General Motors - 3D Scanning the Competition
Ars said:A Mercedes sport utility vehicle stripped of its body panels and chassis sat on a platform like a cadaver on an autopsy table, components of its exhaust system arranged neatly on a cart for examination.
The room is the VEC's Teardown Area, the workshop of GM's Competitive Benchmarking team. Nearby, dozens more vehicles were in various stages of deconstruction. Some were past model years from GM, but more were current models from other manufacturers. All of them were in the process of being digitized.
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Red light scanners, used to document fine details of interior design and to scan smaller parts, relies on reflected laser light to map surfaces. It's used in coordinate mapping machine (CMM) scanning to get precise measurements of internal dimensions—things like headroom, legroom, cargo space, and other "hardpoints" used for competitive benchmarking. It also tracks precision location of components.
Blue light scanning, Pecar said, is "white light scanning on steroids." This is another photographic scanning process that can be used on reflective and transparent surfaces. White-light scanning generally requires that the vehicle surface be powdered to reduce glare from reflections; as a result, "white light has trouble with windshields," Pecar said. "Blue light scanning takes clear stuff and makes black out of it, so you can see the observable area of the window."
