Portable tracker helps detect problems on site
About a year ago I started a business to provide measuring solutions to high-tech industries where the levelling of rotating equipment and the verification of machined parts was vital to the performance of their operations.
Initially I focused on heavy industry where equipment is stationery but when I started looking at the mining industry, I realized that mobile maintenance involving the set up of portable machine centres was also a perfect fit for my new business.
And so far, it looks as if I was right.
By using a Laser Tracker, a device that resembles “R2-D2” and shoots a laser out of the eye, I’ve been able to collect data from a targeted piece of machinery and because it is a portable CMM (coordinate measuring machine) with an accuracy of 0.000 in. over 24 ft., I can span up to 320 ft. in a single shot.
From the data that is gathered, concentricity can be extracted, as well as a whole gamut of GD&T callouts. The software package (Polyworks) allows me to capture and extract anything I need. I can dump the data into Excel or into any CAD package for analysis should the customer require, or do a full analysis within Polyworks itself.
Being out of the Lower Mainland doesn’t stop Digital Precision from reaching out to other areas, as we have done work as north as the oil sands right up to Fort MacKay, and south to Indiana.
Some of the services include, but are not limited to…
- Reverse engineering (as found or to engineering design)
- Inspection (large parts, 3rd party, wear plates crusher, shovel, truck box)
- Alignments (line boring, pumps, etc.)
- Pump Base levelling to gravity or incline plane
- 3D plant layout or as-built
- Crane rail mapping
- Drift surveying (real time monitoring of part movement)
The author’s background started in wood products from UBC where he also obtained a Project Management certificate. He worked in the forestry industry for eight years before switching careers to sell portable CMM’s across western Canada. Selling the equipment for three years opened his eyes to the diversity of industries that could use equipment such as this…and the mining industry is no different. What he says he found is that the larger companies didn’t want to buy this kind of equipment, but would rather hire an expert in using it.
In the mining industry, he’s done work from pump base levelling (aided by portable milling machines), to bail dipper line boring setups, to gear box inspection, to gear inspection, to reverse engineering trunion bearing pedestals, to spyder crusher mating fits, to wear plate analysis, and it won’t stop there. Typically he comes in for a specific job/task and when customers see what he does, the scope of work onsite expands!
The equipment, being completely portable, enables Wagstaff to basically take it anywhere from the inside of shovels for gear alignment, to the machine shop to verify gear boxes on a boring mill, to mag mounting the laser tracker to the lip of an in-pit crusher, to the mill to reverse engineering a bearing pedestal.
If it’s out there, Wagstaff says he can basically capture it and measure it. “I’ve even been asked to measure volumes of material removed from a wall, which can certainly be done, but I’m still waiting for the call on that one.
“So far I have only worked in the oil sands, and copper/gold/silver mines, and have yet to get into coal.
Currently 32% of my business is in mining.
*Warren Wagstaff is owner of DP Digital Precision Metrology Inc., Vancouver, BC.
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