Perceptron Drives Manufacturing Efficiency
Perceptron ScanWorks Portable Scanning System

How do you improve the ultimate muscle car? That was the challenge presented to Roush Performance, a division of Roush Enterprises Inc. of Livonia, Michigan, when it decided to design a high-performance version of the legendary Ford Mustang.

Roush, a low-volume builder of high-quality customized vehicles, turned to Perceptron Inc. of Plymouth, Michigan, in creating the aptly named Roush Performance Mustang. Perceptron’s ScanWorks portable scanning system helped Roush engineers transform conceptual design elements into high-revving reality in a quick and efficient manner. “The ScanWorks technology played a critical role in our ability to streamline the traditional development process,” reports John Immonen, Roush’s manager of CMM services and the man responsible for overseeing data development on this project.

The first step in the design of the new Mustang was the development of a custom fascia, which lent a distinctive appearance to the car as well as improving its overall performance by reducing drag and providing better airflow to the engine. Roush designers used clay models to test various fascia designs before coming up with one that met their demanding standards for aesthetics and performance.

In the traditional design process Roush would have used a CMM with a touch probe to create a series of section cuts along the fascia model. Using this small sample of data, a CAD designer would create a model of the fascia by connecting the data points and then smoothing them into a sculpted surface. Unfortunately, this process is slow and uses a series of surface approximations. The results aren’t a true representation of the designer’s fascia.

Roush decided that conventional methods were too inaccurate, too costly and too slow. But ScanWorks offered a solution to each of those concerns. It is an affordable, portable, 3-D scanning system that operates from either a laptop or desktop. It provides an easy-to-use method for acquiring 3-D information in the form of point cloud data. This data can then be exported to the customer’s in-house software packages.

“ScanWorks permits a customer to use a scanner on the mover of choice, with the software of choice and seamlessly connect with the company’s CAD software,” says Rhex Edwards, Perceptron’s strategic business manager. “With the same equipment, the customer can reverse engineer, perform quality inspection, generate tool paths, do rapid prototyping or anything else one might imagine where digital data is an enabler. This flexibility in hardware and software as well as application-specific capability is a significant reason for ScanWorks’ success.”

Roush used its ScanWorks’ contour probe to generate a digitized, 3-D representation of the clay fascia that would exactly replicate the intended design. By mounting the probe on a portable articulated arm from ROMER CimCore, Roush engineers were able to capture a precise image of their design. With scanning speeds in excess of 23,000 points per second, it didn’t take long to turn the complete fascia design into a digital file.

Roush engineers next imported the fascia digital point file into Delcam’s CopyCAD software to generate an STL formatted file. This software turned thousands of data points into a 3-D triangulated data set of the new fascia. Nurb curve data was extracted from the STL data set. Engineers then migrated this data into Pro/E and surfaced the fascia utilizing an ISDX plug in. The 3-D file became the reference standard to validate the prototype and final production fascia.

From concept to production parts, the creation of the Roush Performance Mustang’s fascia took far less time than conventional methods. In addition to significant reductions in time and cost, the completed fascia was incredibly close to original design specifications.

The 3-D files enabled Roush to produce prototypes quicker, approve them for production and check serial production for conformance. Based on the success of this single project, Roush engineers decided to use Perceptron’s ScanWorks system for every custom body component developed for the Roush Performance Mustang, including the side skirt and the rear bustle.

The results speak for themselves.

Perceptron ScanWorks Portable Scanning System

Benefits:

• Works with a host of third-party inspection and reverse engineering software
• Scanning speeds in excess of 23,000 points per second
• Measurement accuracy of 35 µm, 3 sigma
• Contour probe weighs just 340 g

www.perceptron.com