Find out how German private rail transport company, Internationale Gesellschaft für Eisenbahnverkehr (IGE) has increased the accuracy, consistency and speed of its wheel profile measurements by adopting Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence’s NEXTSENSE CALIPRI tools.
IGE, which offers freight and passenger services across Europe, shares its story in the latest edition of Railway Gazette International. Ensuring wheelset safety is an essential part of IGE’s operations and its trained maintenance engineers carefully inspect the carriages of each train before departure, paying special attention to the level of wear on the wheels.
Prior to upgrading to CALIPRI Prime tools, IGE’s maintenance engineers had to reach under the train’s carriages and manually place a calliper on a wheel to measure the flange, which is the ridge that maintains the wheel’s position on a rail. The process could take between two and three hours, depending on the length of the train. Not only was the manual method time-consuming, it delivered inconsistent results, with time pressure and incorrect calliper handling contributing to errors.
In contrast, the CALIPRI Prime laser-based, hand-held, non-contact measuring device delivers results that are consistently accurate to within a few hundredths of a millimetre. Its patented algorithm corrects the tilting and twisting of the instrument to deliver the same measurement result for every engineer, delivering highly accurate flange measurements in a few seconds.
IGE’s staff have welcomed the new tool, which eliminates the need to climb under wagons for inspection work, and IGE now plans to equip all its vehicle inspectors with the CALIPRI Prime.
Wheelset and Track Profile for Train and Rail
