Standards Committee Formed

[Todd Grimm]

ASTM International has formed a committee that will develop consensus based standards for both short-range and long-range scanning technology. The committee designation is E57, and the name is 3D Imaging. E57 is newly formed and is in the process of adopting by-laws and electing committee leaders.

For years, industry has bemoaned the lack of standards for reporting the quality of data captured and processed by scanning hardware and scan processing software. Many state that this lack of standards is a key barrier to the growth of the 3D scanning industry. With the formation of this ASTM committee, standards will be addressed and hopefully the industry will grow as a result.

ASTM international is a volunteer organization. Members work together to develop the standards. So, ASTM, with SME’s support, is seeking members for E57. If you don’t have the time to be a participating member, you can still join as an information member, which also give you voting rights. Membership is a reasonable $75 per year.

While standards are the key focus of the committee, E57 will also be addressing terminology (glossary), best practices and data interoperability.

For more information on E57: 3D Imaging, including information for membership, please visit www.astm.org (http://www.astm.org)and click on the technical committees link on the left. Also, feel free to contact Pat Picariello, Staff Manager at (610) 832-9720 or ppicarie@astm.org (http://mailto:ppicarie@astm.org). Also, feel free to contact me at tgrimm@tagrimm.com.

Please post any comments or questions in this thread.

[scotta]

From the standards published in '05 and '06 it seems like most of the scanning applications are for electronics or scientific applications (Test Method for Measuring Warp and Total Thickness Variation on Silicon Wafers by Noncontact Scanning)

Does E57 have plans to shift its focus to manufacturing scanning applications which will have pertinance to inspection, reverse engineering or rendering?

[Todd Grimm]

Scott, what existing standards work are you referring to? E57 is a brand new committee that is focused on non-contact 3D imaging for short-range (e.g. reverse engineerig/inspection), long-range (e.g. surveying, civil engineering) and ultra-long range (e.g. mapping).

[scotta]

Oh, yes. I confused myself with ASTM Volume 10.04 (a long list of Electronics standards), which is where E57 committee's standards will reside once developed and some of the documentation on ASTM's website.

I look forward to the committee's developments.