Best Practices for the Cobalt

Basic Definitions

Home - Returns the rotary table to the home position (the initial position it was at when powered on).

Align - Performs rotary stage alignment when relationship between rotary table and Imager has changed.

Range Finding - Used to set standoff distance from Imager to the artifact. Must be immediately turned off after setting distance.

Targets - Enables targets to be captured as single points for auto-alignment as well as aiding alignment.

Exposure Color Mapping - Colors live image with blue. For areas underexposure and red for areas over exposed.

Rotary Table Registration / Calibration & Alignment

• When the rotary table is properly aligned and the point cloud rotary table wizard is used, 360 degrees of an artifact can be scans and pre-aligned without additional user input.
• Pre-alignment will position the clouds in a group and transform them close to their exact location
• Fine registration must be performed on clouds grouped with the rotary stage as the stage in not designed to position the clouds precisely

• During alignment, Imager must be at least 30 degrees above the rotary table in order to identify the targets.

• The minimum standoff distance  for the imager is 320mm for the 500 Cobalt  and 505mm for the 250 Cobalt

Capturing Modes and Capturing Data

• Stereo - Captures points that are identified by both left and right cameras

• Enhanced Stereo - Captures points that are identified by both cameras plus identified by either the right or left camera alone. This allows data that is hidden from one of th cameras to be captured and therefore the coverage is larger.

• Quick - Captures points using fewer fringes, allowing the user to quickly verify exposure settings.
• Clicking "Options" in the Measurement window, you can:
  • Change Area of Interest, Exposure Profiles
  • Turn on Rage Finding and Enable Targets.

Preference Options

• For reverse engineering, it is beneficial to remove the photogrammetry target data.

• Tangential points are points significantly off normal to the projector and can be less accurate.

  • Clicking, 'Remove tangential points', you have less data but better sphere fits.