Automotive Sheet Metal and Grid Digitizing Solutions

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Abstract
Stamped automotive sheet metal parts must be measured for correct part shape, as well as for compliance to forming strain limits. Despite recent technological advances, use of non-contact, optical measurement techniques still has not replaced conventional touch probe and manual methods. This paper reports our recent laboratory experiences using two different non-contact solutions for sheet metal and grid digitizing. In the first solution, an electrochemically etched circle grid is first applied to the blank part. After forming, a CMM mounted triangulation laser digitizer measures the part coordinates and gray level. A parallel computer is used to accelerate data processing. The second solution begins with a square grid, and uses close-up passive stereo CCD cameras for digitizing. Both tailer-welded and constant thickness steel blanks are measured, and the resulting data is graphically presented in an easily interpreted format.

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