my company reverse engineers many parts that we sell and often times some of the parts, such as cams are really hard to measure with standard measuring tools such as calipers, micrometers, etc. So I was looking into possibly getting some sort of digitizer that could measure and draw the parts into Solidworks. Is there anything out there that can do this for a decent price?

Check this website: www.nextengine.com/
is $2495 US a decent price.

Best regards

Bruno

IF DIY is decent enough, I suggest to scan through this forum.
There are a bunch of different designs, for example this one:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28308

Regards,
Sven

My company specializes in all things related to 3D measurement, digitizing, and scanning for accurate reverse engineering. We use a wide variety of solutions and represent many with sales and training.

See our website at www.directdimensions.com (http://www.directdimensions.com) for a lot of information.

In the meantime - sounds like a portable CMM is what you need - either a Faro or perhaps a MicroScribe will do, depending on accuracy requirements for the applications - which we can help you determine.

Plus you can send us parts and we're Reverse Engineering them for you - we do it everyday and have been for 13 years.

Michael

how much would a faro or microscribe run me? I need to get accuracy of about .001 - .002"

I was looking at the Faro Guage and wondering would this one tool replace all my other measuring instruments, such as my caliper, height guage, micrometers (ID/OD), combination square, depth guage, etc.?

The Faro Gage is a measuring-only device. It's software is limited to determining measurement relationships (lengths, angles, GD&T, etc.) - and does not provide for the creation of 3D CAD directly from these measurements. It is intended to be a replacement for conventional hand measurement tools.

The Faro Arm is a fully functioning 3D digitizer and used with software interfaces such as Faro's CAM2 or into Rhino, or others into SolidWorks - provide the ability to capture data in an interactive 3D environment (some more functional than others).

The MicroScribe is the same as a Faro Arm only not quite as industrial or as accurate (depending on models) and much cheaper.

If you need .001-.002" and reverse engineering along with basic measurement I would definitely look at a Faro Arm first.

Michael

I am looking for a decent laser scanner I can retrofit to the spindle head of my vortech router. Anybody know a decent mfg?