Sheffield Measurement Launches Cordax Discovery III Product Line

By DE Editors

The Cordax Discovery III CMM from Sheffield Measurement.

Sheffield Measurement (Fond du Lac, WI), a brand of Hexagon Metrology, Inc. (Fond du Lac, WI) unveiled the new Cordax Discovery III, the next evolution of their original shop floor CMM product line, offering higher accuracy, improved thermal performance, and a new industrial design. Sheffield’s original Cordax Discovery CMM offered affordable automatic dimensional inspection at the point of manufacture on the shop floor. Mechanical design improvements and advanced geometric thermal compensation algorithms form the basis of the Discovery III performance enhancements. Available in three measuring ranges, from 20x24x16 inches to 30x40x24 inches, the new CMM is sized to suit the majority of manufactured parts. The D28 CMM is available for shipping; the D8 and D12 CMMs will be available later in 2008.

The main design features of Discovery III are hardened linear guides and recirculating ball bearings in place of air bearings. This improvement forms the backbone of Discovery’s shop hardened design. When combined with the new lighter weight bellows covers, Discovery III is especially resistant to shop-borne contaminants. In addition, with no requirement for air and a roll-around stand, Discovery III advances shop floor layout flexibility.

Discovery III also provides improved accuracy and thermal performance by a combination of mechanical and controller improvements. First, bimetallic interfaces — places in the structure where dissimilar materials meet — have been further reduced from the mechanical design, making thermally induced geometry errors more predictable, and thus correctable using new advanced geometric thermal compensation algorithms in the controller.

The new CMM also offers a wide range of probing options, from economical touch trigger probes to high performance continuous contact analog scanning probes. New Swiss-made Tesastar probing systems are being introduced on Discovery III CMMs. The Tesastar-m-m8, the new Tesa automatic indexing probe head, has the advanced design features of the Tesastar-m, plus a direct M8 interface. The new Tesastar-mp probe and Tesastar-pr probe rack work together to provide automatic changing of magnetically coupled probe modules.

Sheffield Measurementhas more than a century of experience in the design and manufacture of dimensional measurement products. Sheffield’s Cordax brand CMMs are in use by hundreds of companies around the world for the dimensional inspection of their precision manufactured parts. Hexagon Metrology serves the high precision measurement and inspection needs of worldwide manufacturers with its extensive line of metrology hardware, software, accessories, and customer services. More information is at www.hexagonmetrology.us.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.