The Icelandic company Össur measures components with complex geometries with ZEISS solutions and thus guarantees the quality of its high-tech prosthetics.

A prosthetic leg carries its wearer one million steps every year. To ensure that this is not only possible, but also comfortable, the generally small and light components of the prosthetics must be very strong. This also makes the tolerances very tight: just 10 micrometers for some of the components of computer-controlled knees. Quality Assurance requires precise measuring tools to ensure compliance with the strict specifications. These instruments must also be able to correctly display complex geometries. The artificial knees, for example, feature concave and convex surfaces and cannot be correctly measured manually.

For random sampling measurements, Össur relies on two measuring machines from ZEISS: the ZEISS CONTURA coordinate measuring machine and the ZEISS O-INSPECT multisensor measuring machine. "When all machine tools are running in production, we use them to measure at least 17 different parts every hour," says Ásgeir Páll Gústafsson, Quality Manager and expert in coordinate measuring machines at Össur. The measuring technicians prepare the measurement programs and clamping devices so that their colleagues can position their workpieces properly on the coordinate measuring machine and select the corresponding measuring program. The sensor then automatically scans the workpiece and determines the defined form and location data. Össur has drastically reduced the number of measurements with manual measuring equipment since the acquisition of its first coordinate measuring machine in 2004.