3D DIGITIZING TECHNOLOGY UNIQUE TO IDEAS IN 3D

R.E.A.D. (Reverse Engineering And Digitizing)

R.E.A.D. is more than a reverse engineering solution - it's a revolution in the industry. Imagine tracing complex molds inside a true CAD environment. This process will become the industry standard. We've met the wish lists of Engineering, Manufacturing, Industrial Design and Product Development with a system that's fast, accurate, and user friendly. R.E.A.D. shows off its true power when you need to digitize aerodynamic or free form 3D surfaces. Typically, we digitize surfaces and contours with a touch probe or drag scanned using a hard probe. This flexible process allows us to gather data from an actual part while reasoning over the details and putting them into the CAD model in real time as you are designing.

We do use existing state of the art digitizing technology. We have a Renishaw Cyclone fully-automatic touch probe system. We have Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMM's) and robotic arm digitizers. We have access to laser digitizers. We use whichever is appropriate.

Early on we realized that digitizing is a great concept. But as we began to apply 3D digitizing to our mold making business, we quickly realized that there are difficulties with all conventional digitizing systems.

Some equipment generates "Point Clouds". The equipment picks off points to describe the surface. Point densities can be several thousand points per square inch. Files are huge. The real problem is how to convert the point cloud into something useful for the designer and toolmaker.

The Point Cloud approach works good for complex non-aerodynamic curvatures. However, if you are trying to digitize an item with sharp corners and edges, Point Clouds can not define the edges well. Why? Because the points in the Point Cloud are placed according to a grid pattern. No points can be specifically placed on the peaks and edges. This means hours and days reworking the data to straighten and sharpen edges, while hoping the changes really represented the model.

Ideas in 3D has developed technologies and techniques to efficiently and accurately digitize edges and parting lines from the model or mold. We can integrate this data into Point Clouds. This is much more difficult than it sounds, and for most companies involves a lot of expensive time and effort. Our services are a good value for this reason alone. We will save you both time and money.

PROPRIETARY DIGITIZING HARDWARE:
We have developed a proprietary 5-axis Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) for digitizing the key points that define the model or mold. We use this manual point collection approach for clean product replication. (We will usually not use it for a highly textured item.) Our skilled operators can minimize your costs by picking up the key points that define your product without losing important details.

PROPRIETARY DIGITIZING SOFTWARE:
The digitizing process is about 5% hardware, and 20% software. The rest is experience and technique.

Our software has required years of development. It gives us both a technical and price advantage over traditional digitizing services. Our proprietary software takes the points measured by our R.E.A.D. machine, and directly converts the points into CAD files in real time. This is not as easy as one might think, and we are the first to do it successfully. What this means for you is faster turnaround, files that are ready for you to use, and overall lowered costs.

Our software, used in conjunction with our hardware, lets us accurately measure your model or mold with the optimum number of points while allowing us to create NURBS surfaces utilizing only the points for the creation. This not only saves time, it can ensure better models, because we don't add extraneous points that distort the surfaces.

Please Contact Us with your 3D digitizing problems, and we will provide economic solutions.