Often times, a customer calls in looking to replace their 3mm Faro Arm Probe or their 6mm Faro Arm Probe and the ask us which material should they choose, Zircon or Stainless Steel.
The OEM probes on Faro EDGE, Platinum, Gage and Prime arms are typically Zircon, the older Gold and Silver Faro arms came with Stainless Steel Ball Probes. In almost all cases we recommend Zircon over Stainless. It is a much harder material and we don’t ever see flat spots on them after heavy usage even with heavy contact scanning on castings. The only downside to Zircon is that it will in some cases attract aluminum to it, in turn adding material to the ball that could cause errors related to the offest for the radius.
So for those few people who are contact scanning on aluminum with their Faro Arm we would suggest Stainless Steel. For the rest of our customers we would suggest Zircon (Zirconia). Please let us know if you have questions.
