Sandvik Coromant and Metrologic DCS are part of the global industrial engineering group Sandvik. Sandvik Coromant designs, manufactures and supplies cutting tools, machining solutions and optimisation services to improve productivity and precision in the manufacturing industry. Metrologic DCS develops 3D metrology software and solutions for measuring, analysing and controlling the dimensional quality of parts throughout the manufacturing process. 

Sandvik Coromant launched a project to produce a new model of exchangeable-tip drill. Each part is created specifically for the customer's needs, resulting in an extremely high number of part references, shapes and characteristics, all with short production lead times. These specificities make it very difficult, if not impossible, to create a programme for each type of reference.

Find out how the Metrologic DCS teams were able to support Sandvik Coromant in implementing this project and improving their measurement automation objectives.

The aim of this project was to enable each of its customers to purchase drill tips in the diameter they needed and that were specifically suited to their project. For the customer, it couldn't be simpler: they visit the website, configure their part, place their order and receive it quickly.

For Sandvik Coromant, however, the project was more complex.This is where Sandvik Coromant called upon Metrologic DCS. The idea was for Metrolog to automatically generate the part inspection program specifically for each order placed, based on a CAD (Computer-Aided Design) model of the requested part containing its GD&T dimensions, this model itself being automatically generated by dedicated software.

“At the beginning, explains Fabrice Bertaina, Project Leader in charge of this project since its inception, Sandvik Coromant contacted us to help them translate their mechanical requirements into relevant functional geometrical tolerances on the model, and then to use our software solution to automatically decode these geometrical tolerances. We provided support for this requirement and, little by little, began a discussion about the need to automate the process."

In fact, beyond simply managing the CAD model and the tolerances created by the order, discussions also focused on the need to automate this process. Sandvik Coromant wanted to equip itself with an automatic solution that could handle significant product variations to produce infinitely customizable parts without problems or delays.

This challenge was quickly understood and overcome by the Metrologic DCS teams, who developed their responses to this project to encompass the concept of production line automation.

The project was launched at the end of 2023, with production scheduled to begin early 2025. Metrolog will initially only be used for geometrical tolerances. However, the question of CAD enrichment quickly arose.

“By transferring the demands into the CAD model from a traditional drawing, we have enabled a digitization of a workflow that was really time consuming, and heading towards a paperless production, explains Fredrik Norbäck, Automation Measuring Engineer at Sandvik Coromant. The mayor benefit with this transformation: we can use our resources in a better way. For example, we don’t need specific competences for each system we utilize in the production regarding extraction of discrete values for SPC but instead focus our competences on the CAD environment. This solution we got from our work together with Metrologic DCS has cut the needs of several specific measure programs for each option of the product to only one that we run everything in.”

As part of this project, Metrolog made it possible to add text information to the generated CAD model to supplement the GDTs with symbols not supported by the CAD software and to integrate the evaluation rules to be applied in X4 into the models. 

“Starting from the enriched CAD model, continues Fabrice, we created scripts managed by our CAD decoding functions to associate the evaluation rules and create the geometric tolerances appropriate to the mechanical requirements of the parts.”

These attributes and scripts are used to write the measurement program for the ordered part.

“We worked closely with the Sandvik Coromant teams on several issues, including how to adjust the values in the script, i.e. what is used in Metrolog and what will be transferred from the CAD model, explains Kevin Souvignet, Custom Success Technical Leader at Metrologic DCS. We had many discussions on these topics to see how we could help their teams define these values to meet their measurement needs."

Significantly reduced risk of error and increased efficiency

Using Metrolog allows Sandvik Coromant not only to check the measurements of ordered parts, but also to decode the CAD model generated by the customer order without having to constantly update its programs: these are now directly regenerated via scripts for each new order.

Automation of the measurement program offering maximum flexibility

In this project, Metrolog was used to add GD&T information to the CAD model and information on measurement rules to the surfaces, so that the measurement program could be facilitated and accelerated and generated automatically. All sizes in this product range can now be processed automatically, as well as any new parts, if equivalent surfaces, planes and PMI are used.

Finally, the measurement and production of these parts, thanks to the import of the CAD model, the addition of measurement rules and the use of a script, is highly efficient for a low investment in time.