The National Institute for Aviation Research operates a reverse engineering and virtual reality lab in Wichita, KS. The Wichita Eagle recently reported on how the lab is using reverse engineering and virtual reality techniques to help re-create legacy aircraft parts for which there are no original drawings, or only 2D blueprints available.  A key part of the lab's equipment is their ROMER Absolute Arm with laser scanner.  This device allows them to create 3D point clouds of millions of data points by "painting" the part with a laser stripe.  The subsequent 3D point cloud can be convered to an STL file for creating a stereolithography 3D reproduciton, or meshed to create a CAD model for machining or fabrication.  

The lab is also using the laser scanning capabilities for some novel techniques in virtual reality for improved crash test data collection. 

Read the entire Wichita Eagle article on the NAIR Lab here

One of our recent blog posts shows the basics of the reverse engineering process in a couple of minutes.
http://hexagonmetrology.us/news-and-events/talking-points-blog/entry/reverse-engineering-with-romer 

 Or, view this recorded webinar on the reverse engineering proess in-depth. 

Representatives from NAIR are scheduled to present at our Hexagon 2012 Conference on this topic.  Click the banner for more conference details.