High Performance, cost Effective Surface mapping System for Complex Components

All of the critical elements for fast, inexpensive, 3-dimensional CT are sufficiently mature that a high performance surface mapping system for reverse engineering should now be feasible. TPL is developing a cone beam CT system based on a large, two dimensional detector array with 1900 x 1500 pixels each 127 m on a side. The active area is 8 x 11 inches with 12-bit dynamic range without cooling.In collaboration with Los Alamos Laboratory (LANL), TPL is participating in the development of advanced software for reconstructing cone beam CT data sets, and converting the positional information to CAD compatible files to produce machine paths for CNC systems.TPL proposes a program to integrate all the enabling technologies into a practical, automated system that can merge the CT measurement data with CAD/CAM software for rapid manufacturing. A prototype system based on cone beam CT technology and reverse engineering software will ber fabricated and tested during Phase I.The proposed CT based reverse engineering system represents the culmination of digital X-ray imaging work at TPL, software development at LANL, and the latest advancements in amorphous silicon pixel array technology by a consortium of companies including TLP.