Northwest Aerospace News December | January Issue No. 12 | Page 54

F
or example, the GOM ATOS Triple Scan
— which is capable of measuring up to 8
million points per scan — won the GE High
Accuracy, High Throughput Inspection Tech-
nologies Challenge where the objective was to
inspect the blade of a Victorinox paring knife
in under three minutes. Accuracy of the inspec-
tion had to be 10 microns or less with a repeat-
ability of five microns. Despite the competition
from 50 other entrants, with its advanced blue
light technology the ATOS Triple Scan was
able to come out of the competition a winner. 1
Let’s pause here and talk about “blue light” because that term
keeps popping up. Not all light-based scanning systems use blue
light. Some other systems use white light. Capture 3D’s ATOS 3D
scanning systems use blue light because the wavelength of blue
light is narrower and allows for better filtering against interfer-
ence from ambient light.
Why is any of this important?
So why is all that you’ve read so far important? Because typi-
cally, in manufacturing, increasing speed can come with the risk
of decreasing accuracy. But implementing a Capture 3D’s ATOS
automated robotic ScanBox gives you the ability to dramatically
increase speed without sacrificing any accuracy. In fact, in some
cases the accuracy offered by an ATOS system may exceed your
old CMM. This translates to more parts made, in less time, with
fewer wasted materials, and more money saved. So why isn’t
everyone using it? “The biggest objection we face is, by far, the
‘this is how we’ve always done it’ mentality,” Staton tells me,
and went on to explain that “…CMM’s are great. They’re accu-
rate, but they’re slow.
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NORTHWEST AEROSPACE NEWS
There are some applications for which that’s fine but
for a manufacturer that’s a job shop, or doing one-
offs and first articles, having the ability to use ATOS
and knock out a scan and a measurement in a time
that can’t even be seen, much less programmed, by a
CMM is invaluable.” Staton further offered a use-case
from Capture 3D’s website.
“We have a use case on how one of our aviation and
defense customers adopted blue light scanners as a
standard, and on one project the time savings alone
saved up to 100 million dollars.”