The quick and easy way to find spares for 1970s Formula 1 cars

The quick and easy way to find spares for 1970s Formula 1 cars
Thursday 5th August 2010

That has been the challenge facing Kevin Wheatcroft, owner of Donington Park racetrack in Derbyshire, which is home to a museum containing many famous classic racing vehicles, including McLaren and Ferrari Formula 1 cars driven by the likes of Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher.

Many of the vehicles in the museum are still used by enthusiasts and the wear and tear inevitably takes its toll. But sourcing spares is arguably a harder task than negotiating a high-powered Formula 1 car around a challenging racetrack. Kevin Wheatcroft of Donington Grand Prix Collection explains: “Many spares are non-standard, high-specification products made in small number specifically for a vehicle and once that vehicle is no longer in production – effectively every year in the case of Formula 1 or touring cars – they are virtually impossible to track down.

"We have worked out that the only way to do this is to create a highly detailed CAD image of the spare and then supply this to a specialist manufacturer to produce the part to the correct size and specification for us.” Representations of this kind for reverse engineering can be created in a number of ways. Co-ordinate measurement machines are highly accurate but can only measure a limited number of points at a time, meaning to develop a detailed virtual image can take days or even weeks, while, as a contact measurement system, it is unsuitable for any component which may deform on contact. Laser scanning is quicker but speed can come at the expense of accuracy. While this type of scanning requires ‘patches’ to be stuck together virtually, and is more subject to variations in the operator’s working methods and to physical issues such as laser speckle.

What the team at Donington Grand Prix Collection have found to be most effective is white light scanning – where a “structured image” – typically containing the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of lines – is projected. By projecting a series of these images, the shape of the object can be calculated using triangulation – just like a laser scanner, but perhaps 10 or 100 times faster. Such a scanner can measure an area of metres in seconds – and, because the scanned areas are enormous, the need to align scan patches is greatly reduced.

Kevin Wheatcroft continued: “We have found that using white light scanning is far quicker and able to deliver a more accurate representation of the part we are wishing to source – and the fact that we are able to supply such a faithful representation reduces the risk of errors in the reverse engineering process. “Overall we have found the use of white light scanning to be invaluable in the sourcing of accurate, high-specification spares for our vehicles.

Ralph Weir of Phase Vision, a leading innovator in white light scanning systems, added: “White light scanning offers the best of both worlds in terms of speed and accuracy, with the added bonus that many modern systems so not require either expert operators or laboratory conditions to operate effectively. Accurate, detailed scans can be produced in a matter of minutes or even seconds – speeding up the reverse engineering process while eliminating the risk of errors.”

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