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Earlier this week, I attended a 3D metrology workshop, offered by FARO in their office in Rugby, UK.
Once signed in, it was encouraging to hear that the employees of FARO were familiar with our website. With a cup of tea to warm myself after getting in from the freezing cold, I was taken to a demonstration room with a multitude of different scanning solutions being presented to the other attendees.
It wasn't long before the first presentation of the day was announced and with a dozen or so guests we listened to an extensive report on FARO's developments over the last two years or so. More specifically, a lot of detail went into the updates of FARO's software suite. There were countless small updates, from something as small as moving a button to a slightly different location in the program to streamline the user interface, but many small updates make for a big change. There were also completely new features and optimisations and all of them were created to improve the user experience. But for me, as someone who has never used the software, that was not what stood out to me. What I noticed was that every improvement made to the software, no matter how big or small had come from user requests. I started to get the feeling that FARO is a very customer-orientated company; that they really listen to what their consumers want and that they go out of their way to meet those needs.
In fact, the entire workshop was quite symbolic of that ethos. Those who wished to attend were encouraged to bring along any parts that they had trouble measuring, or that they wanted to find the perfect measuring solution for. Of course I'm not a manufacturer, so I didn't really have anything to bring with me to measure, but plenty of the others brought things with them. In addition to that, FARO had a large assortment of demonstration pieces ready in case they were needed, ranging from car parts to action figures.
Scanning of a 3D-printed coral sculpture
One of the guests had what looked like a large metal washer, of which its cylindricity down to micron accuracy was a critical feature. The employee assisting him quickly showed him multiple different ways to measure the part using the same machine, a touch-probe mounted on an arm, operated by hand. I was surprised by the speed of how not just multiple measurements in one routine were taken, but how different measurement methods according to different programs of the software were done.
What really struck me as impressive though is pictured here. A 3D printed piece of coral, which was part of a larger sculpture. The guest who had brought the part in was already familiar with FARO's products, but wanted to see if they had a different method of approaching such a detailed, complicated shape. A different measuring arm was used for this one, mounted with a 3D scanner. Within only a few minutes (I think it was less than five), the employee scanning the part told us that he had passed 1.5 billion points of data in the scan. Naturally, this meant that the render of the scan afterwards took quite a while, but I was still impressed with how quickly so many data points were gathered and the 3D model formed on the laptop screen.
All in all, it was a valuable experience to see these machines in action. Seeing them being used not just the way some machines run a pre-programmed routine at a trade show, but actually solving problems in real time was interesting and clearly very effective. I'll certainly look out for any similar opportunities in the future, and if you have need of a measurement solution, or need advice, I highly recommend attending workshops like these.