From the course: Reverse Engineering Foundations: Product Design

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Scanners, lasers, and touch probes

Scanners, lasers, and touch probes

From the course: Reverse Engineering Foundations: Product Design

Start my 1-month free trial

Scanners, lasers, and touch probes

- Now, on to the most advanced tools for reverse engineering purposes, scanners and laser trackers. These range from non contact scanning to extremely accurate CMM touch probing. The most common laser scanner that people will be familiar with are what grocery stores use to read UPC symbols. These scanners track a series of black lines that have varying thicknesses and widths. While these are simple 2D images they are relaying information from a real world object. Now, in the engineering realm scanners are used to pick up the shape of objects. As you scan your object points are inserted into a cloud and that cloud is digitized. Depending on the type of scanner and the type of output you may end up with a STL or a point cloud. Since scanners rely on being able to reflect a laser or a light on a surface this surface must meet certain requirements. And depending on the type of scanner you're using you may need to apply special stickers called targets or a special powder in order for the…

Contents