Reaping the rewards of Metrology

Uz CLAAS Agro - Uzbekistan

Agricultural equipment provider applies precision measurement to heavy-duty machinery manufacturing.

The agricultural equipment sector is one of the most diverse areas of the machinery manufacturing market. From tractors and harvesters to planters and balers, there are vast numbers of specialist machines for all kinds of agricultural application – and these are needed all over the world.

Uz CLAAS Agro LLC is a company that was created to meet this kind of local demand. Based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, it is a joint venture which produces CLAAS agricultural equipment for the Uzbek and wider Central Asian markets. Established in 2010, the company has grown rapidly and now employs around 250 people. Its output of harvesters, balers and tractors has already made it the largest producer of agricultural machinery in the country.
The CLAAS brand stands for equipment quality. New machines are designed in the most modern CAD software packages and all factories producing equipment are required to adhere to the strictest quality standards. While the Uz CLAAS Agro plant initially opened with no metrology equipment on site, the developing scale of operations led to a need for a versatile measurement system which could be used for the dimensional inspection tasks generated by the diverse equipment range.

“We needed a system capable of measuring all different types and sizes of workpiece. Because of the difficulty involved in moving some of the heavier parts, we also wanted to be able to conduct some measurement on the shop floor,” explains Askhad Vildanov, who leads the production technology department. “Our colleagues at CLAAS in Hungary recommended a portable measuring arm from Hexagon Metrology as the best solution on the market.”
Following this recommendation, the company purchased a ROMER Absolute Arm with the HP-L- 20.8 external laser scanner. A portable system with a 4-metre measurement volume and the ability to switch seamlessly between highly-accurate touch probe readings for feature measurement and data-rich point cloud digitising, the arm is now an essential tool for the plant.

Vildanov continues: “We use the ROMER Absolute Arm to measure all our parts and sub-assemblies. Depending on the part, we use both tactile and scanning methods to gather the data we need. The HP-L-20.8 scanner enables us to inspect all kinds of different surfaces and materials, which is ideally suited to our production. We are very satisfied with our investment.”

Although the majority of workpieces are currently supplied to Uz CLAAS Agro, the company hopes to utilise their new laser scanning capability for reverse engineering applications to manufacture more parts in their on-site workshop in future.