With metrology to the closed loop

Gears are commonly used and important mechanical parts whose quality has a direct impact on the life and safety performance of the machines in which they are installed.

Sinergy Gearing Technology Co, LTD from Nanjing, China, specialises in the processing and distribution of high-precision gears. These are mostly used in the wind power, steel, metallurgy, building materials and petrochemical industries, etc.

As these markets have grown rapidly in recent years, quality testing of large gearboxes has become increasingly important. Sinergy's customers are predominantly located in Europe, where very stringent requirements are placed on product quality. In response, Sinergy has consistently maintained high standards. After extensive communication and comparisons with other measuring machine manufacturers and experts in the industry, Sinergy chose a large high-precision gantry-type LHF 3020 coordinate measuring machine from WENZEL.

"We use the WENZEL LHF not only to measure the gears, but also to measure the "pin hole" and many positions as well as geometric features to achieve a closed-loop process"

Sinergy high precision gearboxes are widely used in large wind turbines in China and other countries. It goes without saying that the quality of the gearbox is of great importance for wind turbines. Therefore, Zhu Baojun, general manager of Sinergy, has high expectations and many requirements for the measuring device: "As a manufacturer of large-scale wind turbine gearboxes, we need to measure not only the geometric dimensions of the product, but also the technical indicators related to the gearbox, such as the diameter pitch, the profile skew and the modification in the product measurement process. We need combined measuring machines, which can perform gear inspection and professional coordinate measurement, and provide reports and data compatible with the main international technical standards. After preliminary research and extensive,thorough technical exchange,we learned that WENZEL is the best manufacturer of professional coordinate measuring machine and professional gear measuring machine in the industry. After careful consideration, Sinergy chose WENZEL LHF 3020 because it meets our product measurement requirements. It covers the measurement of all important technical indicators of 6 MW wind turbine gearboxes and provides measurement reports that our customers recognize."

Before Sinergy introduced the WENZEL LHF 3020, one of its products had to be measured on two different machines. For example, the position of the "pin-hole" was measured on the traditional coordinate measuring machine and the gear accuracy of the internal gear on the gear measuring machine. In comparison, Sinergy's WENZEL CMM can generate a pin-hole report, a position report and a gear tooth report (including gear tooth pitch, diameter pitch, profile helix) on the same machining standard and the same measurement standard, and also generate two measurement reports on the same machining benchmark, which in the past had to be done on two different devices.

The WENZEL LHF 3020 combines coordinate measurement and gear measurement in one device and uses the measuring module WM | GEAR in the new measuring software WM | Quartis, which realizes a professional gear measurement as well as the analysis and evaluation of the measurement results. Equipped with WENZEL's unique measurement compatibility, the LHF can perform not only professional gear measurement but also coordinate measurement of geometric parts. By integrating the functions of gear measuring machine and coordinate measuring machine in one device, the WENZEL CMM Sinergy helps minimize labor, time and capital costs, adopt the same measurement standard and map the gear design on this device.

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Closed-loop controls to improve efficiency

Sinergy's industrial layout focuses on control, which plays a critical role in ensuring the stability and reliability of mass production. "With the WENZEL LHF, we can perform offline measurements in the same production cycle with a certain frequency and achieve the highest product stability. We can use it not only to measure gear machining, but also to machine the "pin hole" and many positions, as well as precision geometric machining to achieve closed-loop control. This is very helpful for us to win new orders from customers in further cooperation," explains Zhu Baojun.