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We ShapeGrabbed It!
Very Small Electrical Components
– Gerry Kanter, Applications Engineer
Over the years, ShapeGrabber has been asked to scan and inspect very small injection-molded parts. We've answered the call with our new ultra-high SG42 scan head. It's particularly valuable for applications such as electrical connectors (Figure 1), because manufacturers often produce slightly different versions within a product family.
For cost effectiveness, configurable tooling is used to make the different versions, so ensuring the right tool setup is used is critical to manufacturing. However, verifying the right setup is difficult because the differences between tool versions may be very subtle.
By using our new SG42 scan head on the ShapeGrabber Ai310 scanner, you can generate a very high-resolution point cloud with millions of data points in a few minutes, as shown in Figure 2.
The scan data can them be compared to the scan data of a reference part, or to the actual CAD model, allowing inspectors to make specific measurements and do a global comparison with a color error map.
The color map shown in Figure 3 was produced using Geomagic® Qualify software, and shows the deviations between the part being inspected and the reference. This comparison can quickly point out issues or provide confidence that the right part was made.
This method is both faster and more reliable than traditional visual inspection plus hand-tool measurements.
The ShapeGrabber Ai310 scanner with the new SG42 scan head allows inspectors to easily see warpage and shrinkage effects, and to more easily troubleshoot the cause of those variations. It also provides a good method of detecting missing features on the parts or extra features which should not be there.
Call us today to discuss your complex-shaped part! 1-(613) 247-1707
Figure 1: electrical connector
Figure 2: Scan data produced by ShapeGrabber Ai310 3D scanner
Figure 3: Colour map produced using Geomagic® Qualify software