Background

While wind blade is the key component of a wind turbine, thus the dimension’s precision affects its safe operation. The quality of the final blade is decided by the quality of mold, as high-precision design and manufacture technology of mold guarantees the blade shape, deciding the manufacturing efficiency, final quality and performance.

For measurement and test of a large wind power blade, SHINING 3D provides a distinct solution and owns an experienced professional technical support team to help customers to complete the project. Because of the large-size of the wind power which was over 6-m and complex surface, SHINING 3D adopted the DigiMetric Photogrammetry and FreeScan X3 3D scanner to complete this inspection. 

Process:

1. Stick the markers evenly on the scanned object; each object was about 8cm space. The markers were used for data alignment.

2. After then, stick the code marks evenly on the scanned object, keep the space around 30cm. The code marks were used for controlling the overall cumulative error. 

3. Then, place two rulers on both sides of the wind blade.

4. Use the DigiMetric Photogrammetry to take photos of the blade underneth from multiple angles, and then the images were imported into the photogrammetric system software. The software automatically calculated the whole framework points of the blades according to the triangular measurement principle. The measurement precision could be 0.1mm/4m. 

5. In the scanning software, open the DGM frame exported by DigiMetric to control the cumulative error and then use SHINING 3D’s FreeScan X3 laser handheld 3D scanner to scan the whole blade. 

6. Import 3D scanned data into Geomagic Control after completing scanning. 

7.  Use 3D comparative creation to annotate the normal deviation to indicate the position deviation from the scanned data’s position to CAD model’s position. The green areas were qualified areas, warm color areas were the positive out-of-tolerance region, and cold color areas were the negative out-of-tolerance region.

Advantages:

1. Eliminate cumulative errors

By using the FreeScan X3 handheld 3D laser scanner and DMG frame exported by DigiMetric, it could avoid cumulative errors and improve the accuracy of the measurement. 

2. High precision 

Working combined the FreeScan X3 of 0.03 mm accuracy with the DigiMetric of with 0.1mm/4m accuracy, the final result of measurement could achieve a higher level of accuracy, complete meeting the consumer’s demands. 

3. High efficiency 

Result from the 24000 times/s scanning speed of FreeScan X3 and rapid photo taking and high-speed data processing, it took quite a short time to finish the whole inspection.