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Original Date: 11/03/1996
Revision Date: 01/18/2007
Information : Soft Gaging for Coordinate Measurement Machines
The Fabrication Systems development and product certification departments at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant have worked with coordinate measurement machine (CMM) vendors and software specialists to develop routines to generate a mathematical representation for soft gaging. This mathematical representation is of the worst case mating part of the part to be inspected. This effort replaces hard gaging that has several disadvantages including long lead time to produce; inflexibility to design changes; and costly design, build, certify, and maintain characteristics. Soft gaging provides an alternative approach that allows for the flexibility to adapt to multiple design changes. Instead of cutting hard gages, the CMM is programmed with the worst case geometric tolerancing representation. This concept provided Y-12 an accurate, cost effective alternative to hard gages. Other possible applications include inspection of threads, involute splines, locating (balancing) parts within castings and defining the mating part in match fittings.
For more information see the
Point of Contact for this survey.
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