My point about scanning multiple "known good masters" was that Aram's 
stated intent was to correct machining [on the fly] - an Iges (or any 
other neutral format) from a modeler would [typically] give you the 
intended finished part, not something partially complete. I'm following 
this up more as an intellectual exercise, as the future certainly holds 
options similar to this, and actually, I like where the discussion is 
heading.

It's tough to define the logic on what a machine needs to "fix" in the 
middle of the process, if all it has it the final part. For example, if 
you have a part that requires a drilled hole, counterbore, and edge 
chamfer, all of which you generate with standard tooling (not a single 
form tool), you have for example, three operations (more if you spot 
drill and ream of course). Assuming part lineup and planar corrections 
are all taken care of, if you directly compare your finished Iges 
against the first two major operations, the comparison will fail. The 
computer will say the hole is smaller than it needs to be and throw up a 
red flag. If instead of drilling, you decide to helically-bore the 
original hole and the counterbore, the automatic logic may actually 
direct the machine to re-bore the first hole to the wrong size (larger 
counterbore) all the way through and destroy the part. Thus, if you're 
going to do interim comparisons, you need to have interim masters, or at 
the very least, enough intelligence and command in the comparison 
program to limit the areas to be scanned versus the areas to be ignored 
- in 3d space, of course. I consider myself a comfortable coder, but 
even I wouldn't want the task of that - I'd rather have a series of 
"golden samples" each stage along the way just to do direct comparisons to.

I do use Iges files (either customer provided or in-house generated) in 
Rhino3D against an optical scan to show simple difference models (no 
special FEA or the like) - I simply make the bodies different colors and 
let the renderer figure it out - it's the pretty picture of red and 
green that the client likes to see. From a measurable aspect, I dig out 
my Faro arm too - before you say, "true, he has all the toys" - this one 
I built from found digitizing arm parts (read: dumpster and ebay), 
hacked it together and built my own system. I didn't have the 20K to 
drop on one of these wonderful units. (And I really like the idea of 
working on my own gear.) Although I machine and design as an occupation, 
its the CAD that really pays the bills so I have the opportunity to CNC 
as a hobby. The toys, both commercial and "hobby-fied", try to support 
the occupation as best it can. Btw - EMC/LCNC was a big help in getting 
that arm going - it taught me about [serial] forward kinematics and how 
easy it is to lose your mind trying to figure out a little grid of 
numbers 4x4! I eventually moved the system over to Unity3d (game engine, 
not the Ubuntu gui) where I can run capture on my phone or tablet, then 
export that as an intelligent point cloud to Rhino for building. Which 
is where this conversation goes next.

We had a lot of discussion a number of years ago with folks trying to 
build their own digitizing arms - you really need a stable structure and 
preferably 6 degrees of freedom, (thus 6 encoders) - but after that, the 
kins can be done in many possible ways. Some of us even tried doing it 
by straight math in a PIC or Arduino, (insane asylum, please!) although 
I got really lucky with Unity3d: build a model of the arm, drop it in 
properly parented, feed in the encoder angles via a serial port, write a 
lot of script, route a lot of PCBs, and eventually, watch the arm move 
around in virtual space. A few years ago, I would have lost my mind, 
though today it's become a lot more readily available to "us unwashed 
masses".

I have an affinity to (no, actually I LOVE) the arm concept because I 
get to choose what gets scanned and how it gets scanned. That's what I 
consider the most important item in making a point cloud (or any data) 
useable. The human element lets us draw the line the way we see it or 
need it, the machine gets the hard data. If I want to know parametrics 
of a round hole, I don't scan the entire circle, I hit a button that I 
use as a macro that I touch three points on that circle, which results 
in a center and a radius. Math can be awesome. Rhino and many other 3d 
modelers have varied tools for creating drapes and such from a cloud of 
points, but all will have limited results if its just a rectangular 
cloud. The modelers all know what to do with a center and a radius, 
however. And let's face it - as machinists we're really interested in 
the center of a hole and it's diameter - not that it has 412 verts with 
one reversed normal.....

We can see automation added to this by looking at a current CMM; instead 
of having to manually run the probe around with a joystick, you can now 
teach (by manually running the probe around with a joystick), or by 
script/conversational, program the machine for repetitious tasks. Even 
macros or sub-programs within a semi-auto task. (We can even, if we 
choose, make a probing program in g-code for probing in LCNC, so not too 
unrealistic right now). The best I've seen so far (but not yet in LCNC) 
imports a 3d model of your finished part, or if in-process, a partially 
finished part, and generates a probing boundary plus specific parametric 
checks (like diameter and depth of a hole), based on a combination of 
the raw part outline and user input. That's where I consider the logic 
to be in the right place - I don't think it's necessary to take the 
human all the way out of the equation, sometimes the grey matter still 
exceeds the silicon.

Ted.
>> On 12 June 2013 13:52, jeremy youngs <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> not exactly just compare it to an iges file that will never change . or
>>> other parametric solid
>> Going from a point-cloud to a parametric solid is not even slightly easy.
>> However, in this case I guess that you could create a virtual
>> point-cloud from the IGES file for point-by-point comparison.
>>
>>


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