Options for used, supported, accurate CMM Portable Arms

[vmipacman]

I need to buy a Faro/Romer arm. Min 8' extended length.
The biggest unkown for me is not the hardware, its the software. Plus it seems like these manufacturers are constantly changing hands and obsoleting CMM's and leaving you stranded on the software side.
Who supports used equipment well?
Any insight into CMM arms and what to look for (or stay away from) would be helpful. So far I am mainly filtering models by best single point accuracy, such as Faro's Platinum.
Thanks

 

[lobust]

Back when Delcam was a thing, PowerInspect was the top tier software offered by Faro, available as an upgrade over their own software package. I know this because I had a demo and a quote for a Faro Gage. We did not buy because it didn't meet our accuracy requirements.

It has maintained plug-ins for Faro arms, so you'd just need the drivers I guess and it should continue to work OOTB with Faro arms. From what I have read, newer Faro arms are USB and require drivers, which appear to be downloadable from the Faro website. Older Faro arms are serial and supposedly do not require drivers and interface directly with the software via serial comms.

Disclaimer; I use PowerInspect, but with a DCC CMM, not a Faro arm. I do not have a Faro arm.

AFAIK, Romer arms are also well supported by PowerInspect, but I never even demoed a Romer arm, so...

Innovmetric Polyworks is another package that supposedly has a high level of support for arms, but I have no experience with that software.