EXTREMELY ACCURATE DIAMETER MEASUREMENT OF BORES AND SPIGOTS

Rotork PLC is the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of industrial valve actuators, valve control systems, valve gearboxes and accessories. From its impressive head office in Bath,  Rotork controls a global network of over 150 offices and representatives providing a localised single source for the company’s products.

Rotork’s renowned electric valve actuator division, Rotork Controls offers electrical solutions to industrial valve control and actuation applications of virtually any size, description and complexity. Rotork Controls’ capabilities encompass actuators and control systems for new plants, plant extensions and upgrades, together with life of plant support. 

Rotork provide an unrivalled range of market-leading products, throughout the world, offering robust and economic solutions for every valve duty and operating environment. To uphold the company’s hard earned reputation for the high quality of their range of products, Rotork operate a stringent Quality Assurance regime. In addition to suppliers and subcontractors being obliged to maintain and provide comprehensive SPC reports with all of the critical components they supply, they are also encouraged to use the same quality engineering techniques and quality control measuring equipment as those employed by Rotork. Given the harsh environments that Rotork’s actuators are often used within, this thorough ‘belt and braces’ and cominality of approach to Quality Assurance and Quality Control helps to ensure the continuing absolute “quality and reliability” of the company’s products.

An example of Rotork’s thorough approach to Quality Assurance, via advancd quality control methods, is the company’s recent purchase of a bespoke range of internal / external diameter measuring equipment from the world’s leading bore-gauge manufacturer, Bowers Metrology. Rotork’s new Bowers equipment performs the extremely accurate diameter measurement of bores and spigots (both parallel and tapered), the accuracy of which determines the safety critical flame paths of the company’s Hazardous Area actuators via statistical process control methods. 

Tony Bruce, Rotork’s Supplier Quality Engineer, explained,  “Having determined that traditional bore-gauges and external measuring devices would not provide the accuracy and repeatability that we required, Rotork approached Bowers Metrology Systems, the bespoke arm of Bowers Metrology, with our extremely demanding technical specification. The resulting, ingenious Bowers design is now in daily use and has proven to be both accurate and easy to use. The equipment also delivers all of the data we require in a very usable format. The new Rotork internal/external measuring equipment will be duplicated in our supplier’s plant ensuring a common Rotork measuring methodology is applied to these critical parts”  

Click here to download the Bowers Metrology Systems brochure.

Published on June 04, 2009 14:24 updated on July 15, 2009 17:08