The use of laser scanning is helping to maintain the accuracy of foam seats used in personal off-road vehicles, making it possible to reverse engineer the delicate components with a high degree of precision.
Northland Machine Inc. (NMI, Grand Rapids, MN) builds molds used to produce seats for all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles and other personal off-road vehicles. The company found that it was difficult to accurately measure foam seats using contact measurement tools such as coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) or height gages because the probe depresses the foam and it takes too long to collect enough points to define complex contours.