3D SCANNING WITH ARTEC EVA FOR QUALITY CONTROL

3D SCANNING WITH ARTEC EVAFOR QUALITY CONTROL

FITNESS TEST FOR LONDON’S PIPES

Thames Water (www.thameswater.co.uk) is the UK's largest water and wastewater services providers with over 15 million customers and as part of their business they deliver an average of 2,600m litres of drinking water every day.Thames Water's cast iron water mains in many areas of London and the Thames Valley area among the oldest in the UK, and many of the mare wearing out. Their staff have been working hard to replace the smaller distribution mains over the past 15 years, but now the larger trunk mains are of growing concern. A burst in just one of our trunk mains can leave thousands of customers without water, cause major flooding and disrupt transport routes.

Thames Water appraised market offers inviting various suppliers to demonstrate their equipment and concluded that the Eva wouldoffer the most cost effective option to meet their requirements.

Since delivery of our Eva™, Alex Rainer, working on a research project between Thames Water and the University of Surrey, has been developing an appropriate methodology, combining the Eva™and its soware, visual texture added to the pipe and a motorised pipe rotator, so reliable 3D models of the pipes can be built. Artec Studio10.1, the recently updated system soware, hasincreased the robustness of making the mesh by mproved texture tracking whilst recording data.It also uses more of the multi-core capability ofour PC workstation so the raw data processing iscompleted in a significantly shorter time.Comparing the models from before and afer corrosion is removed from the pipe enables corrosion levels to be mapped to a good level of accuracy. The corrosion mapping provided by the Eva™ will be used as a baseline against which the effectiveness of different non-destructive approaches can be gauged.

EVA CAST IN STARRING ROLE AT LEADING FOUNDRY

Using Eva as a QA tool makes ligh twork of metal casting jobs.It’s always great to get testimonials from industry pros who have enhanced their performance thanks to Artec scanners. One such company is Willman Industries Inc., a Wisconsin-based full-service jobbing foundry offering design,pattern making, heat-treating and machining. Willman have purchased an Artec Eva from one of our U.S. partners, Exact Metrology. Willman were already familiar with the benefits of 3D scanners as they were looking to upgrade from an older laser scanner and Faro arm.Efficiency working with large castings up to30,000 pounds was the benefit that sold them on the Eva, says Steve Young, the owner of Exact Metrology.“With the larger castings, the scanner can be taken to the casting rather than having to move the casting to where the scanning arm is,” explains Dana Green, an account manager at Exact Metrology. “That along with the large field of view allows for faster capture rates compared to that of the arm and scanner. Additionally the accuracy tolerances are well within the Eva’s capabilities.”Since its purchase, says Randy Parker, Willman’s quality manager, the Eva has been in use practically every single day in some capacity or another. Parker estimates the Eva has been instrumental in QA on approximately 50 jobs so far, “working out well beyond expectations.”“We’ve made numerous improvements to our process with it. Our dimensional control has improved not just from measuring the castings but from checking multiple process inputs with the Eva,” Parker says.Dimensional control is carried out to determine if the quality of castings meets expected values by comparing the data captured with the scanner against known CAD files. This also helps with issues that can come up during the casting process such as core shift. The Eva captures data at an accuracy level well within the confines of the needs for the castings, demonstrating a higher speed of capturing the larger castings,along with a higher speed of data processing.

“The Artec Eva is crazy efficient. The rate at which you can capture data is fantastic.”

“Using an arm and laser scanner could take hours to scan a large casting, add to that the processing of the large data sets and it may take a day to get results,” says Green. “With the Eva, the casting can be captured in less time and provide processed results faster, thus allowing faster feedback on the production process to maintain quality.”

According to Parker, Willman Industries have greatly expanded the primary use they bought the Eva for to include tooling analysis, pattern and mold scanning, reverse engineering and problem solving.

“Without a doubt the Eva has saved our company money,” says Parker. “We definitely promote it to customers as a valuable tool that will enable us to meet their castings’requirements.”

Problems such as uneven cooling can been countered within casting scenarios, leading to production errors. With the faster data capture and measurement results, Parker can see error sin portions of a casting that can only be attributed to uneven cooling. This helps adjust production methods, resulting in lower production losses in time and materials.Parker says he knew the Eva would help supply layout castings more rapidly but is amazed at the actual pace. Some tasks are accomplished in 75 percent less time and he cited some castings that historically would have stretched over a period of seven to 10 days now being finished in six to 10 hours. He refers to the Eva as “crazy efficient,” adding,“The rate at which you can capture data is fantastic.”“Without a doubt the Eva has saved our company money,” says Parker. “We definitely promote it to customers as a valuable tool that will enable us to meet their castings’ requirements.”