful initial sample testing are now a thing of the past. Now, as a part of requalification inspections, suppliers like Wahl often need to provide proof annually that each individual component meets the customer's requirements. As a consequence, more time and effort is invested on top of the initial and random sampling inspections. And it all adds up: approximately 5,000 hours are spent on measuring jobs at Wahl every year.
The solution: more optical measurements
It quickly became clear to company management that they needed more employees and an additional measuring machine. After a demo featuring the ACCURA multisensor measuring machine at ZEISS, Quality Manager Willi Sauer had already made up his mind: the ZEISS system would offer the company the flexibility it needed. The reason: in addition to the contact probes, the machine was designed for use with the LineScan optical sensor. At the time, however, the measuring machine and the sensor were still in the development phase, which is how this mid-sized company became a pilot customer. "We never second-guessed our decision for an instant," explains the Quality Manager two years later. "Thanks to this measuring machine, we can now tackle measuring tasks we could not have handled previously."
„S použitím dotykového snímacího systému nedosáhneme vždy na všechny potřebné oblasti.“
Peter Kerber, výkonný ředitel
The benefit: faster quality assurance
Contact and optical measuring technology complement each other, making it possible to perform the individual measurements at Wahl more quickly. For example: the contact sensor used to require 45 minutes to capture all the necessary dimensions of a tension lever for the roof of a convertible. Now only certain features are captured using contact measurements, whereas the rest are acquired using optical measuring technology. The result: all required drawing dimensions as well as all other shape and position tolerances of the metal-plastic compound component are captured in just 20 minutes. Using the LineScan sensor has paid off for the company in another way: "We can't always reach the necessary areas using a contact measuring system," explains Kerber. In these cases, useful information on the component geometry can only be achieved by capturing entire surfaces – and the ZEISS LineScan makes this possible.
Peter Wahl GmbH & Co. KG pokrývá v současné době celý procesní řetězec pro automobilové komponenty: od fáze návrhu přes konstrukci nástroje a prototypu až po sériovou výrobu. Firma začala v roce 1962 jako výrobce nástrojů, ale dále rozšiřovala svou lokalitu v Kreuzwertheimu v severním Bavorsku. Celkem 350 zaměstnanců zde vyvíjí a vyrábí kovové a plastové komponenty, jakož i kompozitní díly z obou materiálů pro automobilový průmysl. Důležitým segmentem je i nadále vývoj a výroba nástrojů. Velikosti šarží se pohybují od jednoho vzorového prototypu až po 70 000 týdně pro automobilové komponenty.