Product Description
Renishaw M3 12 mm Silicon Nitride Ball Stylus - Carbon Fiber Stem (L 150 mm EWL 150mm)
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.
Carbon Fiber Stem Material
There are many grades of carbon fibre materials. However, Renishaw GF combines optimum stiffness characteristics, both longitudinally and in torsion (important in star constructions), with extremely low weight. Carbon fibre is inert and this, combined with a special resin matrix, provides excellent protection in the most hostile of machine tool environments. Renishaw GF is ideal for maximising stiffness while giving very low mass for styli above 50 mm in length. It is the optimum stem material for high accuracy strain gauge technology probes with excellent vibration damping characteristics and negligible co-efficient of thermal expansion.
Part number: A-5004-1997
