See Product Details

For a startup aerospace company, it is essential to consistently meet or exceed customer requirements for quality, performance, timeliness, and cost of the products and services provided. Vector Composites of Dayton, Ohio has built a reputation for these traits and is a tier one supplier of aerospace parts to customers such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Missile Systems, NASA, and many others.

Vector Composites provides design and manufacturing of composite materials, components, and structures for the aerospace, military, and commercial sectors. They have considerable experience in autoclave fabrication as well as alternate processes such as press molding and resin transfer molding. In fact, the company was recently awarded a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research contract by the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Warfare Center to compare carbon fiber systems used in helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

As customer needs demand, the parts Vector Composites works with cover a large range of sizes – anything from antennas for unmanned vehicles to engine components for airplanes. Such diversity demands flexibility in measuring devices. Hand tools such as micrometers, calipers, go/no go gauges, and gauge pins provided some flexibility, but they just weren't quick enough or consistently accurate. When Vector Composites needed to find true position and other GD&T measurements, these types of tools were not sufficient.

After researching various solutions such as fixed CMMs and competing portable CMMs, Vector Composites purchased a FaroArm® Platinum with PolyWorks® software. That decision was even easier once they met with James Kerker – their local FARO Account Manager – who helped them find the best fit for their company.

The FaroArm is everything they need for inspection. Not only is it faster than their previous instruments, but it automatically generates the data they need to know in order to prove parts are within specifications.

"FARO greatly improved our quality organization," said Quality Manager Casey Benedict. "Not only is it accurate and much faster than traditional tools, but our customers love to see that we care enough about quality to own this system."

To maintain its status as one of the nation's premier suppliers of engineered composite structures, Vector Composites utilizes state-of-the-art engineering tools. It's no wonder then that they would turn to FARO and that their transition to the improved technology would be very smooth.

"Engineering loves it because they can check their design and ensure it is working properly," said Benedict. "As Quality Manager, I love it because it is easy to train people how to find true position and other GD&T symbols off of the datum. It also helps me generate first article inspection records quickly."

Vector Composites uses their FaroArm with a granite cart that they move around the shop with ease. They can do inspections wherever they have "self-imposed" requirements or, more importantly, where customers want measurements in the process flow. For them, in-process inspection is critical and the FaroArm performs perfectly. As with any new investment in technology, what is gained must be able to be proved as an actual return on that investment. As with many companies, for Vector Composites time savings equal money savings.

The FaroArm is quick, easy, and convenient. It has immensely improved Vector Composites' product consistency and overall quality. They save enough time that they can now do full first article inspections on every part if they want and do it faster than the time it took to do just one part with traditional tools.

"This is a cool machine," said Benedict. "Finding true position used to take us three or four minutes per hole. Now it's about 30 seconds!"

"We are saving about $100,000 a year in reduced inspection times and labor."

"And not only does the FaroArm save us time and money," said Benedict, "but when we take customers through the facility and they see it in action, they find it absolutely appealing to their bottom line and they are impressed with our cutting-edge capabilities in the composite aerospace industry. That says a lot about both FARO and Vector Composites."

Want to see results like these? Click here to request a free, on-site demonstration!

Watch a video of the FaroArm