Product category:
Measurement systems
News Release from: Faro UK | Subject: CMM
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 22 May 2007
Laser tracker aims to break land-speed
record
Faro Technologies has provided the Laser Tracker and FaroArm to acquire the digital measurements needed to manufacture a car to challenge the world land-speed record.
In 1997, the British set a land-speed record of 763 miles/h, aka Mach 1.02 - just over the speed of sound Later that same year, Ed Shadle and Keith Zanghi formed North American Eagle for a single purpose: bring the world record back to North America
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 9 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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This venture uses a car converted from a former jet fighter fuselage - an F-104 Starfighter (minus the wings, of course).
This vehicle is powered by the same 52,000HP engine that the warplane used to fly Mach 2.2.
But transforming an aerospace icon like the Starfighter - which was designed by a legendary engineer, used to develop the space program, and flown by the most daring pilots of all time - into the world's fastest car requires digital, action-ready data that the North American Eagle Team couldn't get from traditional methods.
Compatible with Verisurf, Dassault Systemes and dozens of other software packages, the Faro Laser Tracker and FaroArm empower the Team to digitise the entire, 56ft long vehicle.
They send the collected data to their Aerodynamic Engineer who designs any necessary modifications in CATIA.
The completed design is then sent to CSM Software to perform computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis.
Once the design has been verified, Wind Tunnel model makers use the digital dataset to make modifications.
When complete, the models are sent back to the wind tunnel where the design undergoes high-speed testing.
Following these tests, the dataset is sent back to the model maker who then builds a part to be used on the actual vehicle.
In years past, this process would have required full-size plaster models and thousands of man hours to create.
Using Faro Technologies' Faro Laser Tracker and FaroArm, the process took a mere two hours.
It takes less than two hours to go from data acquisition to completed assemblies.
"It is truly remarkable what Faro has done for our project," Keith Zanghi, Director of Operations, said.
"What would have taken years to create in the past now takes only a few weeks.
I've been in the aerospace industry for 20 years, and we've gone from the caveman days of plaster models to the 21st century using Faro Technologies". Request a free brochure from Faro UK ...
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