Pushing the Limits of Air Gaging | 12.09.2023 | George Schuetz
We have talked many times about how air gaging allows you to measure many jobs faster, more conveniently, and more accurately than other gaging methods.
In the measurement of all hole conditions, air gaging is unsurpassed for speed and accuracy, while in checking any dimensional characteristic, air offers sufficient magnification and reliability to measure tolerances well beyond the scope of mechanical gages.
Air gages also effectively measure all common types of dimensions and are particularly suited to checking dimensional relationships. Some of these are taper, parallelism, squareness, straightness, and center distance. Match gaging, which permits the selection of mating parts with a specified amount of clearance or interference, is easily accomplished with just one reading on one dial.
One of the great things about air gaging is the fact that virtually no other gaging system can put the sensors (in this case the air jets) so close together to allow for multiple diameters or geometric conditions in very small pieces of tooling. But the fact that you can get the sensors close together to make checks for taper or squareness may also impose limits, despite the measuring capability.