Brian
I have just completed four years research into RE for industrial applications. I have enclosed a file which lists about half of the available systems.
I can give you some sensible pointers for hardware selection.
1. Optical systems do not work well on reflective shiney surfaces, in most cases some initial surface prep is required.
2. Touch trigger systems are slower but give a good structured scanline output. However you will struggle with re-entrant features (i.e. feature not visible in the vertical plane).
3. If you have an existing CMM machine you may look at some retrofit solution (e.g. Hymarc (flying spot laser))
4. Check out the accuracy and repeatability of scanning systems. Note: if you are using a retrofit solution then you must consider the stack-up of tolerances (scanner and CMM).
5. Your biggest issue will be reading, filtering, aligning data sets. Choose a software solution which deals with these processes well.
6. You do not always need to get surfaces for manufacturing, a good RE software solution should allow you to complete most tasks with a triangulated point cloud.
I work for Delcam Plc as CAD/CAM solution vendor. We have CopyCAD for point processing, triangulation and surface generation (supported by TriFIX an RP software tool), PowerSHAPE for RE surface development and Hybrid modelling, PowerMILL which will create toolpaths directly from a triangle model (no need for surfacing), and PowerINSPECT and ISO9002 compliant inspection suit (dealing with large point cloud data sets). All the products are OLE linked so importing and exporting is not required between packages. We also support Visual Basic tools which will allow you to tailor your solution.
If you need any more help give me a call.
Regards
Chris Lawrie
Tel: +44 (0)121 766 5544
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
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