Creating CAD Data for Vintage Gas Pump

The Challenge:
The customer, a manufacturer of gas pump parts, needed a 3D CAD model of a cast part in order to reverse engineer it.  The part was created before 3D CAD models were common, so its only documentation consisted of a 2D drawing.  The part had complex geometry and an internal cavity. Precision, non-contact laser scanning was an ideal way to quickly obtain an accurate 3D model of the entire part, not just a few landmark locations.

The part contained complex geometry on both sides and also had an internal cavity. These types of features are very labor intensive to duplicate with a CMM.  The internal cavity was enclosed, so the part would have to be cut open to expose all the internal surfaces for scanning.

The Solution:
GKS metrologists laser scanned the cast part on the Laser Design Surveyor WS-Series system using the SLP-500 laser probe. The scanning process took only 1 hour and over 5 million points were collected in the point cloud data. A model produced with conventional measuring would not have been complete or as precise, and would have taken up to 20 times longer.

The Results:
The part was scanned and general data clean up performed on the point cloud.  All the scan files were registered into a common reference plane and a complete 3D CAD model was created in SolidWorks. 

The new, very accurate 3D model of the cast part allowed the pump manufacturer to easily re-create the old part by reverse engineering it by means of modern manufacturing processes.   

View the edrawings and inspection report