New FARO PowerGAGE Arms On-Machine Inspection Market

FARO Technologies, Inc. [NASDAQ: FARO], the world’s single source for a complete line of portable CAM2 solutions, has released the FARO PowerGAGE – a new measurement device that adds CAD-to-part analysis capability to its FARO Gage product line. FARO President and Co-CEO Jay Freeland said: “It is a tremendous opportunity, as this is the only portable measurement device that enables manufacturers to verify that a part meets the CAD file’s specs to within .0002 of an inch – right on the machine that’s producing the part.” The PowerGAGE is different from its FARO Gage and Gage-PLUS counterparts in that it can perform CAD-to-part analysis. Whereas the FaroArm enables users to reverse engineer and use more than 40 different software platforms, the PowerGAGE runs exclusively on a version of Delcam’s PowerINSPECT – software already used by the majority of the OMI market. When equipped with both of PowerINSPECT's Programmer and Play-Only modules, PowerGAGE users can:

• Create inspection programs/routines offline for anyone in the facility to run
• Import all major industry CAD formats
• Perform surface inspection against master CAD files 
• Receive on-screen instructions including images and videos
• Access a full suite of geometric inspection tools
• Automatically optimize the viewing angle of the part as they measure
• Save all inspection data and run customized reports 

The PowerGAGE, which resembles a short, metallic arm, is a high-tech, yet user-friendly manufacturing inspection device. Instead of taking the part to an expensive fixed CMM in a climate-controlled room, they can mount the PowerGAGE directly to where the part is being made. As the user traces the arm’s tip over the part’s entire surface, the system’s laptop computer verifies all of the part’s 3-D measurements against the original CAD file – the digital “blueprint” – to see if it was made correctly and, if not, where it needs to be corrected, thus reducing scrap, re-work and labor costs.

“We developed the PowerGAGE as a direct result of input from customers who wanted the high, .0002” accuracy of our FARO Gage-PLUS, but needed expanded capability to handle CAD-to-part analysis,” Freeland said. “When you consider the low introductory cost, the value to the OMI market and the fact that an entire department can be trained in only two hours, the PowerGAGE’s return on investment is substantial and almost immediate.”