Quality Control for the Casting Industry
The portable 3D scanners from Creaform, developed to measure the shape and geometry of castings, perform inspections during the design or production process for the quality control. They are universally applicable and allow for fast data acquisition.
by Massimo Brozan
Creaform presents its portable 3D scanners to measure the shape and geometry of castings. The company will showcase them at GIFA 2019, the international foundry trade fair, from June 23 to 25 in Düsseldorf, Germany. These scanners enable quality control teams to perform inspections during the design or production process. They help to avoid unnecessary, repetitive construction steps and ensure that castings perfectly match CAD references. For example, before machining, raw castings must be checked to see if machining is possible. This way, teams can determine if there is enough material on the casting or remove extra material. After machining, the dimensional accuracy of the final castings must be checked to see if they correspond to the CAD.
It’s the perfect solution for confined areas or small parts
The HandySCAN 3D and the MetraSCAN 3D—both developed by Creaform—quickly and accurately capture the dimensions of every imaginable shape, even under the harshest production environments. The HandySCAN 3D is a metrology-grade handheld portable 3D laser scanner. It is very fastest and features high measurement rate and accuracy available –all while remaining very simple to use. Its self-positioning capabilities and portability provide freedom of movement. It is the perfect solution when confined areas need to be reached or smaller parts ranging from 0.1 to 4 m in size have to be measured, regardless of their complexity, material, or color. The HandySCAN 3D provides consistent and repeatable results across all work conditions or environments, enabling you to reduce turnaround times and increase profitability.
It is insensitive to changes in shop-floor environments
The MetraSCAN 3D is a complete 3D scanning solution for metrology-grade measurements and inspections. Truly portable and insensitive to changes found in shop-floor environments (e.g. vibrations, part displacements, setups and CMM instability), it significantly increases the reliability, speed and versatility of 3D measurement processes. It also offers very good performance respect to scanners that are mounted on traditional portable CMMs. The MetraSCAN 3D is a perfect solution for geometrical and freeform surface inspections on parts ranging from 0.2 to 10 m in size, regardless of their type of material, color, or reflectivity. Paired with the C-Track optical tracker that enables dynamic referencing, automatic alignment and continuous monitoring of parameters, it provides the accurate measurements in the lab and on the shop floor. Offering optional probing capabilities with the HandyPROBE Next, users can harness the power of both 3D scanning and portable optical CMMs for a streamlined inspection process. Creaform scanners are universally applicable, allow for very fast and simple data acquisition as well as accurate measurements and quality control. The recorded data is exported as STL models so that a CAD comparison with a reference part can be made directly after measurement.