Product Description
Renishaw M3 4 mm Silicon Nitride Ball Stylus - Tungsten Carbide Stem (L 40 mm EWL 33.7mm)
Straight Styli
The simplest form of stylus, incorporating highly spherical industrial ruby balls and a choice of stem material.
Ruby is an extremely hard material and hence stylus wear is minimized. It is also of low density, keeping tip mass to a minimum, which avoids unwanted probe triggers caused by machine motion or vibration.
Mounted on stems made from a range of materials - stainless steel, tungsten carbide, ceramic, and a specialized carbon fiber material, "Renishaw GF" - these simple ruby ball styli are suitable for most inspection applications.
The size of the ball and the EWL of the stylus chosen are dictated by the size of the feature to be inspected. However, keeping the stylus ball as large as possible and the stem as short as possible will ensure maximum ball/stem clearance, whilst providing a greater yet still rigid EWL. Using larger ruby balls also reduces the effect of the surface finish of the component being inspected.
Silicon Nitride Ball Material
Silicon nitride possesses many similar properties to ruby. It is a very hard and wear-resistant ceramic which can be machined into very high precision spheres. It can also be polished to an extremely smooth surface finish. Silicon nitride does not have the attraction to aluminium and so does not exhibit the adhesive wear seen with ruby in similar applications. However, silicon nitride does show significant abrasive wear characteristics when scanning on steel surfaces and so its applications are best confined to aluminium.
Tungsten Carbide Stem Material
Tungsten carbide stems are best used for maximising stiffness with either small stem diameters required for ball diameters of 1 mm and below, or lengths up to 50 mm. Beyond this, weight can become a problem and stiffness is lost due to deflection at the stem to body joint.
Part number: A-5004-1195
