Computer aided inspection: design of customer-oriented benchmark for noncontact 3D scanner evaluation

Abstract

Many different applications of online product inspections have found a significant advantage by the use of 3D scanners, especially when working with complex surfaces (free-form,…), where traditional inspection tools proved to have significant limitations. Unfortunately, there are not only success stories, but also several situations in which the approach towards 3D scanner technologies has been unsuccessful. This is mainly due to the fact that it is hard to understand which 3D scanner solution is the best to adopt and which working protocol is to be followed in order to obtain the best results from a specific application. These problems are often caused by the absence of a long expertise in 3D scanners and by the presence of inappropriate technical sheets. These last are, in fact, quite fragmented and inhomogeneous and only provide little information about the device behavior in the different working scenarios since they tend to be more oriented to the theoretical metrological performances. Most of the time, this information is not useful for users, who need to have a unique map showing both 3D scanner technical performances and their correlations to the different working scenarios in order to be able to compare the several available systems and to get a better understanding of their usage. In order to provide a solution to this problem, this paper proposes to create a customer benchmarking methodology that is a mixture of benchmark geometry designs and experiment sets. This benchmarking methodology will be focused on the simulation of a computer-aided inspection working scenario and carried out by using the quality function deployment method, in order to be oriented towards customer needs.