3D measurement for rapid prototyping

Optical 3-D measurement is an interesting approach for rapid prototyping. On one hand it's necessary to get the 3-D data of an object and on the other hand it's necessary to check the manufactured object (quality checking). Optical 3-D measurement can realize both. Classical 3-D measurement procedures based on photogrammetry cause systematic errors at strongly curved surfaces or steps in surfaces. One possibility to reduce these errors is to calculate the 3-D coordinates from several successively taken images. Thus it's possible to get higher spatial resolution and to reduce the systematic errors at 'problem surfaces.' Another possibility is to process the measurement values by neural networks. A modified associative memory smoothes and corrects the calculated 3-D coordinates using a-priori knowledge about the measurement object.