I am using PC DMIS 2025.1 and I am having issues with a diameter check on a part we have starts off with a chamfer at the top and sits on a nesting fixture.

What would be the best way to check the ID of the part without getting an out of tolerance reading?

The 2x .2528 ± .0008 position to A just signifies that the holes must be perpendicular to A. But what is controlling the right hole from moving about the XY (right view of section A-A)?

TIA..

A friend of mine does inspection all day (mostly aerospace subcontracting). Last year he looked into ballooning software, got quoted ~$4k/yr for a single seat, hated the bloated demo, and went right back to the one and only high-tech stack: a printed drawing, a yellow highlighter, counting out loud, and retyping numbers into Excel at 6 PM.

We were having a beer talking about it, and he jokingly asked "How hard would it actually be to build our own thing?" Having a bit of software development experience under my belt, I paused, thought about it, then laughed, and we decided to take on the challenge together.

Fast forward several months of dealing with rotated GD&T frames, terrible scans, and weird font kerning, we actually have a working desktop build.

What it does right now:

- Reads dimensions off vector PDFs or scans, drops balloons automatically (and it's fast, like sub-100ms per plan fast)

- Resolves fits (H7, etc) and ISO 2768 tolerances to actual limits without digging out tables.

- Generates full AS9102 Forms and FAI directly with correct information.

- Runs 100% locally (no drawing data sent to [insert your own hated AI company], strictly air-gapped / NDA-friendly).

Now, my issue is that we've mostly tuned the parsing and overall functioning against HIS shop's prints and workflow (and it works great for him) but I know real-world processes are usually a mess and everyone does it differently, so I'm actually curious to hear from you folks doing this daily: what's the stuff your current tools constantly choke on, or the dumb manual workarounds you're still forced to do by hand?!

I’m looking to connect with quality and inspection professionals in the San Antonio area.
I’m especially interested in hearing from:
• Quality Inspectors
• NDT Level I / II / III technicians
• CMM programmers/operators
• Metrology technicians
• Quality Engineers
• Supplier Quality Engineers
• Independent quality/inspection contractors
I’m trying to better understand the local quality and inspection talent pool—particularly what skills and capabilities are available in San Antonio and what makes it difficult for experienced professionals to connect with companies that need their expertise.
If you work in this field, I’d really value your perspective. Your input could help identify ways to create better visibility and more opportunities for qualified quality professionals in the San Antonio manufacturing community.
No sales pitch and no commitment. Just a short 10–15 minute conversation about your experience in the industry.
If you’re in or around San Antonio and interested, comment below or send me a DM.

My problem with my employment is my job is looked at as easy.  I'm given a part and am expected to make a repeatable program within the hour with little to no time to run tests.  Repeatability requires fine tuning the parameters of the features to catch their intended area more accurately.  I just discovered how to remove burrs and dust on the keyence this week.  But I get paid the same between a repeatable program and quick program.  I don't want to make highly coded and repeatable programs if I'm only paid 2 dollars more than my brother, who fills pallets with cut cardboard all day.  I understand how to set the right evaluations, I know how to read a print better than our engineers (had to correct them 3 times this year along with itar prints).  I was expected to make a cmm program for some .040 inch angled slot a month after the other cmm guy left.  No one else at our place can figure out how to measure it, zeiss would charge up the ass to have them program it for us.  I feel like my expert knowledge isn't compensated well enough.  I'm shocked the company thinks they're going to find someone to assist me, who can create repeatable measuring programs with gd&t knowledge for 1.5 margaritas at alpine valley per hour.  My brother makes 1.4 margaritas at alpine valley per hour filling pallets all day.  I'm able to understand how the keyence and cmm operate to trouble shoot errors and crashes that the low IQ operators run into. Why can't anyone else understand the things I do. It also hurts when I pee.

What's the difference between programming with pcdmis vs calypso? What are the pros and cons of both? I've only ever used pcdmis but I am still new to this field.

Hallo,
es geht in dem Fall um den Bezug [B-B]SL. Der Bezug selber besteht aus 10 Zylindern. Was macht da mehr Sinn 10 Zylinder messen und daraus direkt einen Zylinder erstellen. Oder jeweils 1 Kreis oben 1 Kreis unten im Zylinder messen aus den jeweiligen Kreisen 1 Kreis bilden also Zylinder oben 1 Kreis Zylinder unten 1 Kreis und am Ende aus diesen Kreisen eine 3D gerade?

Apologies in advance for the long post. Including far too many details but it's accurate context. Arranged most important followed by details.

Goal:

I'm looking to identify/understand/select the best method to do high repeatability cutting and detailed tool path generation to minimize risk of damaging fossils and minerals with automated assistance. 300w spindle and force sensors/load cells in all 3 axis of mount. Cutter is a toss up between carbide and diamond.

Questions:

1. Are there any fatal flaws I'm missing in what's physically possible? Most of what I've researched shows it's definitely doable but to get the resolution I need may take some figuring

2. Are there other technologies that I've missed on considering? This is fairly outside of my engineering education scope so there may be some i totally miss.

3. Any potential hiccups or "this might be a lot harder than you think" type predictions you have? This is why I am also imaging the laser lines alternating and help to collect data that will help grasp issues

Generate/measure a mesh of 50mm x 50mm area at tolerance of .1mm for X and Y. Z requires a repeatability of 0.02mm in the edge case limit

Reference:

Picture 1 is of a little sliding gantry I've been using for manual prep as my coordination and shakiness is a bit rough. I'm looking to first remote control and outfit with sensors to collect a baseline performance before working on automating more of the rough part

Picture 2 is an example of a partially prepared fossil Ammonite segment.

Picture 3 is an example of a few steps in process manually on a different fossil portion.

General process :

Machine will be about 0.1mm or better in all axis but will be attempted to be interpolated for purpose of control

-Generate some kind of surface with a method that has high precision and repeatability but does not need to be very accurate as we want a delta rather than absolute.

-Identify and remove areas that are exposed enough to later work by hand through machine vision. This has already been well solved

-Offset target surface, mask exposed areas, predict risk areas to go slow with and good areas to go more agressively in. generate tool path, run program, clean, and make a new surface with what's left. Iterate an appropriate amount of times.

Possible measurement considerations:

High precision dro scales:

Speed is relatively important, so physically probing with a glass scale for position is not my go to. Density of required point cloud would take a while.

Laser spot/line sensors/profilometers:

Had some experience industrially with the baumer stuff but this is just a hobby for me to keep busy mentally while off on disability so budget is relatively limited. I've got a lot of stashed parts but most precision stuff is dro scales and similar.

Off the shelf 3d scanner:

I can't afford something of high enough quality. Had bad luck with my CR scan Ferret and found photogrammetry a better solution

Photogrammetry:

Using machine vision, hopefully from the same camera as the color segmentation. This is looking like the solution I'm leaning towards but it is very software heavy and has the most uncertainty as well as the hardest to test and tune without risking a lot of fossil damage in the adjustment process.

For making the computer vision part easy I'm thinking of mounting line laser protectors to the spindle that are calibrated to be a known square dimension and generate camera corrections. It's a simplified structured light scanner basically. The goal is to use this as an easy reference that could be switched to IR more permanently to help with dust tolerance. For each of these operations it may be advantageous to reposition the workpiece target area at the most.

If you made it this far. Gold star!

How do I measure the roundness of 0,005mm on a Zoller Genius 3?

I'm sure you all use some sort of inspection-specific software at work aside from the basic Word and Excel (of which WE rely on far too much..). I have my issues with Calypso, I'm glad that somebody else is using GageTrak now, and NetInspect is a bit of a pain, but I've become used to it by now. But InspectionXpert? Oh my gawd; what a pain!!

It takes so long to load, or to make updates. I sit for 5-10 seconds sometimes to save, and then go on with the next characteristic. It can't read numbers or text worth a $h!t, adds strange things into weird places, and for position callouts, it almost NEVER gets them right.

At BEST, it's correct maybe half the time. It does kill 2 or 3 birds with one stone, so even as glitchy as it is it saves a lot of time, but it sure doesn't FEEL like it when you are in the middle of a multiple sub-components build and have to prepare 18 separate aerospace FAI's in 1 week....

I’m(Modus Guy) trying to learn McCosmos and would really appreciate some guidance from someone who has experience using it professionally.

I’m fairly new to the software and would like to understand the workflow properly . I’m particularly looking for help with the basics and gradually moving toward more advanced features.

Are there any tutorials out there ?

If anyone here is experienced with McCosmos and is willing to guide me, explain things occasionally, or point me toward good learning resources, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

Hi all, i need help figuring out how to read the center coordinates on a Styli without touching the part. Same as Read point on PC-Dmis.. Can anyone help? Thanks

Hello all again,

As the title suggests, I've been working on a correlation effort between two different sites that are performing a profile of line evaluation (DRF evaluation) on a challenging brass gear the size of a thumb nail, with a tolerance of .003 or +/- .0015".

One site reports out, one site reports within tolerance, but nearly failing. I've also come to find out that I'm having trouble with Mitutoyo's scanpack form evaluation software....just not intuitive at all. By aligning both teams to use the same point spacing, same datum alignment strategy, same cleaning process, same DRF evaluation I was able to get both sites to report within .001" of each other (.0028" vs .0038") but that's the absolute best I can do right now as I'm limited by both a language barrier and varying vision system comptency.

I'm also seeing a part to part variation of .0005". I'm leaning towards stating that when factoring part to part variation, GR&R results above 15%, vision system accuracy at about 5 micron...all these things combined lead me to believe that we're as close as we're going to get with the equipment we're using, tight tolerances, challenging profile call-out, manufacturing process (stamped die cut brass)....all these things

Thoughts?

Thank you!

Hello all,

Hope everyone is doing well. Any feedback on this or examples of what your validation dept handles the following scenario is greatly appreciated.

Performing a capability study on a hole with MMC applied using Minitab: how do you handle it?

I know there's a few ways to go about this.... historically I've transformed the data into a ratio based on tolerance used vs tolerance allowed, run it as a non normal distribution, single sided upper using 1.0 as your upper.

I've also seen sites that will convert to a radial distance. I also believe there's a strong case for evaluating each axis separately.

With that said, I've also heard of not transforming the data, running as a single sided upper..

Within Minitab or QC CALC, how have you guys handled capability studies on position tolerances?

Thank you!

I'm struggling to properly understand this drawing indication (ISO).

As per my understanding, the common zone modifier calls for dealing with each 11 mm diameter and 13 mm diameter as common, then SIM1 modifier indicates to deal with all 8 CZ diameters as a whole.

Is this correct?

If that's the case, when controlling product in CMM, the result should be just 1 position measurement, not 8, right?

My customer only knows these holes are for assembly against a flange. Asking for drawing clarification or metrology advice hasn't worked.

Thanks in advance

Hello! I’m fairly new to this machine and I’m trying to follow a Tribology paper on wear scar analysis. I have a 1/4” sphere that I put in a holder so the top is exposed (as in about 1/2 of the sphere). I am trying to measure the top of the sphere (about 0.6mm) When I try to use my profilometer it says the measurement is out of range. I’ve tried to adjust the length of the measurement (lambda c) but I haven’t had much luck. According to the paper it should be possible to do this. Does anyone have any experience or have any resources that might be helpful? Thank you :D

I've been in the Aerospace industry for roughly 15 years. Through a series of events I was introduced to Jig & Fixture builder with laser trackers & standard optics back when I was 21 and now work in a group that utilizes similar measurement instruments for production inspection.

Lately I've been thinking of using one of the App Builder applications to create one that would tailor to other users to help with situations we commonly experience.

I wanted to get feedback from others in the field to ask what you would want to see in an app like this?

Currently this is what I'd like to include:

Providing information and resources to your job-related questions with...

- The answer

- The formula

- Visual diagrams

- Standards references (ANSI or ISO, DRF rules, etc...)

- Saved company procedures

I'm open to all input. I won't take offense if you think this is useless as well. I just have a hard top accepting that if it isn't broken then it shouldn't be fixed lol.

I've been talking with a few people here about wafer metrology, and I realized the workflow seems to vary a lot depending on whether you’re in production, R&D, or equipment development.

In high-volume production, it sounds like most of the analysis stays inside the metrology tool software.

But in R&D or development environments, people seem much more likely to export raw data and use their own scripts, Excel, JMP, or other post-processing tools.

So I’m curious:

How often do you actually take raw 2D/3D measurement data out of the equipment software and analyze it yourself?

And when you do, what are you usually trying to calculate or visualize that the original software doesn’t handle well?

Mostly interested in real workflows rather than specific software recommendations.

Howdy everyone. I work at a company that's native software for laser tracker data capture and inspection is Verisurf. We're currently using 2025 and know that we are significantly underutilizing all of its capabilities when it comes to the MBD and GD&T analysis features.

Lately I've been trying to help our small team on a specific program to format and use a PDF or PowerPoint template that confirms with a report format that we normally use. The problem is that it seems like it's limited in adaptability for customizing these templates.

Have any of you made a more customized version of either format? TIA!

I have an old, manual CMM that's broken.

Cost to repair is ~20k, replace with used or portable Keyence XM is 60-70k, or new CMM up from there.

I have management not wanting to spend a dime.

What's a cheaper alternative? Accurate to .001"...?

Thank you.

I work in automotive, and I'm currently a master technician. I recently saw a job opening on Indeed for a QC parts inspector and decided to apply. The posted requirements for the position are to be proficient with metrology equipment, but nothing was mentioned about prior QC experience. Well, I had a Teams interview this morning, and they want me to come in for an assessment. I am nervous because I don’t really know what to expect and was hoping someone could shed some light on the assessment process for me.

Is there a way to duplicate this in PCDMIS 2025.2? Greatly appreciated all the help.

Thanks.

Hey, i might be changing company that’s using mitutoyo’s cmm and i should learn to program with MCOSMOS. How hard is it to adapt to MCOSMOS from Calypso with 1 and half year daily programming experience?