Manufacturing

Manufactured components require exceptional levels of quality, durability, precision and reliability in order to meet the demanding requirements of Military Weapon and Vehicle applications.

Measurement Solutions

Taylor Hobson products deliver an in depth understanding of characteristics such as surface finish, contour, form, radius, roundness, harmonic analysis, alignment, straightness, flatness, parallelism and squareness providing vital feedback for improvements in design and production.

• Gun Barrel Alignment
• Ammunition
• Improving Fighting Vehicle Performance
• Artillery Alignment
• Anti-Tank Missile Launcher
• Artillery Vision System
• Gun-sight
• Missile Platform Levelling
• Torpedo Tube Alignment
• Periscope Alignment

Gun Barrel Alignment

There are a number of methods used to check the straightness of small and large gun barrels. An optical system designed and manufactured by Taylor Hobson provides a simple but accurate solution to the difficulties associated with checking the straightness of tank and gun barrels.

Due to gravitational forces, gun barrels have a natural tendency to droop; in addition, a certain amount of ‘bend’ is present, caused during the machining and manufacturing processes. To ensure a true trajectory of the shell when the gun is fired, manufacturers must measure and record the ‘droop’ and ‘bend’ for which compensation can be made.

A telescope with CCD, either a collimator or target is mounted in a sledge arrangement and moved up or down the barrel. The target arrangement must be able to cope with the spiral rifling which is present in all gun barrels.

Ammunition

High precision dies and punches are required to mass produce bullets and shells for the Defence Industry. The Form Talysurf® PGI NOVUS enables the quality of the ammunition to be analysed by measuring the profile error and diameter of the parts accurately.

The ability to measure the thread gauges used in Production Process Control is key. Fast and automatic measurement of multiple thread profiles enables a larger area of the gauge to be analysed in a shorter amount of time.

Artillery Alignment

Our Precision Digital Inclinometers are used to determine the Angle of the Guns also known as ‘Quadrant Fire Control’. Large readable direct display replaces the old traditional devices which needs the user to read the values of a Protractor type of devices.

Anti-Tank Missile Launcher

Anti-Tank Missile Launchers have 3 optical paths and they all need to be aligned parallel to improve the accuracy of the Launcher. Three Autocollimators are used to align the Laser, Eyesight and Gun Barrel optics parallel to each other.

Improving Fighting Vehicle Performance

Armoured tracked vehicles can travel at comparatively high speed and because of this it is essential that the track drive shaft bearings are in good alignment and the track suspension rollers are parallel to each other and aligned square to the drive axis. Failure to ensure this causes excessive wear and vibration, leading in some cases to breakage of the track and damage to the vehicle. Normally any errors are discovered only on the test ground, when considerable dismantling must be carried out before the error can be corrected. Alignment equipment can be used for checking the alignment at an early stage of manufacture.