Quality Assurance
ISO 9001:2015 certified facility
As an ISO 9001:2015 certified facility, Prototier ensures all parts and assemblies are carefully inspected prior to being shipped. For quality assurance, a certified quality engineer reviews the original design specifications and conducts a dimensional inspection to ensure all parts are within tolerances.
At Prototier-1 Inc.
we employ multiple statistical techniques to ensure customer specifications and requirements are met every time. These techniques include:
- Dimensional inspection reports
- PPAP submissions
- Capability studies
- 3D scanning inspection and “heat maps”
CMM Dimensional Inspection
A Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) is a sensitive piece of machinery that is used to measure discrete points on a part’s geometry. CMM’s are used to inspect a parts conformance to specifications by comparing the position of the measured points to the intended geometry and tolerances.
Prototier currently uses two LK CNC Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMM) to conduct dimensional inspection with a very high degree of accuracy. Our LK CMM’s are outfitted with the latest software to make sure we can measure any challenging parts our customers have.
The LK Altera CMM was purchased with Nikon laser scanning abilities to conduct complex form and surface inspection at outstanding rates. This CMM has been able to increase our quality assurance throughput and improve the accuracy of our dimensional results. This ensures we’re able to supply quality parts on time and to our customer’s satisfaction!
CMM Inspection Equipment and Software:
- LK Altera S 10.7.6. with non-contact scanning capabilities
- LK G-90C 30.12.10
- LK Studio (DMIS based) Software
- Polyworks Inspector Software
3D Scanning and Reverse Engineering
To stay up to date with the quality requirements of today’s engineers and designers, we have introduced 3D scanning to our QA department. Our 3D scanners allow us to quickly generate meshes that can be used for either dimensional inspection or reverse engineering. We can scan part with accuracy up to 0.030mm (0.0012in).
The implementation of 3D scanning at our facility has revolutionized our development process for parts. We can now overlay CAD files on scanned parts to determine the dimensional accuracy of complex surfaces in a matter of minutes. This not only produces time and cost savings for our customers, but also produces more dimensionally accurate parts.
Using our 3D scanners, ProtoTier now has the ability to reverse engineer parts and assemblies. If components were designed and manufactured years ago, customers may no longer have the tooling or drawings to produce parts. In such a scenario, we can scan any remaining parts to re-create 3D CAD and build tooling or parts to restart manufacturing.
Other 3D scanning and reverse engineering applications include:
- Scanning production parts to determine modifications needed.
- Scanning assemblies or fixtures to identify modifications needed.
- Scanning to create copies of bespoke or “one-off” parts.
- Scanning to recreate CAD for “service parts”.