Quality engineers need accurate force measurement solutions
When a product is brought to market, the engineering and manufacturing requirements and regulations can be immense. Every industry has strict guidelines to ensure safety, durability, quality and overall customer satisfaction. To meet these requirements, most product and component manufacturers have experienced quality engineers to help them meet the necessary requirements in production.
Quality engineers come in a variety of Industries including automotive, transportation, infrastructure, aerospace and defense, industrial automation, medical devices and healthcare, and consumer goods manufacturing. Your job is to monitor, test and report on quality. They are also significantly involved in strategy, process development and increasing production. Depending on the position, they are responsible for inspecting and testing raw materials, components, mechanical systems, hardware and software, and finished products.
The quality engineer works with manufacturers, developers and project managers. They typically work with quality assurance and quality control teams to develop processes, conduct testing procedures, and implement systems that ensure manufactured products and manufacturing processes meet quality standards and safety regulations and satisfy everyone involved. They are protection for companies that manufacture, build and distribute products and materials.
The accuracy of test and measurement data is fundamental to quality engineers. Because they are critical to quality assurance and control, quality engineers rely heavily on all kinds of high-precision load cells, weighing systems and gauges from Interface for force measurement quality systems. Manufacturing quality engineers rely on Interface products to test both products and equipment on a production line to ensure they perform reliably and meet specific safety standards.
Force measurement systems also facilitate the role of the quality engineer by using accurate data. This is because force measurement often enables automated, real-time monitoring of many processes in the manufacture of things. Interface precision load cells are used for monitoring machine processes on the assembly line, testing and monitoring automation devices such as robots and weighing systems, and robust on-site and remote quality control equipment.
Below you will find some examples of the use of force measuring systems in quality engineering.
Medical devices – Interventional quality testing of guidewires
A medical device manufacturer must perform quality controls on the threaded ends of its interventional guidewires. The threaded end of the guidewire contains an extremely small 000-120 thread that must be inspected with pass and fail gauges to determine mating with other important assemblies. The company required a customized, turnkey test bench that was both cost-effective and flexible for different lengths and models of guidewires. Interface proposes a system in which the customer loads the guidewire axially and through the MRI miniature flange reaction torque transducer insert, secure it and check the thread quality with an automatic stepper motor on a slide. During use, the MRI measures the torques of the no-go and go gauges, which indicate the quality of the guidewire.
Quality monitoring of snack weighing and packaging machines
A quality aspect in the area of packaged consumer goods is ensuring even distribution of individually packaged snack bags such as chips or sweets. When a snack brand wanted to weigh the amount of their snacks that would be automatically distributed into bags during the packaging process, Interface offered a solution. We hit several SPI Platform Scale Load Cells and installed them on the potato multihead weigher and the packaging machine. The SPI Platform Scale load cells were installed in the bracket that attaches the head scale to the packaging machine. The force results of the potato chips were read by the load cells and sent to the ISG Isolated DIN Rail Mount Signal Conditioner sent where the customer is able to control the automatic production from his command center. The customer was able to determine the weight of the potato chips distributed into the bags with highly accurate results. He was also able to control the automated production process using the instruments provided. The company will also use this weighing method for other snacks to be packed using this machine.
Vehicle crash test load cell quality check of the wall
A company wanted to carry out crash tests on its vehicles for quality control. There are several tests, such as vehicle structural tests, development tests and compliance tests, and they had to measure the force of the vehicle crash tests in all axles. Interface' suggested several 3A400 3-axis load cells to use and attach them to the back of a cement crash wall. When connected to the BX8-HD44 Interface BlueDAQ Series Data Acquisition System The force results are recorded and displayed on the customer's PC or laptop. The customer was able to measure impact force for all of their various vehicle crash test demonstrations.
The applications of force measurements for quality engineers are diverse, and the need to obtain this data is critical to producing safe, reliable, and high-quality products.