My story is similar to many postings on this forum. I have been assigned to research and purchase a CMM for our facility. While getting quotes for different CMM's, Zeiss mentioned they have the best machines for scanning. (typical salesman) Well, after that point, I began to ask other vendors about scanning. While Zeiss uses the VAST head with special Zeiss probes, the other vendors say they can use Renishaw probes to scan. Is this a different type of scanning? Am I comparing "apples-to-apples"?

Also when researching, I came to a limitation of Zeiss scanning. The probe cannot index or even rotate. This is a problem for our application because we have approximately 30 similar but different aircraft wheel halves. The holes we would like to scan are inflation holes. There are 1-3 holes at different locations around the wheel that are at different angles to vertical (approx. 10-45 degrees). After interrogating the salesman, he stated that we would have to have each one of these probes assemblies made to inspect the different configurations. That would mean approximately 30-90 different assemblies, which means big $$$$$. Is my thinking correct? Do the other systems have the same limitations?

Thanks for any help,
Mark Pate
Honeywell - Aircraft Landing Systems