At Napoleon Engineering Services, inspection and testing capabilities have played a prominent role in its customer offering. Indeed, NES, located in Olean, N.Y., has long prided itself not just on boasting the largest independent bearing inspection and testing facility in North America, but also the most respected.
David Steere, Napoleon Engineering Services Inspection Engineer. Image Credit: Taylor Hobson
At the heart of this service is its Source Qualification Inspection (SQI) program, a unique, and renowned, industrial bearing reverse engineering program. Through its SQI, NES’ goal is multi-pronged:
Step 1 - To determine a bearing’s design intentions, manufacturing capability and quality of workmanship. As part of this program, NES performs a detailed dimensional analysis of the internal geometries.
For years, NES has successfully managed to advise customers on a potential source of supply based on these characteristics. To achieve this, it’s critically important that NES be both highly precise in its measurements and assured of the data it gathers.
Enter, Taylor Hobson’s Form Talysurf® PGI system - The Form Talysurf® PGI is a contact stylus profilometer that measures surface finish and produces high-accuracy form measurements. Its capabilities and ever-evolving technologies have helped to allow NES to confidently carry out its programs.
“As we can see through bearing modeling, we know that differences in this realm, in terms of design, impact the calculated life of these products.” said Cooper Buckley, NES Inspection Engineer.
“We don’t have access to manufacturer’s designs or the research they’ve done to come to these profile shapes for tapered roller bearings and cylindrical roller bearings. So, to reconstruct this on a budget, we need to know for sure that they are using the most precise tools available. That’s what the Taylor Hobson system gives us.”
Step 2 - is to note if a manufacturer is off to their tolerances, based on NES’ vast experience. Again, the Taylor Hobson Form Talysurf® has provided the foundation for these numbers.
“The differences between good product and bad product can be millionths of an inch and can only be seen using systems like this,” Buckley went on, “which allow our customers the most precise, critical analysis of these surfaces.”
“We’re making an assessment about the population based on a small sample, so we need to be confident in the ability of the form measurement that we take. With the Form Talysurf® PGI, we have that confidence.”
“One of the many great things about this machine is the volume of information it uses to characterize the bearing surface”, Buckley said. “It’s using vastly more data points, which increases the accuracy of the measurement,” he noted.
“When you’re trying to determine the design intention and capability of the manufacturing process, you better be using that machine.”
Chris Napoleon, President - Napoleon Engineering Services – “It’s the enhanced precision of the Form Talysurf® systems, due to greater number of data points that they’re able to process when tracing a surface, that allows us to have greater accuracy.”
“This is important to us because we’re responsible for determining the quality level of a supplier, and it’s all based on the empirical measurements that we’re taking off bearings that are provided to us.”
“This is very different from being out on the shop floor and saying, ‘OK, here’s the tolerance range that you’re allowed to hit and then measuring it to see if it’s in that range.’ (In these cases), we don’t know what the range is, so if we’re inducing error into the measurement because of the inability of the gauge to be accurate, then that limits the confidence we have in our statement that we make about a supplier’s quality.”
“This (measurement system) is able to provide us with a much higher level of value.”
Jamie Ross, Business Development Director Americas – “It’s great to see our measurement systems being used to their full potential. The service NES provides to the Bearings industry as an independent consultant is second to none”. “It incredible to see the amount global companies that draw on the expertise of NES.”
FORM TALYSURF® LASER - High Range, High Resolution Surface Finish, Form and Contour Measurement System
- Surface Finish - High resolution gauges with low noise enable roughness, waviness and form in one measurement
- Step Height - Evaluate step heights with higher resolution gauge ranges to ISO standards and more
- Contour - Our patented calibration technique enables measurement of radii, angle, height, length, distance
- Topography - Using an optional motorized Y-stage and Metrology 4.0 software, transform your conventional 2D measurements into 3D