3D Scanning / Digitizing

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SCP

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Anyone have any recent experience 3D Scanning or otherwise digitizing/reverse engineering? I need to get some complex geometry into Solidworks to finish up some documentation and want to take advantage of this potential short cut as I don't need very high accuracy at this stage.

Looking at the consumer grade "Sense" by 3D systems, which, usually consumer grade stuff scares me. But again I dont NEEd that high accuracy. Anyone tried the Sense scanner?

Or similar?

Cant be a turntable, as the part is larger than most lazy susan scanners I see.

And photogrammetry technique is not resulting in a very usable model as of yet. I am using 123D .... and although I dont need very high accuracy, this is inadequate in trials so far. I could deal with +/- a whole millimeter probably at this early stage of this project.

Interested to hear any experience / thoughts.............
 
Don't know if this is any help, but if I owned an iPad I would maybe look at this. [video=youtube_share;mnOzzbl0Uqw]https://youtu.be/mnOzzbl0Uqw[/video]

You say you don't need high resolution, but you want 1mm accuracy?
 
Yeah, saw that one but dont have an ipad either. Theres a lot of them very similar to this out there using basically structured light technique, and I think at that price point they probably all work similarly. May just end up trying one.

Correct, I only need 1mm accuracy (even a bit more is acceptable actually) as this particular project is only for images to finish up some patent documentation. The Sense is spec'd at 1mm , and I would eventually test it before I trusted that if this were a more demanding application. The detailed work I continue to finish later in Solidworks, but in this case I need to get my completed design (a subassembly) assembled to a very complicated arrangement of shapes and engine and frame members, that would take me months to do in surface modelling.

Eventually I will end up with the detailed CAD model as well, but that is far enough out, I want to jump ahead on the patent documentation so I can get the product released sooner.
 
May not be useful in rocketry but interesting. Maybe to make a nose cone. I still think you need higher resolution.
 
Yeah, higher resolution is required if your going to really reverse engineer some shape to actually make a part like a cone...... in most technical applications I agree. In this case, I am only using it to get a CAD model of some complicated geometry just for an illustration in some patent documentation.

The technology IS there for "real" metrology when you get into the professional level units like the Faro arm with the laser scan head, now your talking a few thousandths. And the Faro is ~$60K. I inquired about a rental and even that was going to be spending way more than necessary if I can get what I need with a "fisher price" version.
 
We looked at several. However, the best packages currently available were only accurate to .002". We have a lot of high cavitation molds for thin walled products. Missing a wall thickness by .002" to the thick side would result in the use of an additional $120,000 worth of resin over one year for one mold. We currently have 4,700 active molds in the corporation. So all of our tooling is held to within .0002". And at times, that's not enough to keep the bean counters content. We tackle each reverse engineering project the old fasioned way with a CMM and take on each feature one at a time. It's very time consuming, but worth the effort.

Dennis
 
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