AIR GAUGING: HIGH-PRECISION RESULTS IN THE MOST CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENTS
Adwest Engineering Ltd (AEL) is a private limited company specialising in the design and manufacture of both manual and power assist steering gears. Well-known within its field of expertise, the company is a major supplier to the European OEM automotive industry.
Through its ongoing own advanced research and development program, AEL has been a leader in the design, manufacture and application of steering gears for over forty years. Company milestones include the launch of the Varamatic Gear, developed in conjunction with the Bendix Corporation in 1961.
In the mid-sixties, Adwest developed one of the first integral power rack and pinion gears for Jaguar and Triumph. Recent AEL advancements include the introduction of a heavy duty version of the company’s Pow-a-rak gear, for use in light commercial vehicles.
AEL are able to offer customers tailor-made designs, from within the company’s comprehensive product range, to suit individual engineering requirements. AEL’s principal customers are Land Rover and Bentley Motors (VW) Group, although other vehicle manufacturers are also supplied both in the U.K. and in Europe.
Situated on what was once the Miles Aircraft factory, AEL’s large manufacturing site in Woodley employs 200 people. Enabling manufacturing costs to be kept to a minimum, and company products to remain competitively priced, AEL utilise a one piece flow method of production and boast over 300 CNC and NC and manual machines, plus16 dedicated test machines.
The high-precision and safety critical nature of the company’s products means that AEL’s Quality Department runs a strict quality control regime and makes regular investments in state-of-the-art gauging equipment. A case in point is the company’s purchase of PC-2200 flexible electronic/air columns from Bowers Metrology. The advanced new columns are capable of operating with both air gauging products and measuring probes and contain a multitude of measuring functions including static and dynamic gauging, classification grading mode and probe mixing capability.
Commenting on the company’s use of its new PC-2200, Gordon Smith, Production Engineer of AEL reported. “As air gauging is able to provide high-precision results, even in the most challenging of shop-floor environments, it is ideal for use across our site. Our new PC-2200 air columns have proven to be an excellent addition to our quality control equipment. As we are able to set upper and lower tolerance limits for each job on our PC-2200s our machine operators are able to read the actual size of the measured feature of each component on a digital readout, and judge the status of the part against a clear go/no/go LED display.”
“One of our PC-2200 units is successfully employed to accurately measure the critical clearance between the rotor and sleeve components that are part of the valve assembly which delivers the power assistance within the Land Rover and Bentley steering units. As the PC-2200 delivers its very accurate results extremely quickly, our machine operators are able to take all of the necessary measurements within the cycle time of the production machines they are operating.”
Belying the PC-2200’s inexpensive price, other useful features, include, a high resolution display, status indicators, tolerance limit settings, multi-probe inputs, and an RS 232 output, enabling the downloading of results to computers, data collection devices and printers.
Bowers Metrology is able to supply a full range of both internal and external air gauging devices, accessories and readouts. Using air flow volumes and pressures to measure parts, air gauging is a reliable, repeatable technology well-suited for applications such as precision tapers where tolerances are tight. Air gauging technology is extremely flexible, enabling the measurement of not only dimensions but geometric and relational characteristics, such as squareness and parallelism. Other features capable of being measured include ovality, taper, the straightness of bores and the distance between hole centres.
For more information on Bowers' Air Gauging range of products click here.
Published on June 04, 2010 08:24