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Rapid Prototyping
There are two main technologies for rapid prototyping solutions to make your parts to see and test your designs. These are Additive Rapid Prototyping (SRP), where a part is produced by laying down thin layers of material and support to build a 3D part and Subtractive Rapid Prototyping (SRP) that starts with a solid material and removes the unwanted areas using a from of cutting.
Our expertise is with Subtractive Rapid Prototyping (SRP) by milling, which is one of the most proven technologies to produce 3D parts, molds and models. Working with manufactures of various size machines we have provided technology that can produce small parts that would fit on a penny right through to giant sculptures, concept cars and 40 meter boat hulls using 5 axis cutting with milling and robotic arms.
Pioneers of the most popular office based SRP systems is Roland DG in Japan, who offer a wide range of complimentry digital products. Roland’s Modela MDX machines come complete with cutting CAM software, however, on the higher end MDX540 and MDX40 machines users have looked for a more flexible CAM solution. This is where Picasoft’s Mayka comes to their aid. Virtually all UK installed Modela Pro machines have Mayka at the hands of the designer, as it was designed for prototype machining. Another range of product seeing major inroads to the prototyping market are the wide format digital printers with cutters built in. These printers are being used for packaging samples and labels, plus the latest LEC printer can create 3D relief to images for print that you can feel, including Braille.
Area’s we more regularly address with SRP solutions are :- product designers, jewellers, architectural modelmakers, car and motorsport designers, sculpture’s, toy makers, production engineers, boat builders, filmset modelers, packaging companies etc.
Digitising
Where to begin, how much will it cost ? These are a few of the questions that cross your mind when starting out. There are so many solutions available offering acclaimed accuracies that are difficult to measure, plus the higher that accuracy the higher the solution price. Measuring with a ruler, caliper, micrometer etc., can sometimes be all you need, but making it a bit easier is what you could be looking at for a reasonable price.
Bring on the old, as some will say, MicroScribe digitizing arms that came to market in 1995 and now there are more than 10,000 units out there. Simply plug it into your PC and your ready to capture points and curves from your physical parts direct to CAD. Yes we have been with Immersion since 1996 and recently they decided to change their business model in December 2008 and sell off all hardware business. Fortunately another manufacture has seen the potential and when your reading this, the Microscribe will be back in production.
Higher precision digitizing and faster laser scanning, then the Baces3D solutions of arms and Scanflex combinations with Kreon laser technology are very competitively priced.
Another affordable digitizing solution, especially for the larger parts, is photogrammetry. Utilising a good DSLR camera and lens, placing a few targets on your object, then snapping a few shots is all you have to do. If you are a Rhino user import the pictures with Rhinophoto or for Google Sketchup v7 (and above) users there is Pixdim, and there you have all your coordinates to rebuild our design.
3D Scanning
Laser scanners, light scanners, scanners from £2,000 to £100,000 are all available. However, there is a perception we see from customers enquiries that some people think that the higher the accuracy of the scanning system the more accurate the result. Plus when that scanners object is displayed in glossy colour on the computer screen, it is thought that's the perfect job to pass into CAD. It is usually a point cloud or mesh and most CAD’s either hate working with this data, or they cannot even open it.
If your parts are precision engineered pieces, then some reverse engineering software will be needed to post process the data, products like Rapidform, Geomagic, Polyworks which are more commonly used. If the parts are sculptural or organic, then most scanners have software to handle the work by making a mesh file.
So the current scanning solutions we feel offer good value for money are the Roland LPX range, which are self contained and just need a USB cable to connect to your PC for one button scanning with exceptional results and resolution. Of course your part will need to fit inside one of the LPX scanners, but there are three to choose from and they include the scanning software. If you need more flexibility to work around your part, then the MicroScribe/MicroScan-3D laser scanner is small and compact with two laser beams scanning over 28,000 points per second with an accuracy upto 0.1mm. Included in the package is a complete software that controls the scans, aligns and generates the point cloud and mesh’s ready to export to other applications.
As mentioned above, the fast high precision Scanflex system offers a larger working area than the MicroScan solution.
Reverse Engineering
Digitising points, lines and curves with the likes of the MicroScribe is still today one of the quickest ways to capture geometry directly off of a physical object, even is it is made of metal, plaster, plastic, wood or glass. However, there are a lot of laser and photographic 3D capturing systems, all of which usually create point cloud and mesh data. To process the mesh data in to a CAD format suitable for NURBS and solids, then a post processing package will be required. Solutions like Rapidform, Geomagic, Leios and Geometry Systems come to mind for a price. If you have the mesh data of your complete object then you can probably not find a more affordable solution that RhinoReverse, which runs inside Rhino3D, at total outlay of less that £2,000 plus tax.
There are two main technologies for rapid prototyping solutions to make your parts to see and test your designs. These are Additive Rapid Prototyping (SRP), where a part is produced by laying down thin layers of material and support to build a 3D part and Subtractive Rapid Prototyping (SRP) that starts with a solid material and removes the unwanted areas using a from of cutting.
Our expertise is with Subtractive Rapid Prototyping (SRP) by milling, which is one of the most proven technologies to produce 3D parts, molds and models. Working with manufactures of various size machines we have provided technology that can produce small parts that would fit on a penny right through to giant sculptures, concept cars and 40 meter boat hulls using 5 axis cutting with milling and robotic arms.
Pioneers of the most popular office based SRP systems is Roland DG in Japan, who offer a wide range of complimentry digital products. Roland’s Modela MDX machines come complete with cutting CAM software, however, on the higher end MDX540 and MDX40 machines users have looked for a more flexible CAM solution. This is where Picasoft’s Mayka comes to their aid. Virtually all UK installed Modela Pro machines have Mayka at the hands of the designer, as it was designed for prototype machining. Another range of product seeing major inroads to the prototyping market are the wide format digital printers with cutters built in. These printers are being used for packaging samples and labels, plus the latest LEC printer can create 3D relief to images for print that you can feel, including Braille.
Area’s we more regularly address with SRP solutions are :- product designers, jewellers, architectural modelmakers, car and motorsport designers, sculpture’s, toy makers, production engineers, boat builders, filmset modelers, packaging companies etc.
Digitising
Where to begin, how much will it cost ? These are a few of the questions that cross your mind when starting out. There are so many solutions available offering acclaimed accuracies that are difficult to measure, plus the higher that accuracy the higher the solution price. Measuring with a ruler, caliper, micrometer etc., can sometimes be all you need, but making it a bit easier is what you could be looking at for a reasonable price.
Bring on the old, as some will say, MicroScribe digitizing arms that came to market in 1995 and now there are more than 10,000 units out there. Simply plug it into your PC and your ready to capture points and curves from your physical parts direct to CAD. Yes we have been with Immersion since 1996 and recently they decided to change their business model in December 2008 and sell off all hardware business. Fortunately another manufacture has seen the potential and when your reading this, the Microscribe will be back in production.
Higher precision digitizing and faster laser scanning, then the Baces3D solutions of arms and Scanflex combinations with Kreon laser technology are very competitively priced.
Another affordable digitizing solution, especially for the larger parts, is photogrammetry. Utilising a good DSLR camera and lens, placing a few targets on your object, then snapping a few shots is all you have to do. If you are a Rhino user import the pictures with Rhinophoto or for Google Sketchup v7 (and above) users there is Pixdim, and there you have all your coordinates to rebuild our design.
3D Scanning
Laser scanners, light scanners, scanners from £2,000 to £100,000 are all available. However, there is a perception we see from customers enquiries that some people think that the higher the accuracy of the scanning system the more accurate the result. Plus when that scanners object is displayed in glossy colour on the computer screen, it is thought that's the perfect job to pass into CAD. It is usually a point cloud or mesh and most CAD’s either hate working with this data, or they cannot even open it.
If your parts are precision engineered pieces, then some reverse engineering software will be needed to post process the data, products like Rapidform, Geomagic, Polyworks which are more commonly used. If the parts are sculptural or organic, then most scanners have software to handle the work by making a mesh file.
So the current scanning solutions we feel offer good value for money are the Roland LPX range, which are self contained and just need a USB cable to connect to your PC for one button scanning with exceptional results and resolution. Of course your part will need to fit inside one of the LPX scanners, but there are three to choose from and they include the scanning software. If you need more flexibility to work around your part, then the MicroScribe/MicroScan-3D laser scanner is small and compact with two laser beams scanning over 28,000 points per second with an accuracy upto 0.1mm. Included in the package is a complete software that controls the scans, aligns and generates the point cloud and mesh’s ready to export to other applications.
As mentioned above, the fast high precision Scanflex system offers a larger working area than the MicroScan solution.
Reverse Engineering
Digitising points, lines and curves with the likes of the MicroScribe is still today one of the quickest ways to capture geometry directly off of a physical object, even is it is made of metal, plaster, plastic, wood or glass. However, there are a lot of laser and photographic 3D capturing systems, all of which usually create point cloud and mesh data. To process the mesh data in to a CAD format suitable for NURBS and solids, then a post processing package will be required. Solutions like Rapidform, Geomagic, Leios and Geometry Systems come to mind for a price. If you have the mesh data of your complete object then you can probably not find a more affordable solution that RhinoReverse, which runs inside Rhino3D, at total outlay of less that £2,000 plus tax.