In Search of the Perfect Water Spray

Hansgrohe and its employees live and love water - but only if it comes out in the right places. All high-quality shower heads and faucets which leave a Hansgrohe factory are not only tested for leaks. They went through an entire quality inspection process to meet the high-quality standards of the German company and its employees. Many parts are tested with both surface and CT inspection.

A walk through the "Aquademie" in Schiltach, a museum for water, bathroom and design, quickly reveals quality and innovation as traditionally top priorities for the shower and faucet manufacturer. Not many people know that Hansgrohe actually invented the first hand-held shower with multiple spray types and the first wall bar to hold a hand-held shower.

The company from the Black Forest stands for sanitary products of the highest quality. "Quality for Hansgrohe means being above the average in the world," emphasizes Philipp Alender, head of metrology in quality assurance.

To achieve its own quality requirements, Hansgrohe uses optical metrology and application software from ZEISS in their production process. The tools, which are manufactured in-house, the initial samples and the produced parts are inspected, either with optical or tactile metrology. The measurement of parts during production plays a major role in Hansgrohe's quality assurance. For this purpose, an optical fringe projection system is used for 3D scanning. Due to the speed of optical metrology, it is possible to react quickly and efficiently to changes. The single parts of a product, for example a shower head, are individually inspected before assembly. The parts are measured in their raw state or after galvanization.

A part is digitized with the optical metrology system and the resulting point cloud is analyzed using the ZEISS Inspect Optical 3D evaluation software. A surface comparison is used to check whether the part is distorted and needs to be corrected or has external defects, for example. The parts are evaluated according to the technical drawing to check GD&T, among other things. For example, position checks are used to analyze whether drilled holes are in the correct position, that is, within the tolerance.

After visual inspection and assembly, the assembled hand showers go in the test stand at Hansgrohe to undergo further functionality tests. For example: water spray testing.

If problems continue to arise, for example if the part leaks or the water spray is irregular, Hansgrohe uses a nondestructive testing method to inspect the entire part internally. Computed tomography is used to detect internal defects. Hansgrohe works with a service provider which runs the CT scans and generates the data.