Rapid Prototyping from Reverse Engineered Geometric Data

리버스 엔지니어링으로 생성된 데이터를 이용한 쾌속 조형 기술 연구

  • 우혁제 (광주과학기술원 기전공학과) ;
  • 이관행 (광주과학기술원 기전공학과)
  • Published : 1999.01.01

Abstract

The design models of a new product in general are created using clay models or wooden mock-ups. The reverse engineering(RE) technology enables us to quickly create the CAD model of the new product by capturing the surface of the model using laser digitizers or coordinate measuring machines. Rapid prototyping (RP) is another technology that can reduce the product development time by fabricating the physical prototype of a part using a layered manufacturing technique. In reverse engineering process, however, the digitizer generates an enormous amount of point data, and it is time consuming and also inefficient to create surfaces out of these data. In addition, the surfacing operation takes a great deal of time and skill and becomes a bottleneck. In rapid prototyping, a faceted model called STL file has been the industry standard for providing the CAD input to RP machines. It approximates the CAD model of a part using many planar triangular patches and has drawbacks. A novel procedure that overcomes these problems and integrates RE with RP is proposed. Algorithms that drastically reduce the point clouds data have been developed. These methods will facilitate the use of reverse engineered geometric data for rapid prototyping, and thereby will contribute in reducing the product development time.

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