Performing a Datum Alignment using Control X Before the scan of a manufactured part can be inspected using Control X, it must first be  aligned to its nominal CAD model.  The nominal CAD model represents the ‘perfect’ shape.  Once aligned, all of the Control X inspection functions, including Color maps, Whisker plots, 2D and 3D dimensions, Geometry Deviation, 2D Twist Analysis and more can all take place. Consider the water pump cover shown below, prior to alignment. The datums to be used for alignment can all be found on the mating side of the cover.  The Primary Datum, Datum A, is the mating face on the underside of the cover.  Datum B is the large cylinder and datum C is the small hole that will clock the alignment. The datum Alignment tool makes simple work of aligning the scan to the nominal CAD model by matching up the analytic features that were selected as datums on the nominal CAD model.  The software can distinguish the matching features on the scan and perform the alignment with three simple clicks on each datum surface. After alignment, the software returns any alignment error for the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary datums. Once aligned, any [...]

Let’s say that this water pump cover needs to lie flat against its mating surface to within a specific GD&T Flatness Callout. We’ve seen, in the past, that Control X can check for GD&T Callout information and return pass/fail conditions.  But we can also use Control X to determine the amount that a part is in or out of a ‘Flatness’ spec by turning on a localized color map that we call a ‘Fitting Deviation’. Let’s consider the flat (blue) surface on the water pump cover and ask Control X to check Flatness of the face to .040”. We see that the Flatness of the face is well within the Flatness tolerance callout.  The actual flatness is actually coming out at .0176”. Since the Flatness callout displays a total tolerance value, we can turn on the +/- values to display the Max and Min values. Next, to really examine our surface of interest, we turn on the Fitting Deviation, color mapping tool and can get a much better sense as to exactly what is happening to the face during the face milling operation. Understanding the color map can be extremely helpful for optimizing your toolpath. Below, we notice that the [...]

We’ve seen how to inspect the scan of a single, manufactured part against an inspection plan generated using a nominal CAD model.   But what if we have many manufactured part scans to inspect against the same inspection plan, using the same nominal CAD model. That’s where Batch Processing comes in. The exact same inspection process can be reused as many times as needed and no human intervention is required. Once the batch processing routine is complete, you will have date and time-stamped, serialized inspection reports for each unique part scan. The first step is to create the complete inspection model against the nominal CAD model and perhaps inserting the very first scan to verify alignment, data measurements and output to ensure everything that needs to be inspected is setup properly. The Batch Inspection menu is quite simple to work with… We first select all scans that need to be inspected. Select the Add Files and Browse to the folder where the scans of all the connecting arms are. Next, if there are multiple Results files defined in the Control X model, select the one you’d like to use for this inspection. Next, select the desired Output Options [...]