3D SCANNERS

[Ray H.]

Anyone using a 3d scanner to back engineer parts?

if so which scanner, and is there 3d party software required?

Any advice would be welcome.

 

we are a thermoforming house that duplicates crappy parts that are made in china. Yes I said crappy! we have to copy existing parts to accommodate existing tooling the customer wants to use.

[Salahuddin]

Hi Ray

there is different types of scanning, it depend on accuracy you like and the size of the part

there scanners from company Roland , they have laser scanner too , check also FARO scanners they are very cool.

check also nextengine scanner.

the scanner usually come with a software that will give you the surfaces.

there is a lot of types and you need to chose the one that will give you what you need

[Ray H.]

thanks Sala.

Are you using anything?

Is nextengine decent?

does it require some sort of verisurf software that is expensive?

for accuracy i would say plus or minus .001 would be sufficent.

[Marshal]

thanks Sala.

Are you using anything?

Is nextengine decent?

does it require some sort of verisurf software that is expensive?

for accuracy i would say plus or minus .001 would be sufficent.

 

nextengine is the cheapest, but from what I've seen, it works. It takes some tweaking to get the settings just right and then to bring multiple scans together, but it's supposed to work pretty well. I haven't been able to get good results out of mine, but I haven't used it in a few months either. I don't think I ever gave myself enough time to work with the images and align them properly.

[Salahuddin]

I used one from Roland, it was touch not laser, it gave me good results.

I saw nextengine in action , it is simple and it works

if you want to scan part from all sides there was manual alignment to connect all the images.

as Marshal said , its cheap and work fine and it will give you the accuracy you want.

check there site it have standard software with the scanner and they have software that will be extra, you need to check your needs.

[Lascelles]

I use the NextEngine. It does a good job.

Don't expect a Poof Button that gives water tight CAD friendly models.

 

2K for the scanner

2K for the RapidWorks add-on

2K to update your computer

[Ray H.]

thanks for the input gentlemen.

[Ray H.]

Lascelles,

 

where are you located at?

I am looking for someone who has a scanner so I can see it in action.

 

thanks in advance.

[Ron Branch @ 5th Axis]

Okay I think some of the discussion has to be the size of the parts you are looking to scan? What is the accuracy of the items you are looking to scan has been mentioned, but when you start getting over a certain size then different things have to be considered. Now take faro arm and scanner with a 7 axis arm which is a requirement you are starting ot talk about some serious bucks. Take a cheaper less accurate arm and you can lower the cost, but then you lose the accuracy. So it comes down to the ROI. We have customers that have grown their business 200% with the investment on this capability because they went with the right equipment for the work they were looking to do. We have seen other customer cheap out and get something that did not live up to what they expected and lost business. All scanning to me comes down to educations and knowing the process and what are manageable expectations to keep everything in front of you. I see so many think they are going ot take a 1-2-3 block and scan it and get .0001 accuracy and in 5 seconds have a perfect model and done. Believe me a lot companies sell it that way. When in reality their devices they sit on have a certain amount of tolerance and then you put the scanner on it and that error get compounded. That 1-2-3 block would be better to be hard probed and made into planes that are then turned into cad and .0002 to .0005 would be what I would expect on accuracy using some of the best devices on the market. Now the a scanner where some then scans that 1-2-3 block everything to scan in had to be line of sight for scanner. So if the scanner can not see it on the first try now you have to realign the device to the part throwing other error into the equation. We will ignore all of that and just take a point cloud from the device and go by you have a 2 million point point cloud for a 1-2-3 block. Now why would this even be needed. Well it is not. If 4 points defined the plane and you fit a plane among 4 points that represented a plane is 4 point going to make any difference to 400,000? No but again all on how it is presented. You think you need millions of points then you are going to demand millions of points because everyone tells you their scanner can scan 60k points a second. Okay again how accurate are those points back to what is being scanned back to the device that is doing the scanning back to they way it was calibrated back to other factors. Now again you get this cloud and that accuracy of the device comes in and the faces all show .001/.005 fluctuations when you then turn that into a mesh, because again everyone keep telling you that this is the best way. So you go down the mesh(STL) path because everyone keep pushing that method. Again it is a 1-2-3 block I could have taken 3 micrometers and told you everything in the time took to type this one sentence. So what is the advantage well the advantage is when you have some really non prismatic part that has no model no prints and you are not worried about holding that .0001 tolerance. You got a .005 or .03 tolerance on all the crazy stuff and have a .001 on all the tight stuff then a combo device arm/scanner is the ideal way. Here is why. The arm can make clouds and not worry about the added problem of loser tolerance by adding the scanner and you can still create the clouds needs to turn into mesh. Then use the scanner on all the lose stuff quickly. Then if the part has prismatic shapes now you hard probe everything you can with the device and you do the work in 40% to 70% of the only use a scanner method. You get more controllable results and manageable results and the accuracy you need is where you need it and the get it done where you need it done. I think everyone knows where I work if not check us out we can do it all and even allow you to align, measure, and inspect to the mesh(STL). We also give you all the reversing tools needs for the above task while the whole time allowing you to work inside of the Mastercam tool path.

 

This is a duct for an airplane that was scanned with a tracker. The part is 90" x 72.5" x 47.5" This mesh(STL) has 61,280 faces. With one of our reversing tools I can turn this into one surface.

 

 

 

 

That is just a little of what software adds to the equation. If you have any questions or comments I welcome them and will do my best to answer or help in ant way I can.

[ERIC14779]

I have done quite a bit of scanning with the NextEngine scanner.

 

depending on what you need to do it may work.

 

like was said above the software makes a lot of things possible.

 

RapidWorks is what NextEngine uses it is a full ver of Rapidform XOR that will only

accept data from the NextEngine Scanner.

 

The Software is very powerful !!!

 

takes a little while to get up to speed.... But NextEngine and RapidWorks are there to help you....

 

drop my a email if you want to discuss further...