The company has more than 100 employees and a business that has been constantly growing serving its customers in the automotive, aerospace, machine tool, mold and tool, and job shop industries.

Heinz Kaiser enjoys licensing agreements with BIG Daishowa Seiki Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan). Under one licensing agreement, Heinz Kaiser manufactures the BIG-PLUS tool holding system. Under another licensing agreement, BIG Daishowa Seiki manufactures Heinz Kaiser's precision boring tools for the Asian market.

With its business growing, Heinz Kaiser's team of engineers and operators began looking for ways to increase the company's toolroom capacity. Knowing the importance of tool-presetting and the impact it has on setup time, the company, which had been presetting its tooling for more than 40 years, began looking for the newest and most accurate technology to complement its existing presetting system.

The evaluation of tool presetting and measuring equipment was spearheaded by Heinz Kaiser's Peter Feller, plant manager, and Thomas Terstiege, production manager. Their objective was to identify and incorporate a system that would work with the company's existing tooling and could easily communicate with its existing Benz TDM tool management software.

The company purchased a tool presetter and measuring system from Speroni S.p.A. (Pavia, Italy). The system selected was a fully-automatic Esperia STP 46 CNC system with ProVision software that promised the level of accuracy and repeatability required to meet critical tolerances, delivered with user-friendly, simple programming software.

"We worked with Heinz Kaiser to deliver a system that would meet their needs and could be integrated into their existing setup," explains Speroni's international product manager, Michael Müller.

The new unit offers both manual and fully-automatic operation. Manual mode allows tool measurements to be made quickly and easily on single tools during prototyping. Automatic mode can be used for all tools that are set up in the database.

Another advantage of the automatic CNC/vision system is that no matter which operator is using the system to measure whichever tool, the results are always the same. This leads to an improvement of tool life and part finish due to the accuracy and consistency of the tool measurement.

On manual units with projectors, focusing is set by the operator, leaving more room for variation and errors. Because the Speroni Esperia STP 46 unit has automatic focusing, the possibility of human error is removed from the measurement process, and repeatability and accuracy are improved.

Heinz Kaiser, Benz TDM, and Speroni supplied the required input for the installation and Speroni and Benz TDM made the necessary adjustments to their systems to integrate the presetter system into the Heinz Kaiser facility.

"Integrating the Speroni software with our system was a shared effort," comments Andy Kolb from Benz TDM. "The software was very accessible for me to program the interface and exchange the data." Similar ventures with other companies usually are more complicated and take much longer, he adds.

The collaboration of the companies helped achieve clear communication between the two systems. Now, tools in the database require no additional definition once they are entered, and they can be measured right after being selected from the tool list. Furthermore, if a more complicated tool contour is defined with the Speroni software, the data are shared with Benz TDM software for future measurements.

The Speroni's high-precision spindle with quick-change adapter allows Heinz Kaiser to switch easily between adapter systems (like ISO, HSK, VDI and Capto). When an operator goes through 100 tools per shift, this feature allows for a quick switch, while maintaining precision and repeatability between adapters. Additionally, because the system can store 999 adapters or zero points, it's simple to add a new one at any time and adjust its zero point to any machine tool on the floor.

The ProVision software allows operators to navigate between screens without losing any data. This flexibility is convenient if, for example, a single tool needs to be preset in the midst of a setup sheet or tool kit.

The click and drag function allows operators to modify existing icons from the database and store them as customized measuring icons. This makes current and future tool crib work much easier, enabling Heinz Kaiser to automate even very complicated tasks.

ProVision's user management feature allows all operators to have access to the system, but with different authorization levels. This allows Heinz Kaiser to provide the necessary access to certain employees, while safeguarding against unauthorized usage.