Experts at Nikon Metrology Share Their Experience

Written By: Fran Waghorn

The NEXIV product range of­fers a fully auto­mated quick, ac­cur­ate and re­peat­able meas­ure­ment solu­tion, in an ex­tremely strong ma­chine. Primar­ily the NEXIV works as a non-con­tact sys­tem using Nikon’s ex­cel­lent zoom op­tics to­gether with a cam­era and auto­mated edge de­tec­tion soft­ware al­gorithms.

We spoke to our Nikon NEXIV ex­pert Paul Gough about his ex­per­i­ence of work­ing with the NEXIV range for over 13 years.

As a Nikon Met­ro­logy ex­pert for the NEXIV, what is your fa­vour­ite fea­ture of the Nikon NEXIV & why?

My fa­vour­ite fea­ture about the ma­chine which I really, really like… The WOW factor is re­li­ab­il­ity. The NEXIV comes straight out of the box, it works & it keeps work­ing, to me that is the most im­port­ant thing. I can sell a sys­tem to a cus­tomer & I have no fear of a cus­tomer call­ing me back to say they are hav­ing is­sues – it never hap­pens. I have com­plete con­fid­ence in our product. It is a product I be­lieve in; it is a product that I am proud to sell.

There are lots of little fea­tures I love, such as the ex­ten­ded depth of field (EDF) stitch­ing & image grabbing – but the real im­port­ant one is the fact that the product is so well built which res­ults in a low long term cost of own­er­ship.

The other thing I like is; we do not tie people up with a main­ten­ance con­tract for NEXIV. Our help­desk is not forced upon you but is al­ways avail­able to a cus­tomer in need.

What has kept you work­ing for Nikon Met­ro­logy over the past 13 years?

Firstly, Nikon is a great com­pany to work for, they look after people. They have a very pos­it­ive at­ti­tude to their em­ploy­ees it is fant­astic and up­lift­ing.

For me to stay here for over 13 years it is all about en­joy­ing the job. The part of my job which gives me the most sat­is­fac­tion is being able to re­solve a cus­tomer’s prob­lem with our solu­tion, that is what really gets me out of bed in the morn­ing.

What is Nikon NEXIV, how is it chan­ging the way we meas­ure?

In a nutshell, NEXIV is an auto­mated meas­ure­ment solu­tion. The NEXIV solu­tion im­proves through­put speed which in turn re­duces over­all costs & re­duces op­er­ator error as everything is auto­mated. Un­like people the NEXIV does not suf­fer with hangovers, tired­ness or hav­ing a bad day, it is al­ways pre­cise.

NEXIV is chan­ging the way we meas­ure by de­liv­er­ing key be­ne­fits to cus­tom­ers by re­du­cing costs, provid­ing a quick set of res­ults, being so re­li­able and high­light­ing prob­lems much sooner than a manual device.

NEXIV can also help boost con­tract work by provid­ing ac­cur­ate res­ults for your busi­ness time after time. Your cus­tom­ers will see the auto­mated NEXIV sys­tems in place which gives them more con­fid­ence, they see your com­pany is tak­ing qual­ity ser­i­ously.

What sec­tors & in­dus­tries be­ne­fit from using a Nikon NEXIV?

Any­one! Ab­so­lutely any­one can buy this product for their sec­tor. The sec­tors can range by all sorts; in­clud­ing major in­dus­tries like auto­mot­ive, aerospace, semi-con­ductor, elec­tron­ics & med­ical. There is no real cri­teria as to who will be­ne­fit, NEXIV is suit­able for any in­dustry where they want quicker through­put & more re­li­able data.

Also, with an auto­mated ma­chine in place, there is the re­duc­tion in la­bour costs. Which can res­ult in the op­er­ator’s ex­pert­ise being util­ised in dif­fer­ent & more be­ne­fi­cial areas to your busi­ness.

How do the Nikon NEXIV mod­els dif­fer & what does each model uniquely offer for the cus­tomer?

The VMA iN­EXIV range is our gen­eral pur­pose ma­chine shall we say. The ma­chine also has the cap­ab­il­it­ies of car­ry­ing the touch probe, so in turn, really opens up the func­tion­al­ity of the ma­chine into a small benchtop CMM.

We then move onto the VMZ range. These mod­els have in­creased ac­cur­acy, higher mag­ni­fic­a­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies and offer a ‘through the lens’ scan­ning laser as stand­ard, a func­tion­al­ity that can be used for sur­face pro­files for ex­ample. The VMZ range has more ad­vanced light­ing (so a much lar­ger ring light) which in­tens­i­fies the ma­chine as the ring light does not only work in one po­s­i­tion, the light also moves up & down en­han­cing edges which you could not usu­ally see with a stand­ard ring light.

An­other nicety of the lens scan­ning laser is the dual sensor, per­fect for using on a trans­par­ent coated sur­face. When using only one laser this will either be on top or go through & hit the sub straight. Using dual op­tics, you have the op­tion to go for top sur­face or sub straight & be able to look at the thick­ness of the trans­lu­cent sur­face, which is ideal for elec­tronic in­dus­tries.

One of the key ma­chines for me is the VMZ-TZ. The model of­fers dual op­tics at a very high mag­ni­fic­a­tion. Be­cause of these op­tics we can see res­ults which you would never see without mag­ni­fy­ing. The fact that people talk about 1-mi­cron, what is 1-mi­cron? Well, you can ac­tu­ally see it with this ma­chine! Be­cause of these won­der­ful op­tics, the model is well suited for the semi-con­ductor in­dustry.

The H model is for those look­ing for a very high ac­cur­acy ma­chine – this model is the ul­ti­mate in ac­cur­acy.

Apart from our fant­astic NEXIV products, it is our (Nikon’s) ex­per­i­ence in met­ro­logy which makes us stand out from the crowd. I have too many years be­hind me now (40 years to be al­most exact) in met­ro­logy & man­u­fac­tur­ing. My ad­vice is al­ways free & as ex­plained; I am pas­sion­ate about these ma­chines – I am proud of them.

To know more, check Nikon Metrology