Measuring the thickness of an object like a propeller has generally been a tedious process that is difficult to repeat consistently.

The traditional thickness measurement process goes something like this:

1. Mark each blade to define cylindrical (or conic) cross sections
   1. 
2. Using a flexible ruler, measure several points along each cross section (top and bottom), marking each one
   1. 
3. Using calipers, measure the thickness at each marked point
   1. 

As you can see, there’s a lot of room for error and individual variation between parts and inspectors.

Solution

Using a 3D scanner, you can scan these same parts, and then set up Rapidform XOV to automatically measure thickness (among other things) and generate a report for each part. Using these technologies, the process is 100% repeatable for every like part.

Here’s how the process works with a 3D scanner and XOV:

1. Scan the part. (There are a variety of scanners available; you can find pricing and accuracy info on rapidform.com’s 3D scanner info page)
2. Open the scan data in XOV, and create offset cylinders/cones that will be used for measurement
   1. 
3. Create section curves from the cylinders/cones, and then set the measurement points along the curves using “Add thickness deviation pattern”
   1. 
4. The software reports the thickness values for each requested location
   1. 

Note that once you’ve defined the cylinders and measurement points on a given part, every like part after that can be inspected with just one operation. You can also set up a trend analysis report to aggregate the results of several part inspections and look for trends.