Nezkot Precision Tooling and Engineering, now uses Romer Absolute Portable Arm for their key metrology tasks
Nezkot Precision Tooling & Engineering located in the northern Melbourne suburb of Bundoora is a successful and well-respected engineering business. The Company focuses on the supply of precision tooling and engineering services and has developed a niche in the market with their high quality and unique manufacturing capabilities for the aerospace, automotive, mining and FMCG manufacturing sectors.
Founded in 1987 as a toolmaking and high precision business Nezkot has grown to now employ over 25 staff operating across two shifts and has complete design, CNC machining, tooling and manufacturing capabilities. CNC equipment includes large multi-axis machining, turning, wire cutting, EDM and surface grinding equipment. Through their subsidiary Bike Technologies Australia and with their expertise in 3D component and mould design and design for manufacture have developed some of the most advanced carbon fibre track bicycles available in the world today.
Nezkot are one of only a small number of suppliers in Melbourne qualified for aerospace tooling work to major aerospace contractors - for both civilian as well as other projects, and now with the upsurge in aerospace tooling demand constitutes a large proportion of their workshop activities.
In mid-2011 with the upturn in aerospace tooling work there was a need for Nezkot to investigate ways in which the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) requirements of their key customer could be met. "We looked at fixed coordinate measuring machines, said Sansonetti, but they didn't have the flexibility or the dexterity that we needed to get around and underneath parts in order to measure critical features relative to or in comparison to key datums or references, we found that we needed a portable arm - a portable coordinate measuring machine, to perform these types of tasks.
Nezkot starting their evaluation process for a portable measuring arm and had a several submissions from a number of suppliers including Hi-Tech Metrology. They considered both probing as well as probing and laser scanning options for the portable measuring hardware. In the end however, according to Adrian Sansonetti, it was the local support that we were most concerned about and we believe that Hi-Tech Metrology provided the best overall package on this front.
In the end we decided on a Romer Absolute 7325 SI series Arm and PolyWorks/Inspector Probing software said Sansonetti and even though we don't see a great need currently for laser scanning its nice to know that in the future we have the capabilities to do laser scanning inspection and reverse engineering with our Romer hardware platform. This may have some significant benefits in the future in our on-going development programs for the racing cycle business].
We have also found the PolyWorks software to be excellent remarked Sansonetti, and after the appropriate training provide by Hi-Tech Metrology we now find that we can measure the required features as per the GD&T call out simply and with great confidence. The 3D CAD background of our team here at Nezkot also helps us to use PolyWorks which we have found to produce reports and output that our customers really like.
In the fully equipment workshop and tooling facility at Nezkot's Bundoora plant an array of work is being undertaken from the modification of large aerospace tools, to the manufacture of automotive moulding tooling, and tooling for local manufacturers of specialised food trays etc. Nezkot also have the capabilities of performing very specialised machining and assembly tasks, such as recently, the removal, machining and fitting of a bearing system to the rear aileron of an aircraft.
The future for Nezkot appears to be solid and positive, and whilst there will be a period of consolidation as they take further advantage of their new premises at University Hill in Bundoora; they are well positioned to take advantage of the growing need for quality aerospace and precision engineering tooling capabilities in the Australian market where strong export contracts still exist as well as growth in their other business of development and manufacture of a range of some of the most innovative cycling technology available anywhere in the world.