Renishaw has announced the launch of a successor to its well established QC10 ballbar system; a tool adopted worldwide for the assessment of machine tool positioning and servo control performance.

The QC20-W ballbar is a completely new design featuring a Renishaw developed linear sensor and Bluetooth® wireless technology. This design offers benefits in ease of use and enhanced durability and allows the QC20-W to be used for testing even in “closed door” manufacturing, where access for wiring can raise safety and procedural issues.

Diagnose and quantify machine tool positioning errors
The new design also allows testing in 3 orthogonal planes through a single reference point. A single, simple hardware set up means quicker testing and the ability to produce a representative volumetric measurement of positioning accuracy. The QC20-W ballbar retains the principle of a simple CNC circular program, and powerful software. Together, these can quickly diagnose and quantify machine positioning errors including, servo mismatch, stick-slip errors, backlash, repeatability, scale mismatch and machine geometry as well as giving an overall circularity error value.