The images below are of a turbo impeller blade. The top left image is of the actual
impeller blade. The large bottom image is a computer generated wire frame
model from CT slices for use in CAD/CAM. The top right image is
the 3D output from a laser-sintering machine (material polycarbonate). Often
companies from the Auto and AeroSpace industry would ask SMS
(company I worked for at the time) to do a 3D scan of a competitor’s part. This
was for the purpose of finding out how it was made and to possibly modify
the part for use as their own. This process is known
as "
Reverse Engineering". I made
over 20 different models using this process while at SMS. The models
used a varity of different materals like nylon, wax, paper, plastic, photopolymers, and polycarbonate.
Click on picture to view a bigger image.
