You can easily perform part inspections in batches and automatically generate inspection reports for each part using a Creaform HandyScan scanner, along with Geomagic Control X software. The first step is to capture your parts’ geometry with a metrology grade, certified scanner. Scan each part in the batch, and export an STL file. It’s handy to put all of the scans in one folder. The next step involves creating a master file that will be [...]
Reverse Engineering has many purposes, one of them being to recreate parts or components that are no longer manufactured. With straight-forward mechanical components, this can be accomplished with a variety of measuring instruments. This task can quickly become more complex though, if the part takes on more of a freeform or ergonomic shape. To serve as an example, the president of our company recently had one of his speaker covers broken. Despite the fact that [...]
This blog article will illustrate how to extract the centerline of a 3D pipe with compound angles. Extracting the centerline of a 3D pipe that contains angles in 2 dimensions is not that complicated. However, when you have compound angles, and the tube is bending in the X, Y, and Z directions simultaneously, extracting the centerline can be quite challenging. For example, below we have a prototype of ½ of a bicycle handle, printed on [...]
Have you ever needed to inspect parts in a CMM, without having a master part? Automated CMMs can be a great time saver when inspecting parts on the shop floor. Traditionally, a master part is measured to generate a master data set. The same routine is then automated and used to measure each production part. Each production data set is then compared to the master data set to determine the actual size of the part [...]
This blog post is going to show you how to scan a mid-size part with tiny features. When scanning a model, you're usually faced with the decision of using a scanner that either has a large scan envelope and good resolution, or a scanner that has a small scan envelope with high resolution. But what if you needed the best of both worlds, that is, to capture both a larger part with small fine details? [...]
With Geomagic Design X software you can easily produce a fully featured, editable, native CAD model, directly from a scan. What is Design X? Design X software is a tool that enables you to recognize geometrical features on a scan, utilize them to create CAD features, then transfer that tree of features directly out to the feature tree of your CAD system. Let’s break this process up into three stages: Auto Segment, Feature Extraction, & [...]
Today we are going to talk about how to reverse engineer a used sheet metal part back to its original flat pattern. This can be challenging at times, since sheet metal parts tend to bend and distort with normal use. Geomagic Design X can assist you in interrogating the geometry of the part, and reverse engineering it back to the original un-warped shape. After scanning the part, you can import the resulting point cloud into [...]
In this blog post we will discuss how to improve the quality of your STL to produce better 3D Printed parts. The STL, or Stereo Lithography file format, is widely used for rapid prototyping, 3D Printing, and CAM. An STL file describes the surface geometry of a 3D object by triangulating the vertices on each face of the object. At times though, the STL file may contain errors, small holes, imperfections, and blemishes as shown [...]
