Portable Coordinate Measuring Machines
Portable CMMs are different from "traditional CMMs" in that they most commonly take the form of an articulated arm. These arms have six or seven rotary axes with rotary encoders, instead of linear axes. Portable arms are lightweight (typically less than 20 pounds) and can be carried and used nearly anywhere. The inherent trade-offs of a portable CMM are manual operation (always requires a human to use it), and overall accuracy is somewhat to much less accurate than a bridge type CMM. Certain non-repetitive applications such as reverse engineering, rapid prototyping, and large-scale inspection of low-volume parts are ideally suited for portable CMMs.
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