If you’re growing a business, it’s important to be tech-savvy. 3D scanners are one of the best ideas to become more profitable. Read on to learn why!
Getting a team to invest in a product before a prototype has been made is nearly impossible for even an established brand. If you want to grow a business with 3D scanners, 3D printing, and modern design technology, prototypes can be cheap and fast to speed up funding and production. With the help of 3D scanning, every element of the production and ideation process can be sped up and assisted.
Here are some of the ways that every element of your business will benefit from the use of a 3D scanner.
Improve ideation
When you’re working through a concept, most of the solutions to your issues will be framed as abstracts. It’s hard to keep an idea together when everyone in the room is imagining something different. You could get bogged down in hour-long conversations about inane hypotheticals.
When you have a 3D scanner, you can use physical space to give a stronger concept of the project. Industrial designers can quickly turn your scanned idea into a real physical object. This allows everyone to come to the table with a strong idea of what they’re talking about.
When you have something relatively concrete to look at you can be sure that all concerns are connected to a rendering. When a question comes up, it’s easy to talk past one another. With a 3D scan, you can move around the object and clear up the details you’re all concerned about.
3D Scanning in the design phase
Starting with a physical object and then putting it into a modeling program allows your team to start to play. Designers often have to design around existing objects. Other times, they have to fit their design to objects that already exist.
With 3D scanning, designers can make sure that parts that need to fit can be matched down to the micrometer. When you’re designing industrial or machining parts, a micrometer matters. Mating parts can be scanned, making it easier to get a match for a strange or non-conventional component.
Reverse modeling or reverse engineering is a powerful way to make use of a 3D scanner. You can jumpstart your design process and get the grunt work out of the way. Any new design will be appropriately shaped around the most pertinent needs of the rest of the design.
Prototyping is a breeze
When making prototypes, 3D scanning becomes a powerful tool. A very common way to help is that you can reduce the number of prototypes you actually have to make. When you lower the number of design cycles, you lower the cost of production and you can end up producing more every year.
When you free up that budget, you have the chance to take risks. Your team can make things that seemed impractical before to see how you can innovate your products and services.
Using the precise measurements of the physical world, your design will also scale up correctly. If you need to double the size of something, you can ensure that you double every dimension to end up with something that works. You can also ensure that the design and figures are precise thanks to the power of a 3D scanner.
Engineering loves a 3D scan
With a 3D scan, physical objects get put right into the engineering phase of your design project. At this point, you can start moving onto the real work of shaping and engineering a project toward its completion.
3D scan data give engineers the opportunity to start doing the important analysis of objects required in the design. CFD, CAE, FEA and the other types of object analysis that get done before manufacturing will be a breeze.
Modifying something once it’s in the manufacturing phase is hard. With 3D scanning, you can do all of the engineering work with assured accuracy and avoid any production issues.
Production is a breeze
3D scanning is used by manufacturing and production facilities to capture all of the changes that occur on a shop floor. Tooling or parts changes can make the whole production process change when you haven’t used 3D scans.
Tooling ends up being hand-tuned so that you get the final look and feel of a part. However, these modifications can be accelerated with the help of 3D scanning. The optimizations that you need to be transferred from tool to tool can be easily matched to production.
3D scanning is great for analyzing and characterizing the wear of the tools that you use for production. 3D scanning, when used optimally, can eliminate any tool failure problems you might normally have. 3D scan data can also be used to recreate the optimized parts.
Improve quality control
3D scanning can help to improve the analysis of the condition of parts after they’ve been manufactured. Non-contact technology is good for quality inspecting parts. They can detect issues like warpage or scale problems.
The overall size and shape of parts are important because manufacturing processes can make a product differently than it was originally designed.
3D scanning can be used in conjunction with statistical analysis. This helps to maintain and predict quality in manufacturing.
Grow a business with 3D scanners
If you invest to grow a business with 3D scanners, you’ll find that the returns will come back to you in many ways. Not only will you save in production and design costs, but you’ll produce higher quality products faster than ever.
If you want to know more about what kinds of investments you should make to improve your business, bookmark our site today.
Photograph by RawPixel