The eviXscan Heavy Duty Quadro is the first 3D scanner ready to scan in almost all conditions, making 3D scanning possible in the harshest of conditions. With two changeable scanning ranges and its four 5Mpix cameras, the Quadro is highly versatile and allows you to scan medium to large objects. In this interview, Senior Research & Development Engineer, Peter Montgomery, breaks down what applications the Quadro excels at.
Meet Peter Montgomery
Meet our Senior Research & Development Engineer, Peter Montgomery. Peter plays a huge role in the support of our Stratasys sales team, providing application development and customer education. He also works closely with Purple Porcupine, engaging customers with engineering services and product development. With his detailed knowledge of additive workflow processes, Peter is an incredible resource for our team and customers.
What applications is the Heavy Duty Quadro used for most often? What was it designed to excel at?
The Heavy Duty Quadro can be used in an array of applications, from quality control to reverse engineering. One of the advantages of it, is how rugged it is, given that most scanners are extremely sensitive.
As far as applications it excels at, it’s great for when you need a high quality scanner, but the facilities are such that there might be ambient dust.
What industries do you see the Heavy Duty Quadro being utilized in?
With reverse engineering and inspection, the Heavy Duty Quadro can go all over the place in terms of application. Off the top of my head, I would say, for something like this, that can produce high quality mesh, a great application of it would be in aerospace. The machine can capture the complex surface geometry that we typically see in aero-structures, aircrafts, and things like that. Automotive, as well, for the same reason.
Then also things like medical devices. Its ability to capture really high resolution geometry with its inner range means that it can scan really complex, detailed objects and then reverse engineer that. We’ve done things when we’ve scanned small medical parts and have then been able to use the CAD data to regenerate the geometry.
How does it compare to other 3D scanners on the market?
While there are other structured light scanners on the market, eviXscan is very unique in that it uses two sets of cameras that work together to create the mesh geometry. It has a high level of accuracy, as compared to existing scanners on the market.
What really sets it apart, though, is its automatic alignment features using the customized markers, which work like QR codes. That, from a user workflow standpoint, makes my life a lot easier. I can scan a part and then commence reverse engineering on it a lot faster.
With a typical laser scanner, or what I am going to call sort of “Industry Standard Scanners,” I might be looking at upwards of two to three hours of just mesh post-processing to get the data aligned and ready to form either an inspection or a reverse engineering application. I get that right data right immediately after scanning with the eviXscan and that’s huge.
Why do you like using the Heavy Duty Quadro? What are some of your favorite characteristics of the machine?
I like using it because of the level of surface accuracy that it can capture. The funny story we have here at Purple, is when we first got the scanner in, powered it up, scanned a sample part, we actually thought there was maybe an issue with the mesh we were gathering. We were scanning an FDM printed part and it was so accurate that it was actually picking up the layer lines on the FDM part. We hadn’t seen a scanner that could do that before. That alone really impressed me. That story speaks to eviXscan’s ability to capture really high resolution surface geometry.
A lot of the times with scanners, surface geometry is sort of an extrapolated version of the surface data you’re capturing. Because eviXscan’s ability to capture that surface data is so strong, the final mesh you get is so accurate. It makes it awesome to work with. I have a great deal of confidence in the geometry that I produce off of the Heavy Duty Quadro.
What are some of the key differences between the Heavy Duty Quadro and the Heavy Duty Basic? When should someone opt for a certain machine?
The main difference is that the Basic is going to have just the outer range, whereas the Quadro is going to have the inner and outer range. I would say that, if it’s the case that you know you’re going to be doing fairly large parts, larger than a cubic foot, you’d probably be okay with just using the Heavy Duty Basic with the outer range.
If it’s the case that you know you’re going to be scanning large parts and fine featured parts, or if it’s the case that you have large parts that do have fine feature details, then you would want access to both focal ranges. With the Quadro, you can also dynamically switch between focal ranges throughout your scan.
What makes the Heavy Duty Quadro unique?
Things that make it unique are: the coded markers, the alignment inside of the software, and it holds calibration for a very, very long time. You actually have the ability to check the calibration of the machine.
One of the biggest things with scanning in general, is calibrating it. Oftentimes you have to calibrate it almost every single time you scan, which can be a very labor and time intensive process. This holds calibration for a long time, which comes back to the fact that it is a very ruggedized machine.
The machine also has filters, so you can control the light that is projected onto your part. A great example of that is when I was scanning a large aerospace part. The part was red, so I was able to change the color that the Quadro reflected to be red, so it would completely pick up on that red part. If you know the target color of your part, you can do certain tricks to pick up that data. I don’t know that you can do that with other scanners and that ability is very cool.
On top of that, there is no other scanner out there, that I’m aware of, that is a structured light scanner, with this accuracy, where you can move between an inner and an outer focal range scan without going and changing the lens on the scanner itself. It would almost be like a camera lens, you’d say, “Oh, I have to change my range,” and you’d have to physically put on another lens and you don’t have to do that on the Quadro. This ability is incredibly unique to eviXscan.
To learn more about the eviXscan Heavy Duty Quadro, contact our team by emailing us at [email protected] or calling us at 949.474.9222.