Whether you are an average Joe trying to repair your car’s engine, or a computer technician constructing the next digital apparatus, chances are you have wished at some point for an easy way to conduct an assembly analysis. How do these machines fit together? How do the parts that I can’t see interact with the parts I can see? For many people, taking a device apart and reassembling it is the only way to gain an understanding of how a machine works and still have a working machine left over. Not anymore.
Assembly analysis has been made immeasurably simpler by industrial CT scanning, or industrial computed tomography scanning. This method involves the use of 3D scanning, to produce a computerized visual model of every individual component of a device. This form of non destructive testing enables people to gain data on an unprecedented level, including porosity measurement, wall thickness analysis, fiber analysis, and many other metrics. This process allows customers to reduce their new product inspection costs and failure analysis costs by anywhere from 25 to 75 percent.
This process has had numerous applications throughout a variety of American industries, and is part of a growing movement to distinguish America as an industrial power through innovation and the development of elaborate technological procedures that cannot be easily duplicated or performed cheaper abroad. Already, despite claims that America’s industrial days are behind us, car manufacturing is on track to increase by 50% from 2011 to 2018, and American motor vehicle manufacturing generated $50 billion in 2014. The level of assembly analysis enabled by 3D scanning, specifically industrial CT scanning, has contributed to America’s renaissance as a site of global production and operation.
Industrial CT scanning services are something that everyone can benefit from, whether you are a defense contractor assessing the viability of commissioning the production of a new fleet of jets, or a tinkerer experimenting on some gadget in your garage. Hopefully the coming years will see a democratization and increased accessibility to this technology for a new generation of American innovators.