Hexagon partners with ZeroTouch to bring high-accuracy inline inspection to European precision manufacturing

Hexagon has partnered with ZeroTouch, part of Sandvik, to bring high-speed, high-accuracy non-contact gauging cells to European customers through its Manufacturing Intelligence division. The turnkey cell enables manufacturers to measure key dimensions of mission-critical parts with micron-level accuracy in seconds, providing rapid feedback to reduce scrap and improve process maturity faster with metrology-assisted manufacturing processes.

Volume part manufacturers in safety-critical industries require 100% sampling of components, but this is often not feasible because the measurement accuracy required exceeds production cycle time. First introduced in 2022, ZeroTouch Rotation and Linear metrology systems uniquely delivers high accuracy measurement of control points so they can be deployed at any control gate within a production and integration process.

By combining its application expertise and software with ZeroTouch’s non-contact inspection system, Hexagon will address common process issues for tier one manufacturers that need to improve process stability rapidly without reducing their throughput. Under the new partnership, Hexagon will offer ZeroTouch as part of its solutions within Germany, Switzerland and France and components such as brake discs, electric motors, luxury watches and medical orthopaedics are the first applications to be addressed.

The non-contact ZeroTouch system uses 3D laser scanners to acquire feature and surface measurement data as parts measuring up to 400mm are positioned and rotated to acquire a rapid but rich point cloud immediately into the terminal software or connected data management and statistical process control applications. Depending on the quality requirement, simple gauging can be accelerated with rapid measurement of multiple features, or complete part and surface property data can be acquired with millions of points.

The ability to perform inline inspection of high-precision components complements adjacent metrology applications where Hexagon technologies are commonly used. Beyond measurement, it offers customers the ability to integrate the ZeroTouch system into workflows using its automotive standard Q-DAS metrology data management and statistical process control suite to respond quickly to issues with suppliers and to continuously improve the quality, throughput and scrap rates of local production.