Metrology-Grade 3D Measurements Right on the Production Floor

In this article, Guillaume Bull discusses the insights that led to the development of Creaform’s latest optical CMM scanner.

Operator scanning an industrial mold directly on the shop floor.

Over the last few years, manufacturing companies have seen their time to market expedited due to intensified competition on the global scale. In addition, the parts and assemblies that they produce are now more complex than ever.

On the one hand, they face pressure to accelerate their workflows. On the other hand, they must meet quality standards that are constantly rising. Creaform is fully aware that today’s manufacturers are facing tremendous challenges. They know that product quality issues impact scrap rate, production ramp-up, production rate, and downtime, ultimately affecting production costs and overall profitability. Consequently, Creaform’s product development team started on their task, with their clients’ issues and needs in mind.

The objective was to develop the ideal 3D scanner that could be integrated seamlessly into any quality control (QC), quality assurance (QA), first article inspection (FAI), maintenance, repair and operation (MRO), or reverse engineering workflow, and operated by users of any skill level in any type of environment—including the production floor.

Creaform wanted to offer production and quality professionals an alternative solution to the coordinate measuring machine (CMM), where parts are usually brought for FAI and QC. By doing so, non-critical inspections could be relocated and even performed right on the production floor to offload the CMM and keep it available for inspection of crucial dimensions. Creaform also wanted to develop a tool more suited for QA, since quality issues can come from multiple parts, all with different sizes, shapes, and surface finishes. Creaform’s engineers had definitely a lot on their plate.

Faster, More Accurate, and More Versatile Portable 3D Scanner

Creaform’s engineers kept these objectives and challenges in mind when they developed the MetraSCAN BLACK. They were determined to take dimensional measurement speed, accuracy, and versatility to a whole new level.

Speed

Now featuring 15 blue laser crosses, which can take up to 1,800,000 measurements per second, the new metrology-grade 3D scanner offers a larger scanning area and accelerated scanning time. Such a measurement speed—4X faster than the previous version—ensures an optimized acquisition time and data processing rate in order to provide users with instant meshing. In short, the measurement workflow from setup to real-time scans and ready-to-use files has never been faster.

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