Update from the workshop

 

Manufacturing complex parts for our watches, as well as for industries outside of watchmaking, requires complex metrology, too. In this case we are seeing what the limits are of our new Zeiss Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM).  CMM's use tactile measuring devices in the form of ruby spheres to very accurately "feel" how big (or small) a part is. On our new CMM from Zeiss, we've been able to use this method to measure parts with a certainty below 1um - that's such a small value, it's difficult to even comprehend! For reference, a human blood cell is around 7um in diameter. Tactile measurement has worked incredibly well for us, and generally works very well when the feature sizes are relatively large - so you can use a large ruby sphere (called a stylus). But, part of the reason of why we purchased this particular machine was due to its very unique ability to use incredibly small styli. Generally these ruby spheres are around 1mm in diameter, or larger - however this can pose problems when the parts you are trying to measure are very small in and of themselves! For example, measuring a hole that is 0.5mm in diameter, you would need a ruby that is significantly smaller than the hole size!  Last week we pulled out our new 0.2mm stylus - this ruby is just two sheets of paper in diameter, or about 3 human hairs wide! It's dwarfed against the tip of a ballpoint pen, and requires a special ceramic sphere to calibrate it in our Zeiss CMM, shown below.

These probe tips or styli are manufacturing marvels themselves - here is a great video walk through of how these tiny measuring devices are manufactured! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3oINXdHLNw When we set out to do watch manufacturing in Australia, I never thought we would be doing this! Josh Hacko