I have a few new NLA parts that would be perfect for digitizing. What's the best way to do this?

You need one of these:

http://microscribe.ghost3d.com/gt_microscribe.htm

Yakima uses them to digitize roof gutter profiles to design clips for their roof racks.

At the very least, add them to The Parts Vault with lots of pictures and measurements and construction materials and finish, etc.

I've done a bit of digitizing recently and it can leave a lot to be desired.

The thing that stinks is that you can get a digital model that can be imported into CAD, but the model is just a shape with no build history. That means that sectioning of some parts can be impossible, and since no dimensions or build history exist, you can't measure much or do much with it. In most cases, you are stuck rebuilding a part over the shape and changing the dimensions on your part until it matches the scanned shape.

So far I've tried a point cloud (useless), a white light scan (requires a .005 or so thick coat of white paint on top of the part), and an X-ray scan.

The X-ray was best for the really small parts that we were looking at, but the parts looked like a wax model with drips and runs and no flat or straight surfaces.

Best way that I know of is to measure the parts and build a parts model in CAD. In that case, an optical comparitor and a grid work well.

Hope that helps,

Which reminds me, didn't we have some old guy that worked at the Porsche engineering that said he could get 914 part drawings????? This was years ago (around the # 4 prototype time) and maybe on another forum.....
Ken

There's a thread a few months back that someone wanted to model in 3D our 914 parts. I started awhile back with my own parts but stopped doing it. To much time modeling and not enough time working on my car. I even printed out 3D half size and quarter size versions of Fuch four and five spoke wheels. I used the 3D printer at work. I think I have some of the pic's in my 914 world blog.

They were talking about using SolidWorks or was it Pro-E? Anyways, I use AutoDesk Inventor Professional 2010 at work everyday designing Window and Door manufacturing machinery. It's not that hard to reverse engineer our parts, it's just a matter of taking measurements and then modeling.

In reverse engineering and having seen failures in the OEM product, changes can be made to improve the product.

Interesting.
One consensus is that it's not worthwhile to do this and the other says it is worthwhile. Well, which is it?

@McMark

I added a few of the parts I have to vault last night.

@ kwales

Would you be willing to elaborate on "no build history" in reference to an imported digital scan?

@montoya2.0

I don't know which program their talking about. This Atlas Tool shop in Roseville, MI appears to support your opinion.

@Mikey914

I completely agree with you.

I can only speak from experience trying to get something in that is useable. Experience of a lot of wasted time, multiple scanning systems, and contacting and working with multiple vendors...

My opinion? I was much less than impressed with all but the X-ray. I will never forget ( or get back) the hour I spent with one hotshot salesman who scanned a part for us and showed us how we could get a spinable color picture that showed height changes as colors..... No dimensions were associated with the colors, but more towards the blue meant higher and more towards the yellow meant lower..... I kept asking for the data in a measurable format so I could measure dimensions, and he kept offering that useless spinnable color picture that couldn't be measured. Did I mention not cheap??? It's thousands of bucks per part.

When somebody digitizes, you get a lot of points in space in a software format that is written for the measuring device. Buy the measuring device, get their software. With SOME of the measuring softwares, you can measure and edit the model produced by the scan. If a straight line scans in as a curve (which it frequently does), or there is a small dent or scratch in the scanned part, you can straighten it or fill in the dent with the measuring device software. That scan is then converted from the proprietary software to a software format usable by CAD or CAM (computer aided machining) software.

But when that scan is sent to your CAD or CAM system, it comes in as a solid shape and nothing more. You can spin it around and look at the shaded detail, and that's about it. You can't fill a scratch, fix a dent or straighten a line.

You can say "ooooo, pretty" but you can't do anything with the solid- like measure a hole in a ring...... Why" because the part has no"history" of being built, and the CAD/CAM software can't find the center of the hole or the edge or the radius. It's just like trying to measure a smoke ring with calipers. You can see it, but you can't touch it or measure it accurately.

You can move the calipers around so they look like they are in the center of the smoke ring hole and sorta look like they are at the diameter of the hole, but you aren't measuring anything you can touch. If you take those "guess" dimensions and make a real part with them, you can measure the part you just built, and you can place the built part on the "smoke ring" to check for accuracy.

That's what happens when a scanned part comes into a CAD/CAM system. It's a "smoke ring" that is viewable but unreadable by the CAD/CAM system. The CAD system parts are built step by step as a mathmatical model. For a ring, each step or change to a part is a step in the part history such as create a disk, dimension a disk, punch a hole in the center of the disk to make a ring, dimension the hole, etc. Without that history, the part can't be be edited, manipulated, or measured. It's that part history that makes the part measurable or changable in a CAD/CAM system.

The "smoke ring" is unmodifiable or measurable as there are no history steps, dimensions, etc associated with it.

Hope that helps

i have a next engine scanner... one of the original ones. after building my windows 7 box I discovered that it doesn't work with 64 bit os; so i had to rebuild an xp machine... it just got that all set back up. now to try scanning again.

I deal with these very situations everyday when I have to download vendor parts. It's frustrating to have the model in front of you but you can't measure or edit.