3D Model Reverse Engineering for Reshoring
Laser scanning based reverse engineering is a powerful tool for reshoring.
It's sad, but true that many products being manufactured overseas were at least partially engineered overseas. It's very common for molds and tooling for US products to be designed by and be owned by overseas manufacturers.
The overseas manufacturers often develop and build tooling at "no cost" which makes it easier to get started, but nearly impossible to leave. If a customer wants to move a manufacturing operation, he or she is often faced with having to redesign and rebuild all of the tooling. Laser scanning can help.
Often the tooling development process results in small tweaks to the part design. And often these tweaks go unnoticed and don't get incorporated into the official design. Trying to build new tooling doesn't just involve redesigning the tooling, but also redesigning the part. And that's where laser scanning based reverse engineering comes in.
3D laser scanning (or X-ray CT scanning) can collect enough measurement data to completely describe a part. The scan data can then be processed with advanced reverse engineering software, like Rapidform, to create high quality, dimensionally accurate CAD models. These models can be used for designing tooling, design documentation and quality control.
Think about laser scanning the next time you're involved in a reshoring effort.
Showing posts with label reshoring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reshoring. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
3D Model Reshoring with Laser Scanning
3D Model Reshoring with Laser Scanning
Laser scanning can be a vital tool in bringing manufacturing back to the US.
A customer of one of my clients wanted to reshore a line of fishing lures. Production was continuing overseas so the molds were not available. Also, due to the high level of rework required on the lures, it was felt that the overseas molds would not be adequate for US production. My client's customer chose to have new molds built here.
My client, an injection molding company, had already begun production of one lure in the series. Reverse engineering the first molds using conventional methods was very time consuming and required several mold revisions to achieve an acceptable product. Repeating the process on the other lures in the series was going to be prohibitively expensive so Reverse Austin was contacted to see if the process could be expedited using laser scanning.
My client had had less than satisfactory experience with laser scanning performed by a previous vendor. The CAD models produced were comprised of many small surface patches that included small imperfections and which were difficult to tool path.
To show my client that not all laser scanning is created equal, I grabbed an old lure from my tackle box and scanned and modeled it. Based on the results, my client agreed to have me scan and model two of the remaining lures in their customers line.
My client had SLA rapid prototypes made from the Reverse Austin CAD models
Laser scanning can be a vital tool in bringing manufacturing back to the US.
A customer of one of my clients wanted to reshore a line of fishing lures. Production was continuing overseas so the molds were not available. Also, due to the high level of rework required on the lures, it was felt that the overseas molds would not be adequate for US production. My client's customer chose to have new molds built here.
My client, an injection molding company, had already begun production of one lure in the series. Reverse engineering the first molds using conventional methods was very time consuming and required several mold revisions to achieve an acceptable product. Repeating the process on the other lures in the series was going to be prohibitively expensive so Reverse Austin was contacted to see if the process could be expedited using laser scanning.
My client had had less than satisfactory experience with laser scanning performed by a previous vendor. The CAD models produced were comprised of many small surface patches that included small imperfections and which were difficult to tool path.
To show my client that not all laser scanning is created equal, I grabbed an old lure from my tackle box and scanned and modeled it. Based on the results, my client agreed to have me scan and model two of the remaining lures in their customers line.
My client had SLA rapid prototypes made from the Reverse Austin CAD models
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