[rat_rod_russell]

3D Scanning and getting the last parts to the puzzle

So after talking through several emails with Mike owner of Absolute Geometry (http://www.absolutegeometries.com) I figured out all I could without seeing and working with the parts myself. I spent several weeks of trying to get some free time and getting my schedule to align so I could head up to his place and talk in person with the equipment for demonstration. I also decided it would be a good idea to get some small parts I wanted scanned so I’d have something to play with in the computer to better understand the final product. The STS Turbos I want to really suck into the chassis and make them fit so I took one of the turbos and took it in 3 parts, the compressor housing, the turbin housing and the center section. This would give me 3 separate parts so I can clock the turbo in the computer for future chassis project and really fit the turbo in to the chassis, here are the results.



The I’m having a little trouble making 3D surface files out of them but that’s just because my version of Solidworks doesn’t have the 3D scanning software and I’m forced to go to a friend’s place to use his premium copy so I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it. I also found out he can do the laser scan of the surface and then go in and get hard points with the FARO pointer. The points come in as a IGS file that will lay over the scan. The advantage to this is I don’t have to do any work to the scan to change it from a STL file into anything else. I have the hard points to measure from and I can see where something might interfere with the outside and change that.



So I showed this to a friend and so he asked me to supervise the scanning of his A-Body frame. After the scan it he called and decided he wants the back to Lay frame. So he asked if I could make a quick modification and make up some rear arches that will move the loop up 4 inches. It took 15 minutes with the scan data and everything’s to scale, take a look.



So my plan is twofold. One is to have the bottom of some of my other projects scanned so in the future I have all the body bracing, inner and outer fender, firewalls and core supports all in the computer before I start so I can build my frame and look to see if it will clear without having to spend a week moving the body, building a prototype moving everything around just to find out one section is .500 to far to the left and hitting a body brace or you can’t get the wheels off, the list goes on. The second part of the plan is to check against deviation from the design. When we’re done with the frame we’ll scan the first few out of the Jig to make sure they are all within speck and not warped all to hell. The best design is useless if you can reproduce it accurately.

More to come
-Russell