LARGE CAPACITY DIGITAL CALIPER

Rainford-based Welding Units (UK) Limited has been providing connector and flange solutions to a global customer base for more than 40 years.

The company’s high quality products are designed and produced for a wide variety of diverse applications and are supported by a depth of expertise and engineering support. Welding Units work with clients across the globe to provide innovative, bespoke solutions that are efficient and cost effective but above all, guarantee integrity.

To complement the company’s impressive design and project management services, Welding Units operates a fully CNC equipped manufacturing environment to ensure that all products are manufactured to the highest standards in accordance with ISO 9001:2000 and API Spec. Q1 approved Quality Management Systems.

The company has a proven track record in delivering a range of standard and non-standard products on short lead times, for the largest and most technically complex projects and field developments. Welding Unit’s products are often used for critical applications within the harshest of environments, such as the connecting of subsea oil industry pipes. As the risk of failure–in-use could have disastrous financial and environmental consequences, the company’s products are inspected at all stages of manufacture, from the testing of incoming materials, through every stage of the manufacturing process, to the finished products final inspection routine. 

To complement its modern CNC machine tools, Welding Units has a policy of investing in the most advanced inspection equipment available to ensure the integrity of the company’s output. A case in point is the recent purchase of an advanced UniCal Universal Digital Caliper from Bowers Metrology.

As the company produces flanges of up to 2 meters in diameter, containing a range of close tolerance features, conventional large-scale calipers often prove too heavy and cumbersome to allow the company’s employees to achieve the required levels of precision. Also, the dedicated internal/external jaws of traditional calipers do not allow for the retrofitting of specialised accessories such as ball contacts for the measurement of face grooves, and cones for checking the centre-line distances of bores.

Following a search for a large capacity digital measuring instrument that would overcome the limitations inherent in normal workshop calipers, Welding Units’ Quality Manager, Len Marsh discovered the new Bowers UniCal. Len recently reported. “As the flexible new Bowers gauge is able to be fitted with a selection of optional accessories, we are able to quickly set-up the instrument to undertake a wide range of dedicated measuring tasks. Although the UniCal has the same measuring capacity as some of the company’s existing calipers, as it is manufactured from advanced composites, it is only a fraction of their weight, this enables our staff to achieve higher levels of accuracy, whilst considerably reducing operator fatigue. “

“So successful has our trial purchase been, we intend to purchase further capacity UniCal models soon. To enable efficient data collection we also have plans to fit our UniCals with Bowers’ data transmitters enabling wireless collection of our gauges’ findings.”  

Designed to accurately perform a staggering variety of measuring tasks, Bowers new multi-purpose UniCal digital gauges are available in standard 300mm, 600mm and 1000mm capacities, with larger versions available upon request.

Designed for harsh shopfloor use, Bowers’ flexible UniCal boasts tough, lightweight reinforced composite beams.  Further advanced features include a large, easy to read digital display, a preset facility, a constant measuring force, a metric inch conversion and an RS 232 data output port.

Although a wide range of standard UniCal accessories enable a multitude of measuring tasks to be performed, for more unusual applications Bowers is able to manufacture ‘one-off’ adaptations allowing the most difficult of large capacity shop floor gauging routines to be undertaken. 

For more information on the UniCal Digital Caliper, click here.

Published on January 11, 2010 10:13