Tuesday, 21st May 2013
Technology

Laser Scanners, white light 3D scanners or CMM?

There are so many measurement technologies available it can be hard to understand the good and bad points of each. We try and compare Phase Vision's white–light scanners with the main alternatives – laser and mechanical CMM probes.

The main contenders are:

  • CMM – once the flagship of the quality department, CMMs are incredibly slow – but with a mechanical touch probe, also extremely accurate.
  • Mechanical Arm. Ideal for a quick check of a few critical dimensions, the arm is invaluable in many workshops – but like the CMM, poor at complex shapes.
  • Laser Tracker – a long-range version of the CMM, the tracker will give you a few points, possibly many metres apart – accurately. But slowly.
  • Laser Scanner. The familiar red line scanner – ideal for low-cost reverse engineering, but a slow and manual process – and not good on many surfaces. Plus, needs to be mounted on an arm or CMM to help it align scans.
  • Early area scan systems based on gray codes (black & white stripes) – these look similar, but perform poorly in the real world.

Each of these technologies is explained in more detail on the following pages, but as an overview, the diagram below shows where Quartz fits in – high speed measurement, which scales for large structures; more accurate than alternative optical approaches, while aspiring to push towards the accuracy of mechanical systems – all in a package which can be deployed on the shop floor:

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