Renishaw enters CMM retrofit market

While the company’s retrofit activities are not restricted to the top-of-the-range Revo, both Hexagon and Zeiss are not supporting Revo’s integration on their products. Revo offers huge productivity gains in scanning applications, able to scan at up to 500 mm/sec. Future developments of Revo technology will see surface measurement incorporated. Renishaw’s UK general manager, Marc Saunders, suggests that the annual UK retrofit market is around 100 CMMs, but that with Renishaw’s entrance to the market he expects this to increase. He hopes that Renishaw can capture half of this market. Refurbished CMMs can also compete with new, it is suggested. In certain circumstances, the difference between retrofitted CMM performance and new is not great, with technology like Revo allowing older machines to compete well with new at lower cost. A top-of-the-range Revo retrofit is likely to cost up to £75,000, with more traditional technology costing less, of course. Mr Saunders stressed that the company is not looking to compete aggressively with CMM companies that are providing Renishaw technology, such as Mitutoyo. The Renishaw retrofit initiative has been made possible with the purchase earlier this year of a non-exclusive copy of Metris Camio CMM metrology software plus a number of developers. This will form the basis of its Modus metrology software and will diverge from Camio from now. With its own metrology software, all the necessary pieces are in place within the company (probes, CMM controller, metrology software). The Renishaw offering will be a professional service based upon a thorough survey of existing equipment. A quote will be made on the basis of that and Renishaw will guarantee post-retrofit performance. * Machinery will cover Renishaw’s new initiative thoroughly in a forthcoming issue.