The need for spare parts is increasing as technology continues to evolve. Companies that manufacture or produce constantly changing parts use reverse engineering as a primary inspection tool for recreation of spare parts. Reverse engineering refers to the process of obtaining a CAD model from an existing physical part.
Advances in laser scanning technologies have facilitated this process by sampling part surface data with speed and accuracy. With the help of this technology, it is possible to acquire the geometry of a part having complex and freeform surfaces. Laser scanning presents options the previously used methods do not allow. Damaging parts surfaces due to contact is not a problem with laser scanning.
Our system uses the IVP 2000 Range Scanner to acquire scanned data and generate a 3D freeform model using RapidForm 2004. The IVP Range Scanner is equipped with a camera system and laser scanner that acquires the data after scanning. One of the many options that RapidForm offers is the use of its various work benches. After importing scan data into RapidForm, users can segment feature regions on the model and fit analytic or freeform surfaces to each segment of scanned data depending on the geometries of different feature regions. By simply clicking on a feature region of the model (i.e. a plane, cylinder, cone, sphere, or freeform surface), RapidForm fits the appropriate surface to the model. After surface fitting of the models, a feature aware solid model in RapidForm is automatically created by trimming and merging the surface patches. The solid models created in RapidForm can be exported into virtually any solid modeling tool.
Another feature being studied is how sufficient is the data collected and reproduced using the RapidForm software. The goal is to generate point cloud data in RapidForm to be used on a future need basis. In order to test the capabilities of RapidForm, good calibrated data with high quality resolution and no noise is needed. Different views of a specific test object are needed to omit the possibility of occlusion. Future work will concentrate on an effort to develop reverse engineered CAD models that can be used for any situation.
The need for spare parts is increasing as technology continues to evolve. Companies that manufacture or produce constantly changing parts use reverse engineering as a primary inspection tool for recreation of spare parts. Reverse engineering refers to the process of obtaining a CAD model from an existing physical part.
Advances in laser scanning technologies have facilitated this process by sampling part surface data with speed and accuracy. With the help of this technology, it is possible to acquire the geometry of a part having complex and freeform surfaces. Laser scanning presents options the previously used methods do not allow. Damaging part surfaces because of contact is not a problem with laser scanning.
Technical Approach:Our system uses the IVP 2000 Range Scanner to acquire scanned data and generate a 3D freeform model using RapidForm. The IVP Range Scanner is equipped with a camera system and laser scanner that acquires the data after scanning. One of the many options that RapidForm offers is the use of its various workbenches. After importing scan data into RapidForm, users can segment feature regions on the model and fit analytic or freeform surfaces to each segment of scanned data depending on the geometries of different feature regions. By simply clicking on a feature region of the model, (i.e. a plane, cylinder, cone, sphere or freeform surface), and RapidForm fits the appropriate surface to the model. After surface fitting of the model, a feature aware solid model in RapidForm is automatically created by trimming and merging the surface patches. The solid models created in RapidForm can be exported into virtually any solid modeling tool.
Results:
. Reverse
Engineering of a water pump
Figure 1: Reverse Engineering pipeline of the reconstruction of the water pump used for data testing
Figure 2: Animated 3D reconstruction of the top surface of the water pump
Publications:
No publications currently available for this project.
This research is being conducted at the IRIS Lab by Sherry Ali under the supervision of Dr. Mongi A. Abidi.