Hi #measuringhero! Jay here. Today we're at corporate headquarters of ZEISS in Oberkochen.
Nestled on the far end of campus is our ZEISS CMM production area.
And today what we're going to do is look at one of the crown jewels of our CMM portfolio. The XENOS.
So the XENOS is one of the most accurate CMMs in the world
and what we will do today of course is - have a look at one so come on in and let's see what it's all about.
Ok, so what is a micron?
Well, let's start with… Well, actually: before we start, let's bring in Alessandro who is the product manager for the ZEISS XENOS.
Hello Jay! Hi Alessandro, how are you? Nice to see you. Fine, thanks.
Great. we were just talking about what a micron is...a micron ok your human hair is 100 microns so 1 micron is 1/100 of a human hair.
How accurate is this machine? This is the most accurate machine that we have in our product portfolio.
This is 0.3 plus L over 1000.
0.3 so that is one third of a micron… but what is L over 1000?
Imagine if you want to measure one meter then the accuracy to measure this meter is 1.3 micrometer
because you have to sum 0.3 plus the meter 1000 millimeter this is the the meaning of the of the formula
just to have the accuracy how accurate is the machine to measure this meter
Ok, so L is in meters and however many meters there are you add that to 0.3?
Exactly. Got it. Very good Jay.
That's very accurate.
How do we do this?
This was a very high-level project that we did here at ZEISS.
We also developed new material, we developed a new construction. We took over the experience that we had, 25 years of experience in this project
To have the most accurate machine or one of the most accurate machines in the world.
For example: we also have new materials like silicium carbide.
This is the first time that such material is used in a CMM
Just to imagine: silicium carbide is four times stiffer than other material like granite for example that is also used by the competitor.
And this material is just to give the most stiffness of the structure
it is used for example for the x axis for the z axis and for all movable parts of the CMM.
And you can see the colour of the material here.
This is this grey colour.
And also to achieve this high accuracy, we have, we developed a new drive technology.
It's what we call virtual central drive because we have two engines on the left and on the right side to compensate the bending error.
And to compensate what we call the Abbe error.
The Abbe error is just…let me say the adjustment that you have or the offset that you have between the glass scale and the other sides and the measurements.
If you have some bending errors thats what we call the Abbe error.
In this case if you have two engines on the left and the right side and two glass scales on the left and on the right side,
Then you have the possibility to avoid this error because you have the information of the position of the probe inside your measuringvolume.
Every time, let's say, for a standard CMM in our product portfolio like PRISMO, like ACCURA, like CONTURA,
the structure of the machine is to have one glass scale on one side and the engine drives linear on the one side.
This means, if you have faster acceleration you don't know what's happening on the other side.
In this new case, with this new concept, we know exactly where the bridge is and we can compensate every error we know.
So there is two drives on this one?
Yes, that's right.
And we also have two glass scales.
For the first time with one nanometer resolution.
this is the first time that a CMM in our product portfolio has such a glass scale.
Let me say, it's a full package to allow us to achieve that accuracy.
That's great. That's great. And it looks cool!
How many of these are there in the world?
Right now we have 12 installations worldwide.
There are different customers.
It could be a National Institute, it could be some companies.
There were some companies that told me "We decided to buy the XENOS just to avoid all the discussion inside the company."
If we have a measuring result and nobody knows whethter it's ok or not and there is a lot of discussion.
And with this machine, they say if we have such problems we measure the part on this machine and it stops this discussion.
Everybody accepts it and they start to work again.
A lot of industry companies use it as a reference machine or Institutes or calibration laboratory.
Let me mention for example also NIST, this is the National Institute in the U.S..
They use the Xenos for a project, the Big G project to evaluate the gravity acceleration.
They're using one of these for that?
They 're using one of these for that, exactly.
Well, Alessandro. Thanks for shwoing us the machine, talking to us about it.
It was a pleasure.
Thank you, appreciate it. We'll see you soon.
Okay, everyone. That was the XENOS.
Thanks for joining us at the #measuringhero blog.
Don't forget to join us every Thursday. We'll do something cool like this.
And for now, bye!