When he logged onto the World Wide Web one day, Barry Whisenant, President of Barry Machine Tool, didn't know it would lead to a Discovery that would change his business for the better. He only hoped it would.
Barry Machine Tool of Clover, South Carolina is a 5,000 square feet job shop with eight employees who do general machine work. Barry performs precision CNC milling, turning and surface grinding, working with different types of mediums, such as aluminum, steel, plastics, cast iron, and others. Its biggest accounts serve the machine tool industry. As they've grown, so has their need for a coordinate measuring machine.
"I'd been looking at CMMs for a year and a half," says Whisenant. "I had seen demonstrations from most of the companies and read a lot of literature. But I still hadn't found what I was looking for." One day, Whisenant saw a picture of the new Discovery CMM in an article in a metalworking trade publication. The article listed the URL for the Sheffield website. "I brought it up on my computer," says Whisenant. "I liked what I read - the shop floor machine that doesn't need a special environment. The web site also listed the distributor for our area." Soon after, Barry Machine purchased a Discovery.
The web site also provided Whisenant with some valuable material for Barry Machine's own promotional literature. He downloaded the picture and information about the Discovery CMM from the site and included them in the write-ups and facilities list he gives to prospective customers.
Saves Time While Ensuring Quality
Currently, Barry Machine Tool is using its new CMM in a "walk up mode" to measure tolerances on inner diameters, distance between hole locations, radiuses and taper bores. "It's a time saver," says Whisenant. "The old manual gage method of checking parts was very time consuming. The Discovery eliminates a lot of that. With direct computer control, Discovery lets you verify part quality up to 20 times faster than manual methods.
Barry Machine will soon be using Discovery in its "run mode" to do quality sampling on long part runs. "Some of our part runs number in the thousands," notes Whisenant. "Our operators will be able to take every fifth piece to the CMM, put it into place, push a button and check the part in just a few seconds. That will make it a very productive tool for us."
Even in the walk-up mode, the Discovery has increased Barry Machine Tool's productivity. Recently, it accepted a job that they would have been unable to do without a CMM. As Whisenant points out, "We've got the equipment to do precision work. But we've got to be able to check it. The Discovery gives us that capability."
Shop Hardened and Easy-to-Use
The shop-hardened Discovery CMM needs no special site considerations - not even an air supply. "Most of the other CMMs I looked at required a special environment," states Whisenant. "The Discovery was the only one that didn't." Automatic temperature compensation is standard, and the machine can be set on a table on the shop floor. Just hook up its computer, plug it into a standard outlet, and it's ready to go.
The Discovery is also so easy to use that you need no special training. "I've been given demonstrations on competitor's machines," say Whisenant, "but they were all hard to understand and difficult to work with, especially their software." MaxLite, the measurement software for the Discovery is Windows-based, icon driven, and simple. The operator can measure just one part using a remote control joystick. By simply guiding the probe to touch the part feature to be measured, the Discovery programs itself. From then on, it can measure unlimited copies of that part automatically. It also runs part programs written on nearly any Cordax CMM.
Cost-Effective Quality Control
"One reason we went with the Discovery," say Whisenant, "was the cost of the other CMMs was prohibitive for a shop of our size. The price for other CMMs in that size and capability, with the same measuring envelope, was nearly double that of Discovery."
"We're very happy with our Discovery," claims Whisenant. "It's exactly what we were looking for. It's a product that no one else offers right now. I looked at several others, but no one had a CMM in that size that's fully automatic and DCC. I researched this for a year and a half and nobody else has a product like the Discovery."
