Innovative solutions for 3D computer tomography data evaluation in industrial applications

In recent years the development of industrial production processes has led to fast and optimised manufacturing of high quality products. For these improvements a modern, cost and time efficient quality inspection is necessary. Here industrial computer tomography (CT) as a non-destructive technology for 3D-image data acquisition meets all requirements and furthermore offers the possibility of a complete inspection for complex parts with all inner geometric features. While CT has been established for material testing and first article inspection, the use of CT for metrology and surface analysis has just started to reveal its potential. In this paper we present our progressive work in precise CT-data analysis, including 3D-image processing, innovative surface reconstruction and automatic geometric inspection for complex components. These software tools are essential for the practical usage of CT in industrial applications especially for the complete range of measurement data evaluation and applications based on real object geometry.