Austech 09 Review

From May 12-15, this year, Hi-Tech Metrology once again exhibited at Australia's premium annual engineering show - AUSTECH, a full range of our equipment, skills and capabilities.

This year, AUSTECH was held in Melbourne, and we had a significant amount of equipment on display on our main stand including a Brown & Sharpe Global CMM, Micro Vu vision system CMM, various products from our FARO stable including a FARO ScanArm with V3 LLP laser scanner, a FARO Laser Tracker, FARO Gage and the new ZScanner 800 from principal - Z Corp of the USA.

Demonstrations on the Stand included high precision measurement of an off-gear gear box housing from Albins Off-Road Gear on the Global CMM, 3D laser scanning of automotive panels on a Smart Fortwo Coupe (donated by Mercedes-Benz Melbourne - South Melbourne for the week), and the scanning of various parts including a small Kubota tractor back-hoe bucket (donated by SuperGroups of Hallam) using the ZScanner 800 3D hand-held laser scanning system.

Interest levels in all of the equipment and product demonstrations on the Stand was very high and although visitor numbers were down on previous years there was no shortage of buyer interest and enthusiasm from both existing and new clients in seeking help and assistance from Hi-Tech Metrology to solve their latest measurement, reverse engineering and modelling challenges.

We were fortunate to have Mr Taveesak Srisuntisuk, General Manager, Brown & Sharpe, Hexagon Asia Pacific visit us at the AUSTECH this year.  Taveesak who is based in Bangkok, Thailand, commented on the large size of the Show and the very good attendance and was very impressed with the Hi-Tech Metrology's display of the Brown & Sharpe range of CMMs.    Mr Victor Ng, General Manager, Sheffield CMM, Hexagon Asia Pacific, is a regular visitor to the annual AUSTECH Show, but was unfortunately unable to attend AUSTECH this year due to other commitments.  He sent his best wishes for a successful Show by telephone to the Hi-Tech Team.

Hi-Tech Metrology was also involved in a major industry initiative this year at the AUSTECH exhibition, the Innovate 2009 - a mini self-contained exhibition of the latest in manufacturing technologies from around the world, put together by AMTIL with funding from the Australian Government.

On the Innovate 2009 Stand we had a number of pieces of equipment which demonstrated how the application of these technologies could be used to assist Australian manufacturers improve their productivity and aspire to global competitiveness.  We had a Sheffield Discovery D8 in operation as part of a fully-automated robotic-loaded CNC machine tool manufacturing cell, a FARO ScanArm laser scanning a machined impellor for reverse engineering tasks, 3D Printing equipment from Z Corp, for product design visualization, and a Micro Vu Vertex 420 vision-based CMM in the nanotechnology section of the Innovate Stand.  The Innovate Stand was manned for most of the week by sales manager, Mark Cray, and applications / service engineer, Bryan Clydesdale.  Mark was also heavily involved with conducting guided tours of the Innovate mini-exhibition, showing visitors the range of technologies on offer and how these technologies could be applied to a wide range of Australian businesses.

The 2009 AUSTECH Show was a great success for Hi-Tech Metrology with the opportunity to make many new acquaintances, the chance to talk over future applications with existing customers, and some excellent new business prospects were uncovered.

On behalf of the whole Hi-Tech Team I would like to thank everyone who stopped by at our various Stands and locations and helped us make the AUSTECH 2009 exhibition the success that is was, and I would also like to especially thank the whole Hi-Tech Metrology team who spent many long hours setting up the Stands, manning the Stands during the exhibition and finally helping to pack up the equipment. It was a great team effort.

I would also like to extend a special thank-you to Bryan Clydesdale who toiled for many long hours over many nights to get the machining / CMM cell within the Innovate 2009 display up and running in time for the exhibition.  This was a fantastic effort!

David Eldridge, General Manager
June 2009