Measuring an aluminum mold with EinScan HX 3D scanner

Background

With the rapid development and tremendous technical progress across industries in the past decade, the structural design of products has become more complex and there has been an unseen amount of diverse mold contours. With the proportion of free-form surfaces increasing and the precision requirements for mold processing rising, the discipline of mold measuring is faced with unprecedented challenges.  

Traditional mold measurement is conducted using contact measuring tools such as vernier measuring tools or micrometers. Only a few attributes such as mold width, height, and depth can be measured, while the curvature of the surfaces and sunken surfaces are difficult to measure with these tools. These measuring methods are not only complicated and time consuming, but it is also difficult to ensure measuring quality and accuracy of large-size molds, making mold measuring a very time-consuming and laborious part of industrial manufacturing.

​For this reason, non-contact 3D scanner measurement has gradually attracted the attention of the mold manufacturing industry and has become one of the main methods of industrial mold measuring due to its abilities of overcoming the deficits of traditional measuring methods and achieving high-quality inspection.
 
The aluminum mold

A mold factory made a 1.5m x 1m aluminum mold. Due to the significant differences in processing equipment and technology, in many cases the mold cannot reach the required accuracy after several production runs, hence mold measuring is a necessary step in the manufacturing process of industrial products.


Due to the large size of the aluminum mold, the traditional manual measuring tools are not able to obtain the comprehensive data information of the mold accurately. In order to improve the current dilemma of poor measuring results and inefficient measuring work, the mold factory chose to use a handheld 3D scanner to perform 3D measurement of the mold.

The 3D scanner - EinScan HX

For this measuring process, the mold factory chose EinScan HX 3D scanner. This innovative 3D scanner by EinScan combines blue LED light source and blue laser into one device, offering benefits of both 3D scanning technologies: the speed and efficiency of LED structured light and the precision and details of the laser in a single 3D scanner.  EinScan HX is a multi-purpose device and compatible with a variety of surface materials and object sizes. Thanks to its portable size, user friendly interface and high scan speed, the EinScan HX brings efficiency to high quality measurement in any environment. EinScan HX is a multi-purpose device and compatible with a variety of surface materials and object sizes.

EinScan HX and its components

Measurement and Analysis Process

Step 1:  Application of Reference Points

For this scan the laser scan mode of EinScan HX was selected. Before scanning, reference points were applied on the reflective aluminum mold.

Step 2:  3D Scanning

The laser mode has a scanning speed of 480,000 points/sec. The technician spent only 10 minutes to obtain the complete high-precision 3D model data of the aluminum mold directly.

Step 3:  3D Measurement Data and Analysis
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In order to check whether the aluminum mold meets the accuracy requirements, the scanned aluminum mold data and a digital model of the original design were imported into the measuring software Geomagic Control X. After the coordinates were aligned, the deviation comparison analysis was performed using the chromatogram to obtain the annotated deviation diagram. Finally the measuring report was exported.

In the case study above, we introduced the application of EinScan HX using the laser mode to measure large-size aluminum mold. The scanning process took less than 30 minutes from applying reference points to 3D scanning to obtaining the final comparison analysis report. This method saved a lot of time in relation to traditional measuring methods and solved many parametrical problems which cannot be detected by traditional measuring tools.

In addition, when opting for the rapid scan mode of EinScan HX, the blue LED light source can be used to scan and obtain the 3D data of mold parts with obvious characteristics without the need of sticking marker points. This improves the efficiency of the whole data acquisition process and satisfies various needs of users, as well as providing a fast forward and feasible solution for product measuring and reverse engineering.

If you want to learn more about EinScan HX, you can read the full product review here.
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Growshapes is an HP Silver Partner of HP 3D scanning solutions and the official U.S. distributor of Shining 3D EinScan 3D scanners. We are now carrying the eviXscan 3D scanner from Evatronix too!

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