NVision HandHeld Scanner Reduces Diesel Engine Modeling Time

By DE Editors

Cameron Compression Systems used NVision HandHeld laser scanners to produce a solid model of an existing large engine in one-tenth of the time that would have been required using conventional methods, according to NVision.

“It would have taken several years to re-engineer the large diesel engine block pan and heads using a coordinate measuring machine (CMM),” said Greg Obets, manager, Engineering Systems, for Cameron. “Instead we scanned these components, converted the resulting point cloud to a solid model, and made the tweaks necessary to prepare them for production in only two months.” 

Cameron Compression Systems provides reciprocating and centrifugal compression products, systems and services to oil, gas and process industries. The company also previously built a line of 12 to 16 cylinder two-stroke diesel engines to power its compressors. The company discontinued these engines about 10 years ago, but customers have been asking Cameron to bring them back and recently the company agreed. 

The engines were designed using paper drafting methods and several of the paper drawings had disappeared. The engines worked well so there was no need to re-design them from scratch.

“What we needed was a way to reverse engineer the existing engines to create solid models that could serve as the basis for manufacturing,” Obets said. “It would have very difficult to reverse engineer these parts using a CMM. Collecting one point at a time with a CMM, we would only have been able to capture a rough outline of the geometry. So we would have had to re-design most of the details from scratch.” 

Cameron decided to investigate laser scanning and looked at several different scanners. The company selected the NVision HandHeld scanner because of the 8-in. laser stripe width. The HandHeld scanner is a portable device that is capable of capturing 3D geometry from components of virtually any size. It is attached to a mechanical arm that moves about the object.

Cameron used the integrated HandHeld software to re-assemble the point clouds in a single file for each component.

Then the company used XOR software to convert the point clouds to a solid model. 

“We imported the solid model into Siemens PLM NX software where we tweaked a few things such as thinning out or beefing up surfaces,” Obets said. “In only two months, we were ready to turn the solid models and drawings over to manufacturing.”

For more information, visit NVision.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.