Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Digitizers, Renishaw

Smoke wrote:

> Just musing...or more like a wierd daydream just went flitting thru:
>
> Wouldn't it be cool if someone could come up with a really tiny side
> scanning radar system that would work on these little machines. All you'd
> need to do is runa a single pass across the part from above and the
> sensor(s) would be able to detect all the minute variations of the part.
> Then all, you'd need is to covert the image into 3D, import it to Rhino or
> something other program to build an .stl, .dxf or whatever file and then
> send that to your software used for generating the gcode.

Radar clearly won't work for this, as the waves are WAY too big.
You can't even measure a swimming pool with conventional radar
(10 GHz and under) as that is only a few wavelengths wide.

Light, however, is a pretty good wavelength. Lasers produce coherent
waves, which may not be necessary for this purpose. but, they are
also bright and collimate easily. if you pulled the rotating mirror
assembly out of a laser printer, used a 5 mW 650 nM wavelength
laser and mounted it all on a carriage that could traverse vertically
while the mirror swept the beam horizontally, you could do a pretty good
job. You could have a camera that picks up the point where the laser
hits the part, and solve the geometry pretty easily with one beam
hitting one point and showing up at one point on a camera.

Jon