On the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, the Transportation Division of Bombardier begins the assembly of electric commuter trains that speed through the New York subway and out along Long Island commuter rails. Located in the heart of French-speaking Canada, the La Pocatiere facility is a key link in a NAFTA-inspired manufacturing net- work in which assembly of these cars is shared with a sister facility south of the border in Auburn, NY. Parts for carriage bogey trucks and the upper structural parts of the cars are cut and welded together in Canada; much of the final machining and finishing is done in the U.S. What may not be so obvious on something so large as a commuter train is the need to hold dimensional quality on the vehicles. Welding the many pieces accurately requires an understanding of the behavior of steel and knowing why physical dimensions are something of a moving target. Because the sheet stock used for the bogey trucks is 3/8 in. or greater, the robots must apply considerable heat to ensure sound welds. As weldments cool from molten to ambient temperatures, the now-joined parts distort slightly, with inevitable stresses forming as the steel tries to change shape as it contracts. Bombardier engineers used to monitor dimensions of bogey parts for absolute position, for surface flatness, and for surface parallelism. The sheer volume of quality data that the company needed to handle presented many problems. What the company needed was a way to be able to measure all points in the same manner, regardless of who was taking the measurements, and to compile statistical process control (SPC) reports as fast as the measurements were taken. What they found to do these tasks was a FaroArm portable 3D measuring system that uses optical encoders in articulating arm joints to pinpoint an exact point, digitize it, then record it in a computer. Developed by FARO Technologies, Lake Mary, FL, the arm has proven itself as a quality checking tool in shop floor environments, from transmission plants to assorted fabrication shops. Data from the arm are fed to a computer that operates with software that was written for the arm, known as CAM2 Measure. This software collects the measured points and compares them to nominals from the original design. As soon as a unit is measured, the software can generate SPC reports that not only show how dose the truck is on critical tolerances, but also dimensional drift from one unit to another.
Bombardier uses measuring arm to 'track' train quality
Welding Design and Fabrication ; 75 , August ; 40-43
2002
4 Seiten, 5 Bilder
Article (Journal)
English
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