6533b854fe1ef96bd12afb02

RESEARCH PRODUCT

3 D digitization of specular metallic surfaces by means of infrared imaging

subject

description

For the past twenty years, the need for three-dimensional digitization of manufactured objects has increased significantly and consequently, many experimental techniques and commercial solutions have been proposed. However, difficulties remain for the acquisition of optically non cooperative surfaces, such as transparent or specular ones. Since the working principle of conventional scanners is based on the acquisition of the diffuse part of the reflection, transparency and specular reflections may cause outliers. To address highly reflective metallic surfaces, we propose the extension of a non conventional technique that was originally dedicated to glass objects, called “Scanning from Heating”. In contrast to classical active triangulation techniques that acquire the reflection of visible light, we measure the thermal emission of the heated surface. A laser source is geometrically calibrated with a thermal sensor to extract a cloud of 3D points from infrared images. Considering the thermo-physical properties of metals, we present a theoretical model of heat exchanges that are induced by the process, helping to demonstrate its feasibility on metallic materials. With a finite element analysis solver, results give some important indications about the conception and the settings of the experimental solution. A first device has been designed in order to validate the 3D digitization process on specular surfaces, with various geometries and compositions. Furthermore, a comparison of our results with those of a conventional system shows the versatility of our technique. Actually, from metallic samples with the same dimensions but various surface states, we prove that the accuracy of the 3D acquisition is not affected by the surface roughness variations. Finally, according to some practical observations, a 3D scanner prototype has been designed to improve the efficiency of the first system