BMT's New Laser Scanner Speeds Surveys
11 January 2008
BMT Defence Services, a subsidiary of BMT Group, has acquired a new FARO LS 880HE laser scanner to significantly enhance the company's ship and submarine surveying capabilities.
The new scanner works by scanning, recording and digitally recreating an object or area's dimensions – such as a submarine's hull or ship's engine room – as a photorealistic 3-D image on a computer screen. Visualisations are available as pictures, videos or presentations.
It can capture 50 million colour pixels in 2.5min and can take an eight mega-pixel scan of the surrounding area in less than a minute – over 100 times faster than conventional scanners.
HIGH-PERFORMANCE LASER SCANNER
The high-performance FARO LS 880HE laser scanner will complement manual surveys and greatly improve BMT's ability to capture, manage and exploit information. For many years BMT has carried out manual and relatively time-consuming surveys of ships and submarines, both as standalone projects and as part of larger programmes. From the scan, the highly accurate digital model can be used for inspection, investigation, reverse-engineering into Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models, feasibility studies and other processes and projects.
Steve Carter, a systems engineer at BMT Defence Services, commented: "By acquiring this compact, portable and flexible piece of equipment, we've greatly improved the speed, quality and capabilities of our surveying services. The high-speed laser scanner gives us an efficient, cost-effective process for recording survey information in a powerful, previously unexploited format. BMT's customers have always appreciated our innovative, workable solutions and this laser scanner certainly helps us to meet their budgets and needs."
