"Hey Sleuth!" came a raspy voice from the other side of the metrology lab. "Let's knock off early, and I'll buy you a beer."

Sleuth looked up at the clock behind the lab's large DCC CMM. It was 7 PM. He had already worked two consecutive 14 hour days on a very complex, first piece validation for a rush government job. Quitting two hours early for a little relaxation would come as a welcome relief. So he consented to the offer which had just been flung across the room by Parts ‘R Us Metrology Team Leader, Joe Marsden.

"Good to see you Sleuth. Have a seat. Let me buy you a beer; it's the least we could do after all you have done for us."

The large man who made the offer was big Earl Buck, owner of Buck's Tool and Die Shop. About a year earlier, they had consulted Sleuth about a bottleneck in their measurement process that was causing some of their tool and die deliveries to be late.

"So I guess that the DCC CMM with integrated laser scanning I recommended for you is working out okay?" he said.

"More than okay, it's been tremendous," said the big man beaming with enthusiasm. "Ed here is my shop foreman. He can tell you."

"That's right" Ed nodded. "It used to take our measurement guy the better part of three days to program and measure critical dimensions on our die cast dies and tooling. It would drive our customers nuts knowing that we had made the tools but had not gotten around to measuring them yet."

"Now, with our CAD-based, CMM programming and our touch trigger, hard probe and laser scanning capabilities we do these measurements in hours instead of days. Not only can we collect much more data but the scanning and probing data also correlate perfectly because it all comes off the same CMM. Having all this reliable information has really allowed us to refine our manufacturing process so that our customer almost always gets exactly what he needs."

As Ed was having his say, big Earl made his way across the crowded room and brought back a couple of gentleman. When he got back he seated one of them next to Sleuth.

"Meet Bob Foster. He is President of Whacker Industries, one of my customers. They make small engines for lawn and garden equipment. Tell our friend here what you think of our integrated measurement capabilities," he insisted.

"Fantastic!" said the man without hesitation. "First off, we were considering another tool and die shop until Earl solved his delivery problem. But he did more than that. He solved our first piece inspection problem. We used to do our own. Now we send the first piece castings over to Earl's shop and they inspect them better and faster than we ever could. He uses a laser scanner for most of the work and then checks a few critical dimensions with hard probe scans."

"His scans of our first piece castings are works of art. They are color-coded so we can tell at a glance where our parts are in, where they're out and by how much. This has done two things for us. Where it used to take days to get our first piece inspection information, Earl turns it around for us in a day or less. And those pretty pictures, they tell our setup people exactly what to do to adjust our process to make parts exactly to our customer specifications. This has been a tremendous time saver for us."

"Your customers must really like that?" Sleuth prompted him.

"Funny you should ask," said Bob Foster. "The man standing behind me is one of my customers. What do you think about our inspection reports Harry?"

"Well, we are real sticklers about engine performance on our weed whackers. So if we have to troubleshoot a warranty problem, we will likely go right back to the source. There are all sorts of things we might want to look at. Bob's company has spoiled us. Their first piece inspections are so comprehensive that, as long as the data was there in the original program, they can send any view of any part we want—a laser scan of the part as a whole or hard probe scans of critical dimensions."

"To be honest, their parts are not usually the source of a problem. But if they are, their comprehensive reports help us to nail down the root cause of a dimensional problem very quickly."

"Hope that information is helpful to you. Nice to meet you, but we've got to run," he said as they turned and left.

Now it was just the three of them at the table. "So how has your business been?" asked Sleuth.

"It's been a tough year, I won't lie, "said big Earl. But we are holding our own and doing better than a lot of the other shops. Our faster turnarounds and contract inspection capabilities have actually got us some additional business and …"

Before he could complete his sentence a wiry young man approached the table and sat himself down without being asked.

"Big Earl and Ed, what brought you guys out of the woodwork? So I hear you've got this fancy CMM with a laser scanner. How's that working for you?"

Big Earl grimaced. "For a piece of equipment that doesn't actually make anything it's okay. You should get one. It will cost you about 10 times as much as what you guys are using and if you personally spend about a year in class you might even learn some of the basics."

The young man rolled his eyes in horror. "No thanks, Earl. We've got real work to do." And he got up and left as quickly as he had come.

"Well that was a pack of lies, wasn't it," said an astonished Sleuth.