WENZEL SELECTED AS JOHN DEERE'S PREFERRED CMM SUPPLIER

Deere & Company is one of the world's largest users of CMM machines at its plethora of manufacturing operations around the globe and is actively involved in advancing standards associated with CMM technology.

In 2003, Deere formed a "decision focus team" to evaluate the CMM market with the intent to identify a preferred supplier for the company's CMM requirements. The Deere team's task was daunting, due to the diversity of machines required by its plant activities; diverse by measuring volume, accuracy demands and probing requirements. Although a single supplier was the goal, the team understood they might have to compromise and rationalize to a separate CMM supplier for scanning and another for touch-probe applications.

After almost a year, the evaluation process was finalized and the team selected Wenzel as the preferred source for all its CMM requirements. Corey Leland, leader of the Deere team says, "Although we were currently using few Wenzel CMMs, after extensive evaluation it became apparent that their products and technology satisfied our requirements." (Corey Leland represents John Deere as an active member of the DMIS National Standards Committee and serves as its Vice Chairman.)

During the evaluation, members of the Deere team visited Renishaw in the U.K. to undertake extensive evaluation of the new SP80 and SP25 Scanning Probes together with the Renishaw UCC2 CMM controller; all of which form part of the total CMM scanning solution Deere is standardizing upon.

The extensive technical evaluation also included full ISO10360-4 testing of a Wenzel LH12.30.10 bridge CMM fitted with 0.1 micron resolution scales at the Wenzel manufacturing plant in Weisthel, Germany. An identical machine was subsequently installed at the John Deere Technology Center in Moline, IL for further evaluation and benchmark testing.

Wenzel GmbH is the 4th largest CMM builder in the world and builds their CMMs intrinsically accurate, negating the need for the huge error compensation files to achieve quoted accuracies which have become the norm in past years from most CMM manufacturers. Wenzel is represented in North American by Wixom, Michigan-based Xspect Solutions, Inc.