[sci.electronics] profileometers

piner@pur-phy (Richard Piner) (12/01/89)

A couple of days ago I got a call from a chap down in Indy who
has an interesting problem. He needs to measure the shape of
a molding in three dimension to within 0.025". And he needs to
do it fast. What they want to do is take a molding of a piece of
human bone and machine an implant from the molding. He says
that the CNC milling machine can do the cutting in under an
hour. The problem is getting the digital information to program
the mill.

So, does anyone know of a commercial system that can measure
the shape of an object in three dimensions and do it quickly.
Most machine vision systems are not fast enough or accurate
enough. Anyone know of a 3d profileometer system that is up to
this task?
					R. Piner