Mahr Unveils New MMQ 400 Formtester
Providence, RI - Mahr has taken its many years of experience in form measurement systems back to the drawing board and has emerged with an entirely new, fully automated system for the measurement of form and position. According to the company, the new MarForm MMQ 400 Formtester is a ground up design which is robust, less sensitive to environmental influences, flexible and accurate than comparable systems on the market today. 
"Our goal with the new MMQ 400 design was to improve upon our very popular MMQ 44 series," said Tim Johnson, Senior Product Manager for Mahr Federal, Mahr's US operation. "We've succeeded with an instrument that is best in class."
In addition to that, the MMQ 400 offers an array of features that make it stand out from the pack, including extremely solid construction with a generously dimensioned, reinforced steel base. All mechanical components have been optimized in CAD with Finite Element Methods and all motors and electronic components have been thermally isolated to enhance stability. Wherever possible, homogeneous materials have been used in construction to minimize the effects of thermal expansion.
The MMQ 400 is also larger and more flexible than its predecessor and can measure parts up to 60 kg (132 lbs) in weight. The Z-axis has also been redesigned, making it more stable and improving both accuracy and repeatability of measurements. Although larger than its predecessor, the overall footprint of the unit is smaller than comparable instruments as the controller and other electronics have been completely integrated into the design.
Another important benefit of the MMQ 400 is the elimination of the need for an air supply by the use of a high-precision mechanical bearing for the rotary table. Mahr has been a leading producer of high-precision bearings for over 60 years, and the mechanical bearing used in the MMQ 400 is more accurate than most air bearings and up to 70 times stiffer, making the system less susceptible to external forces such as vibration.
Two versions of the MMQ 400 Formtester are available, one with a 350 mm Z-axis and 180 mm X-axis, and the other with a 500 mm Z-axis and 280 mm X-axis. All measuring axes are fully motorized and a selection of available probes—including the T7W 360° motorized by-directional probe, and the manual T20W probe—further enhances measuring flexibility.
Fully controlled by Mahr MarWin software, the MMQ 400 can evaluate all standard form parameters, including roundness, sector roundness, run-out, sector run-out, concentricity and coaxiality, total run-out, cylindricity, straightness, section-by-section straightness, parallelism, perpendicularity, angularity, flatness, conicity, and taper. The system has been especially designed to measure a wide variety of workpieces, including injection components, ABS components, valves, pistons and piston rods, crank- and camshafts, brake disks, gear shafts, ball-bearings, and more.
SOURCE: Mahr Federal Inc