Chemnitz also owes this high precision to the holistic interaction of many measures. When ultra-high precision is required, the workpiece goes into the separate, fully air-conditioned area, which, thanks to a sophisticated ventilation concept in maximum climate class 1, keeps the temperature constant at 20 °C – with a maximum difference of 0.2 K. To ensure that passing trucks or vibrating machines from neighbouring halls do not falsify the measuring result, the measuring machines stand on a vibration-decoupled foundation and base plate ensemble.

The selection of the measuring quartet in Chemnitz was targeted. ”The MMZ major-part portal coordinate measuring centre, the MICURA high-accuracy measuring machine and the two PRISMO 3D coordinate measuring machines are graduated in relation to each other in terms of the size of the parts so that we get redundancies,” says the Head of QM. ”I can therefore also keep a machine completely free for a customer project.” The four machines can accommodate small components with an edge length of 500 mm, medium-sized workpieces (900 mm × 1,800 mm × 700 mm) and XXL components with a maximum measuring volume of 27 m³. ”Even a small car or a complete Heckert machine bed fits in the MMZ,” says the expert. ”I’m often at customers’ and suppliers’ sites, but at no company – including numerous wellknown companies – did I see a comparably equipped centre.”

The latest investment is a ZEISS PRISMO with a turntable for continuous four-axis measurement. The measuring centre thus responds to the trend at Starrag and its customers towards four-axis and five-axis machining of precision components. ”With a three-axis measuring machine, a cylinder with many bores cannot be measured completely because the sensor cannot get into every bore,” says Knöfel, citing a typical example from practice. ”The turntable allows us to position the cylinder so that the measurement succeeds. Thanks to the turntable, the PRISMO is now also a four-axis 3D coordinate measuring machine – and not everyone has that.”