Study and Improvement of a Destructive 3D Digitizer Based on Grinding Technique

Abstract

The objective of this research was to study and improve the destructive 3D digitizer based on grinding technique that was developed previously. It is shown that the grinding technique used in the 3D digitizer generates better surface condition than the milling technique commonly used in other 3D digitizers, and this is beneficial to the subsequent image processing to obtain the profiles of the cross-sectional images. To increase the overall image resolution, an image-merging method was employed by putting a fiducial on top of the object to allow us to merge partial images into a full image. One of the key factors for the success of image processing is to have good contrast between the object and the background material, and we developed a program with a controllable power supply to automatically adjust the illumination based on the histograms of the images to obtain the maximum contrast. At the end, we performed an experiment by using Taguchi method and found out that the grinding depth is the most significant factor that can be controlled on the destructive 3D digitizer for burr length reduction.