Silbitz Guss manufactures one-off components as well as small and medium-scale series-produced parts for various industries. Many of the foundry’s customers come from the energy and railway industries – two fields where the generous dimensions of products frequently impress. Components up to 6 m diameter and weighing 30 t are quite usual for Silbitz Guss and its sister company Zeitzer Guss. Ease of movement and visual inspection are not typical features of these objects and therefore they present a real challenge to quality assurance technicians.
“When you wish to measure large parts, you come up against a whole series of questions,” says Knut Fitzner, responsible for quality at Silbitz Guss. “You have to determine whether you can move the part quickly – for example on a measuring machine. Then you need to know whether a stationary measuring system can reach everywhere on the part or are there any dead zones,” continues Mr. Fitzner. However, another requirement was crucial to the decision to procure a new measuring system: Silbitz Guss wanted to mark its parts with the measuring machine. Knut Fitzner: “Our customers increasingly wished to be supplied with marked unfinished parts – and to do this marking during measurement saves considerable time and provides us with a clear advantage over our competitors.”
During their search for a suitable means of measurement, Knut Fitzner and his colleagues tested various alternatives. His colleague Uwe Leißner recalls: “The portability of a laser tracker system captured our interest from the beginning. But we were only totally satisfied with the solution that Hexagon Metrology offered us.” With the Leica Absolute Tracker AT901, the wireless Leica T-Probe tip and the Leica T-Scan hand scanner, Silbitz Guss finally ordered a measuring system that can handle all the required applications. Even marking will not be a problem in the future - thanks to a centre punch on the Leica T-Probe measuring probe, which is automatically triggered by pressure. This simple and accurate marking tool was the crucial factor in the decision to purchase the system.
