More than 1800 employees at the Mercedes-Benz U.S. Inc. plant in Tuscaloosa, AL, assemble 80,000 sport-utility vehicles per year in a huge 200-acre facility. To ensure that all those SUVs--and their supplied component parts and assemblies--meet specs, the plant employs horizontal-arm CMMs from Zeiss. Two dual-arm SMM-C CMMs with touch-trigger probes measure upward of 1000 points on bodies-in-white pulled from the production line along with sheetmetal assemblies from outside suppliers. The SMM-Cs can measure to 276 in. on the X axis, 63 in. on the X and 95 in. on the Z. They handle workpieces weighing to 11,000 lb. The plant produces standard and high-performance versions of Mercedes Benz 320, 500, 55 and 270 models. Body-in-white tolerances for these vehicles range from +-0.5 to +-2.0 mm. From time to time the CMMs do special measurements to facilitate problem investigations or to measure doors, for example, through every stage of production, even removing them from the SUV body after painting.
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