I get this question all that time, is it okay to use rapid surfaces for my final tooling? Well it really depends on what the object is. But there a few there is a few guide lines to follow if you do plan on rapid surfacing your data for tooling.

Do you plan to make any changes with this data? If so how big are your changes going to be? Are you just adding or subtracting parts to the data? If so feel free to rapid surface it adding/subtracting stuff to rapid surfaces are easy. But if you plan to make changes like editing a fillet size or pushing and pulling surfaces I suggest you grab your trusty surfacing/CAD app and spend your time slowly modeling it.

Budget! Now that can a huge factor here especially for start ups, rapid surfacing can be super cost effective when it comes to creating a CAD model for manufacturing. Let’s use a golf club head for example. It would probably take weeks for a CAD modeler to generate an accurate model of such a complex object, but with rapid surfacing it could easily be done in a few hours with the accuracy of +/- 0.01. As long as you’re original data is good you’re good.

Now too quiet down the doubters in the surfacing world telling you that these surfaces are not good enough to manufacture with, and you will get a bad result out of it. That can be true if you had bad data to begin with. I’ve been doing for years which might not mean much, but if Ford can use rapid surface to rebuild tools why can’t you? Just make sure the data you’re surfacing from looks close to perfect compared to the original. If your object is since and smooth make sure your data looks nice and smooth, or if your data is covered with texture like a tree bark make sure your data should looks just like it and you will be okay. A good way to sum it up rapid surfaces is “What you see is what you get!”

Scanning can be very beneficial in every stage of your design; it can greatly decrease your design time in the early stages or help you through quality control in the latter. Let me give you an example. Say you made a prototype part and you’re ready to create CAD? You could quickly scan your part, start surfacing the data and have your scan as reference to make sure it’s accurate to your real model (imaging surfacing the part above +/- 0.05mm with out any scan data.).

Mid-way through the process hand changes where made to the part/tool. How would you justify the change? You could CMM a few points or quickly scan the object (the part above took 5min) with billions of points it can accurately show what has changed when compared back to CAD.

Oh and the billions of points makes it really nice to see what going on with your part. Hopefully this has been a good intro to implementing scanning in to your product design. The part above took me roughly 2 hours to scan and generate a cad model (Not bad for +/- 20 microns).