Robust generalized numerical inspection fixture for the metrology of compliant mechanical parts

Abstract

Free-form non-rigid parts form the essence of today’s automotive and aerospace industries. These parts have different shapes in free state due to their dimensional and geometric variations, gravity and residual strains. For the geometric inspection of such compliant parts, special inspection fixtures are used in combination with coordinate measuring systems (CMM) and/or optical data acquisition devices (scanners). In our previous work, a general procedure was developed to eliminate the use of inspection fixtures. We measured the similarities between CAD model and scanned data by taking the advantage of the geodesic distance metric. Then, using finite element non-rigid registration, we deformed the CAD model into range data to find the geometric deviations. Here, we apply a new method to robustify the generalized numerical inspection fixture. We filter out points causing incoherent geodesic distances and demonstrate that our approach has several significant advantages, one being the ability to handle parts with missing range data. The other advantage of the method presented is its capacity to inspect parts with large deformations.