New Toy

I just inherited a Romer Arm from a sister company that bought it in 2017. They never used it since the classes, so we now have it to put it to use. It's an Absolute Arm 7 axis 7525 SE with an external HP-L-20.8 Laser Scanning System.

I'm not counting on getting sent to classes, so I may have a "few" questions as I try to make this thing useful.

Any preemptive pointers are welcome.

anthony.alfaro over 5 years ago

calibrating the scanner is a huge PITA.
the scanner itself is really nice but very fragile. Lucky you, the HPL works well on shiny/machined surfaces.
do your homework on how to extract features from a pointcloud. It's not complicated, it's just tedious. Lots of settings.
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Kp61dude! over 5 years ago in reply to anthony.alfaro

I wish I had one.. the scanning of shinny/machined surfaces is a HUGE plus!
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Schrocknroll over 5 years ago

It was already calibrated, presumably by Hexagon when everything was set up in 2017. It has a kinematic joint, so I believe I should be set with just plug and play.

I've got it up and running and was able to scan the plastic Hex block.
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anthony.alfaro over 5 years ago in reply to Schrocknroll

They will do an actual Cal at the service center when you send it in for your yearly calibration. Yes, the TKJ connection will make it repeatable but it's still good to do a cal ever so often. especially after significant transport.

as far as the arm itself, it's always a good idea to perform field checks regularly to make sure the encoders are good. I would contact your local hex office to tell them you just took ownership of a Romer arm and ask the training coordinator to give you access to the RDS course which explains in detail how to do field checks and all that junk. I don't think it's a paid course if your an arm owner.

https://learning.hexagonmi.com/catalog/course.asp?id=20750

yes, note in there says its free.
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Schrocknroll over 5 years ago in reply to Schrocknroll

anthony.alfaro THANK YOU!!! This will be a huge help.
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Schrocknroll over 5 years ago

calibrating the scanner is a huge PITA.
the scanner itself is really nice but very fragile. Lucky you, the HPL works well on shiny/machined surfaces.
do your homework on how to extract features from a pointcloud. It's not complicated, it's just tedious. Lots of settings.

Update
I've tried it on shiny turned surfaces and does work. The downside is you have to be near perfectly facing the surface being scanned. The front face of the part wasn't too bad. The O.D. is possible, but will require many, many, many scans around it to create a surface, unless you're OK with strips of scans at regular intervals instead of a complete O.D.
The I.D. was a no go since it is smaller than the scanning head. With matte surfaces you can capture part of the way down holes as the light will bounce back up a bit. With shiny parts, no such luck.
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anthony.alfaro over 5 years ago in reply to Schrocknroll

yes. But that's the nature of light.

The flying dot can adjust it's exposure rate for each pass which is what allows it to scan shiny surfaces. tedious, but doable, as you've discovered.

scanning shiny stuff with a laser line scanner...forget about it. unless you spray with developer, which usually isn't ok.
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AndersI over 5 years ago in reply to Schrocknroll

And don't forget that, when spraying, you're adding material to the surfaces...
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Schrocknroll over 5 years ago

When the Romer is sent out for calibration/certification, does the laptop need to be sent with it?
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Matthew D. Hoedeman over 5 years ago

When the Romer is sent out for calibration/certification, does the laptop need to be sent with it?

It USED to be required but now they say they only want it if you are having connection problems. YMMV
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