Last week Virginia’s Daily Press mentioned Newport News’ shipyard has been a “beacon of heavy manufacturing” for more than 100 years. Recently, though, they have identified the need to design and build through the use of new technology. “The process of designing and building a warship has moved away from the waterfront and hand-drawn blueprints into high-powered computers and software engineers. To design state-of-the-art, multibillion-dollar nuclear warships, Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding today relies heavily on technology to drive its research, development and design."
It was stated that the shipyard now has “a small team…to explore new ways to make the shipbuilding process more efficient.” One of the types of technology used to achieve efficiency in processes is portable CMMs. With a portable CMM (generally known as measurement arms, laser trackers or laser scanners) you can take high precision measurements to ensure that parts or components are within defined tolerance levels for quality. By capturing 3D data, a portable CMM will provide you the X, Y, Z coordinates of an object.
These portable devices are typically much less expensive than a traditional, fixed CMM, and their user-friendly software easily produces results. More data is collected and provided than that of traditional measuring devices. With their light weight and durability, they can be transported quickly and easily to allow operation at multiple work sites in varying environments. Laser trackers and laser scanners in particular allow for fast, efficient data capture on large scale objects like those Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding face daily.
Read the full article
Learn more about laser trackers
Learn more about laser scanners
No comments:
Post a Comment
Share your success story or thoughts!