Jeff’s experience working at Prince corporation, an automotive interior company, taught him crucial lessons about the importance of being able to work well with others. He has taken those lessons with him and applied them throughout his career, from motorsports to building custom Porsches to managing a metrology lab. Also, learn about the differences between structured light 3D scanning and CT scanning, and when to use each.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Jeff’s experience working at Prince corporation, an automotive interior company, taught him crucial lessons about the importance of being able to work well with others. He has taken those lessons with him and applied them throughout his career, from motorsports to building custom Porsches to managing a metrology lab. Also, learn about the differences between structured light 3D scanning and CT scanning, and when to use each.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Welcome to the Being An Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Jeff Kolk. Jeff is a mechanical engineer and currently Program Manager at Dynamic Metrology Services where they offer high performance measurement solutions such as 3D scanning, CMM measurements, vision inspection and more for companies in the automotive, furniture, medical and aerospace industries. Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah, thanks for having us. Appreciate it. Good to see you, Aaron.
Aaron Moncur:Absolutely. So Jeff and I have worked together in the past. And we'll get into that a little bit. I wanted to start off Jeff by asking you, what was it about being an engineer that was attractive to you back when you were deciding what you wanted to do for your career?
Jeff Kolk:Good question. Well, out of school, it seemed to fit most with classes we did well in and other things. It seemed like a natural for my dad was an engineer. And so I ended up down the engineering path in college. And it has been going that if not, in an engineer role, like now I was through most of my career in automotive interiors.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so your dad was an engineer. You saw him?
Jeff Kolk:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:I know probably heard stories about work. And that sounds interesting. I should check that out.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah, for sure.
Aaron Moncur:Any, any experiences you had like growing
Jeff Kolk:No, I was probably a natural fit. I've always up in your formative years that that helped you understand? Oh, yeah, this is definitely what I want to do. Or was it? Was it more just general, you heard your dad talk in you? Maybe? I don't know, right now gravitated to mechanical things and hands on. It's kind of funny, in today's high tech world by my background, and probably what led me into it was much more of a hands on thing. It's, I grew up working on cars and small project side projects, any anything in that direction? If you've ever seen that, have you ever seen the Dilbert engineer cartoon when when he goes to the doctor's office it's really a funny cartoon and it's called the neck if you ever want to look that up that's a really funny one about that's become an engineer. So no, I did really it was a shoehorn fit for my my natural abilities and what I gravitate to
Aaron Moncur:Is that the one, I've heard an audio clip I don't know if it's the same one but it's like I don't know, a doctor or something talking to a mother and he's like
Jeff Kolk:Yes
Aaron Moncur:Your son has maybe that's the neck maybe that's what he says. And then the mother's like 'Oh no!'
Jeff Kolk:Mother spirit well runs away screaming that is gonna be an engineer but a lot of good engineer humor.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, all right. So right out of college you worked at a place called Prints Corporation. And if I if I understand correctly, they manufacture industrial, I don't know, feed supplies is the right word but but like
Jeff Kolk:No, that's a different company in Holland, Michigan here Prints was a automotive interior supplier.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, different Prints.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah, there's a few different Printses and it's easy, it's comes up quite often that I get they get crossed a little bit, not tennis rackets. But as I said, it was a really standout automotive interior supplier, real, dynamic and proven positive organization. And that's really lucky to be there for a number of years.
Aaron Moncur:Tell me more about that, what was what was positive about it?
Jeff Kolk:Prints had a foundation of building a great culture, a very trusting environment where the employees and the company like trusting each other, and we're given just tremendous work environment. And we were very, very successful in the automotive interiors arena. And then unfortunately, the founder passed away some time into it for me and the company was sold, but still went on and I actually we currently do it's been through two different owners now. But and we do a lot of work with a lot of the same people I knew when I was there. So it was a here in Holland, Michigan, it was a very just a standout company, just just phenomenally successful and a very positive place to work. Very positive work environment. You know, one of my former managers was cornered and what made you guys so different? And he said it, he said, 'Well, you just got to know at a Prints, it was more important to work well with people than to be the best at your jobs.' So and that's it. We didn't have a lot of super talented people but it was very strong teamwork environment
Aaron Moncur:Interesting, how did they foster that kind of environment because that sounds very attractive right it's more important to work well with others than it is to be, the I don't know successful at your job but they're both important of course but what what kinds of things that they do to foster that environment?
Jeff Kolk:There was a there was a number of things, is push really hard and in your review plan and your different interactions as you grew in the company and it was any kind of attitude problems or any not-my-job kind of attitudes built in were addressed right away
Aaron Moncur:Right away
Jeff Kolk:Down to the positive and it just it was it's hard to explain in just a short podcast here it's a very long explanation so really awesome place to be and I i really probably changed I sure I changed them and much different today than I would have been if I work in any other environment it was really a positive experience for me
Aaron Moncur:Well, we might have to do a whole nother podcast just on that topic alone that sounds really interesting.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah, we could do that. And it is, it's powerful, powerful stuff. And it's really fascinating. Here I've been I've been out of that corporation even in its subsequent owners for 15 years or so now. And yet everywhere I go, I can see my work in here dynamic we interface with hundreds of companies in the area and you can see numerous people who have moved on to other companies in the area and brought a lot of that prints environment and culture with them and tried to foster in new locations. It's really it's an amazing story. I, you're catching me off guard here but with a big smile, because you're bringing back good memories, so I did.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, yeah, well, yeah, in all honesty, I'd love to maybe do a follow up if it's if it's too much to talk about right now that sounds like really valuable information for people to hear. Okay. And if any tidbits of information come to boil up from your subconscious while we're talking, feel free to share them. Okay.
Jeff Kolk:Absolutely.
Aaron Moncur:So you you then worked as a project engineer and a program manager at a company called Johnson Controls, which apparently is a really big company I was looking at their website
Jeff Kolk:Really big.
Aaron Moncur:Being like yeah over 100,000 employees worldwide something like that.
Jeff Kolk:And just the quick connection there is Johnson Controls was the company who was recruited to purchase Prints when
Aaron Moncur:Oh, okay.
Jeff Kolk:The owner passed away and that was that was pre staged. They had that also at a time so that was an extension of that alignment. So also Automotive Interiors. Yes.
Aaron Moncur:I see. So Johnson Controls was Automotive Interiors.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah, the division we were in was Automotive Interiors. Yes,
Aaron Moncur:Got it. Well my research is just completely off today because the Johnson Controls I found I thought was they did like smart buildings, is that
Jeff Kolk:That is foundation of Johnson Controls and that's what they've been through and through from the beginning of time. And they branched into automotive a few decades ago. I think they pretty well backed out at this time of the automotive arena or a good portion of it. So that was a Johnson Controls was a always shifting and adjusting to markets as necessary. So
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so on LinkedIn, I saw that you've been the owner of Coke in, Coke LLC for 31 years now, a long time, tell me is that something that you're actively working on or just I don't know something on the side that doesn't get too much attention these days?
Jeff Kolk:I don't promote it, I get more work than I wanted for a while there between Johnson Controls and Dynamic I did that full time and it's I've had some motor auto racing background and and I do some projects on really any car but primarily race cars.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, tell me about your your racing background. What, what did you race?
Jeff Kolk:I was very fortunate to be able to race a highly modified Porsche 911
Aaron Moncur:Wow
Jeff Kolk:National Road Racing Series. So I was lucky to do that for a while. That was real, real amazing experience.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, the National Road Racing. What did you call it, the
Jeff Kolk:Right, it was Porsche club has a, as just a Mark Car Club has an amazingly successful and large road racing program that I was involved in for a number of years I still float around the outskirts and help prepare some cars for it and and do some help with the club but for it was probably eight or 10 years ago. I was still really active in that.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, I know almost nothing about the racing world. Can you tell me a little bit about what what you were doing? Is it, I mean, is it like just the sprints that you were doing or long, long, I know some of these like the Indy 500 or whatever there they go for what four or five hours or something, it comes a long way.
Jeff Kolk:All races would last about a half hour.
Aaron Moncur:Half an hour
Jeff Kolk:Half hour
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Jeff Kolk:Awesome in doros but that that was an hour and a half nothing like you see in professional motorsports. This is purely amateur motorsports
Aaron Moncur:Okay, how did you get into that?
Jeff Kolk:Just, it just overtook me I've always loved cars and one thing led to the next as I grew up always wanting to car then a little better car a little better car and and it just progressed from one step to the next real high end sports car to take them out to your local auto crosses to some lapping days to some time trials and and that grew into the wheel the wheel racing.
Aaron Moncur:And the you mentioned it was a highly modified Porsche. Were these modifications done by you? Or was there another guy behind it?
Jeff Kolk:No, this was my own, my own the car, built the car, designed the car, developed the car, drove the car?
Aaron Moncur:That sounds incredible. How long did it, this is probably a continuing process. But how long did you spend building this car?
Jeff Kolk:It's a continuing process. It was a carry on for a long time. And as time went on, I developed it farther and farther into higher and higher classes the same vehicle but in higher spec classes as time went on.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, and for Coke LLC, what, what kind of work were you doing? I mean, back when it was full time?
Jeff Kolk:Most anything except paint. I have a shop in a building with a group of guys up there that as a multi employee operator, mine was just me. And anytime we rent me paint, I just hand it to them. But do anything from an engine builder, an oil change, or my specialty was chassis setup, where you're getting the alignment and weight balance and some of the suspension critical details adjusted very accurately.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. Any any particularly noteworthy projects that you can share with us from those days?
Jeff Kolk:Oh, gosh, it's it's been so long ago. I've had a few really nice, well, along with a car built for myself. I bet a few full builds for people that that turned out really nice. Yeah, so
Aaron Moncur:Cool.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah. Kelsey, I never really advertised for it. I it's a business, I've literally never had a business card.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, that that does not surprise me for some reason. After looking through your LinkedIn profile, it's sparse. Let's just say
Jeff Kolk:Yeah, that's, yeah. I like that. That's, that's a good point, I probably taken that style into what I do today and maybe not that ideal but dynamic, I like to connect with the customer and work with my team work with your team and make the performance on the project be the selling point for for future projects for reference to other company, colleagues that a given customer you may have and I've known that that it's not my nature to broadcast and advertise and whatnot. So and it's probably not that ideal, but we approach some of the, push for work development at dynamic and other in other ways, primarily by strong performance of our team.
Aaron Moncur:Well, let's talk about that a little bit, your style a little bit. You've been working as an engineer or in the industry for a long time now, what are some of the the best practices that you picked up during your career? Maybe some habits that you practice that help you be productive and effective at work or even just in life in general?
Jeff Kolk:Well, I honestly, it's funny that you brought out the Prints Connection because I learned so much back then. And I had developed a, it was something you learned out of college, you're all green and wanting to get it so that this is all media, but it seems so simple wow, looking back, it was just developing a high integrity operation. Here's something that happens at dynamic, we push an environment where you're gonna measure parts, you have to be as accurate as you can be. And as much as we try, ocassionally, you miss one, or a dimension or whatnot.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Jeff Kolk:We've tried to create a culture here that you call with a problem. There's a went wrong, hey, let's dig into this what do you got there? And if it's something that we didn't get right, we don't hide it, don't defend it, don't go out of the way that's, that's something that I find very effective in the daily working environment. And then on the culture side that I just find it I've had so much experience from my background. First for what Prints left, you just work well with people, be positive don't, nonconfrontational and it just, that's not through and through out there, as I'm sure you know, there's a lot of people that keep a whole different profile in the work or whatnot. I'm sure as a business owner, you have learned the same thing you can't go charging at people and beating them up and whatnot. And it might work in the short term, but in the long run, you know that people don't come back?
Aaron Moncur:For sure, yeah, I've, I've had the opportunity to practice that here and there. I have a mentor who likes to say, 'When under attack, fallback.' And what I mean by that is, if someone is, is being hostile, or aggressive, or whatever, if you're hostile or aggressive back to that person, it is not going to solve the problem, it's just going to make the situation even more heated, even more difficult to get.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:So he likes to say when under attack, fall back, and I found that to be really excellent advice.
Jeff Kolk:That is a great comment, and pull back and revisit it and but you got to address it afterwards. You can't just
Aaron Moncur:Sure
Jeff Kolk:Sit and lie. And if there's something there, and you got to go back and dig into it, not let it just flow
Aaron Moncur:Yes
Jeff Kolk:Longer down there and cause long term problems. So
Aaron Moncur:Yeah and I think that fall back doesn't necessarily mean become complacent and let people walk all over you. It just means don't get in their face. Don't, don't retaliate, don't yell at them. Take a step back, take a deep breath, and how can how can I help you solve this problem? You know, as opposed to
Jeff Kolk:This is a technical environment. Yeah, I mean, that is so true. I mean, you you can get your dander up and get your macho side out and fight confront and whatnot, but it exactly it highlights the situation and accentuates instead of
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Jeff Kolk:I like that fall. That's a really good one. I enjoy it. I'll remember it.
Aaron Moncur:There you go. Hang it up somewhere.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Well, this is maybe a good place to take a quick break and share that the Being An Engineer Podcast is powered by Pipeline Design & Engineering, where we work with predominantly medical device engineering teams in a turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices and you can find us at testfixturedesign.com. We're speaking today with Jeff Kolk, who is the Program Manager at Dynamic Metrology Services. So let's, let's start talking a little bit about Dynamic. How did you transition into your current role at Dynamic?
Jeff Kolk:It's a, not a totally, it's really not at all by design process. I was in my shop one morning, coming to life with a cup of coffee and reading some news online and the, then general manager of Dynamic here burst into my shop hair on fire and they were I barely knew about Dynamic, but I knew this gentleman really well. And they needed some help. And short term they're hot hot hot behind on a project and I came over here and hopped on our previous vision machine and I sat in ramparts for a month or so and the company we were doing that for, we kind of that connection started to get made and and development program management role specifically for this very large group of insert molded glass filled nylon components, it's a really highly complex parts that we've worked through the launch phase to, to support them. So it's just something that just grew, I just kind of fell on my lap. I was thinking I probably wanted to get back more in the I would say corporate world but non-motorsports world. And it just happened and days have gone by and it just has grown farther and farther. As time went on to
Aaron Moncur:You've been there now for what? 10, 11, 12 years, something like that?
Jeff Kolk:I think 12 years, I think is the right number right now.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. During that 12-year time period, can you think of a project that either you had like a huge success on our project? Or maybe it was a huge fail on a project? And and what you learn from that, and maybe what you know what we can all learn collectively from that experience?
Jeff Kolk:That's a good question. We get 1000s of projects have come and gone through here that all the time, probably numerous projects on our ATOS scanning where if you're not familiar with a 3D scanning world, it's a camera based system that creates a digital copy of that part, which you can then overlay to CAD variety things you can do that we've had so many, in a really positive hits with it, where you, you can sit with that data. And the common tool we use in the in the scanning world is the overlay to CAD. And it gives you that color field view of the part is very intuitive. I mean, if you've seen it, you know what it's doing. And you can see how the part varies from CAD, or from a previous part or whatever. And we just had some really positive successes with that. And once we, once we get going with companies, though, is very, it's also very, we've kept up try to keep a profile here of it, instead of trying to get the scan out as quick and fast as cheap as possible. We always go the other direction, if in doubt, we tweak the processes to be a little higher resolution, even if we're not certain it's fully needed on a given project. I think you've you've we've had that together, haven't we?
Aaron Moncur:We have, we have? Absolutely.
Jeff Kolk:And I think our our culture and style shows through that we always do they need to really get down in that in that little pocket in there. Well, I'm not sure let's get it. So we try to be as thorough and as high accuracy as we can in that. And that's always received well, and we've been able to it's very, I would call it a nice hit that we cannot it's a nicer place to live than how much can we get away with, how am I not, what's the minimum they need to keep the prices that we get people in the door and then it's... So a lot a lot of good successes, there were really seen some uncovering some hidden problems with the with the angels data is the scan data is so strong, that you can really start to see some things that you wouldn't through, if you're poring through 30, 40 pages of Excel data with the dimensions in the format of Excel data.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I can speak to that. You mentioned the overlay. And we've, we've been able to utilize that from dynamic a lot where you have a part and you want to know is the geometry of this part, either equivalent to the geometry of another part, or does it match the CAD data. And you can either scan Part A and Part B and overlay them like you said, and it produces this wonderful color map, it's really easy to see where the geometric deviations occur if they occur, or you can overlay it on the the nominal geometry of the CAD model. And again, see that color map. So that's been really helpful for us. And then you, you talked a little bit about the, I guess the level of detail and your scans. And we've also seen that we've worked with a few different scanning vendors, maybe a little background. So at Pipeline, we do reverse engineering. Here in house, we have our own 3D scanner. And the reverse engineering process. I'll just go on a quick side tangent for those that aren't familiar with this process. But they're they're really two main efforts. One is scanning the object to get the the point cloud the raw data. And the second is actually reverse engineering the object within a special CAD application, we use something called Designed X using that that raw scan data. And for larger projects, especially where there are maybe 30 or 40 components that need to be scanned, we have often opted to send that out to dynamic to do the scanning. And then our team internally does all the CAD modeling and reverse engineering. And one thing that we have consistently noted and we have worked with several different scanning vendors in the past that is that some of the scans we've received from other vendors, they're okay but they're kind of patchy. They're missing surfaces here and there, especially when you get down into some crevices or pockets maybe. And we always just thought that's just a limitation of the scattered light scanning technology. And then we start to work with dynamic and we realized, maybe not because the scans we get from your team are so detailed and complete and thorough. They're just really beautiful scans. So that's that's something we've really appreciated. Working with your team. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the the equipment that you use there that you mentioned the ATOS scanner, what what is the technology that that uses and how have you been able to use it so effectively to get such clean, raw data scan sets?
Jeff Kolk:Well, in the in the scanning world, there's there's primary, primarily two avenues short of the higher end CT scanning, which sounds like we'll get into that later in our in our podcasts. Yeah, there's cameras and lasers and the lasers are typically the spread laser technology mounted on a multi link arm, common manufacturers are Faro and roamer arms. And then the camera based arena is primarily there's some hybrids and offshoots of this that don't exactly fall into this description, but primarily known as structured light scanning. A number of years ago, common terminology for that was white light scanning. And then that terminology has changed to blue light structured light is really the more industry generic, correct term. Blue light is a little bit slang. And so it uses where the light is a light source, it's a projector ball, you go to these high tech demonstrations, and we like to reduce it to real simple terminology and then the don't fluff it all up. But then fair enough, but it's a projector ball, and it shoots through a screen. And this is where things start getting tight tech and I think early versions of might even have been a mylar screen where projects a pattern of light down on the part and today's systems, the projector shoots through a computer system controlled LCD screen. So that then creates an image that looks like lines being laid down the way it was explained to me as a rows of little tiny triangles. And then that is red with a camera or two cameras. So there's a structured light scanning means there's a control pattern structured pattern that laid down on the part and then the cameras read what it sees. And in the case of our ATOS equipment, it uses a two camera system and, and triangulation against that in order to read all those patterns of light on the part, and then calculate tons of points. Not exactly correct. But the, the the systems had typically have 4, 6, 8, 16, 12 megapixel cameras and theoretically 12 million, let's say it's an eight megapixel camera at a million points. Well, with how it reads it's not exactly that, but it's in that range, it's in that order of magnitude. So if you take an image of if we were to take an image of a basketball, you take an image on one side of it, prep the parts such that the images can read and join from one to the next and start building images around the ball with with camera shots. And each time you take an image it makes a few million points. And that's what they'll do now of the short of the CT, which we'll talk to which is slightly different. The the lasers, the cameras, the trackers, the all the slightly differences, and they all do the same thing. They make points, make lots of points really fast. And then to my knowledge, they all do a second processing step in order to make the data useful, or the typical software packages that are out there. And that is to put a little tiny, tiny triangular face element between each three point patterns. So that's millions of little tiny triangular faces. So that gives you a mathematical surface function that then you can do a lot with with various different software analysis programs.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, we refer to the raw data all those points you're talking about as the point cloud, yes, different cloud of points that cumulatively creates the surface of the part but like you said, at that point, it's just a lot of points. There's no actual surface and that that gets into what you mentioned about these little triangles that are generated between all the points and we often refer to that as as the the mesh, right that gets created around that the point cloud So you mentioned CT scanning. What what's the difference between CT scanning and the structured light scanning? And why might one do one over the other?
Jeff Kolk:Great question. And we're really looking forward to get started on this is something that's been on our radar screen for a long time. And we finally had a machine all lined up to go. And COVID put a delay on it. So we were we're supposed to be up and running with it right now. But the whole COVID thing, the real simple story is it gave gave it a delay. CT has been out there a little while so so what it is, is instead of shining light on your part, and reading it with cameras, CT scanner takes an X-ray emitter and shoots X-rays through your part. And then how that X-ray that it's expecting to see in a detector screen behind the part, how that X-ray comes through. Some apparently the very advanced software knows how to take what's coming out of that screen and calculate what your part is. So and here's the basic difference. That's a great question. And these machines are incredibly complex, incredibly advanced. But to understand what's happening, it's fairly straightforward. So in a structured light scan, we're going to make tons of points. In a CT scan, instead of making points, you're going to make little tiny digital cubes and the CT world has adapted and pretty well honed in on the term voxel which ever heard that it's new to me, it's really new to me, I've just learned ahead of time before the equipment comes, what's going to be here, but it had, I assume that came from combination of a volume pixel makes little tiny cubes, a couple microns, 10 microns, 30 microns, depending on the resolution that you specify, and how you set up your set up your scan. So you basically create a solid now there's a lot of analysis actually is very interesting. A lot of analysis coming off a CT will get converted back into an STL file, which is that triangulated or the little triangular face element version of that point cloud the final file that we send out from scanning, you can see a lot of times take these volume files or convert back to an STL. But there is a lot of volume, volume-based analysis you can do with that also. So I shouldn't speak too extensively on this because it's quite new to me. And but in concept that's, that's a great starting point for the discussion. So the base starting point is instead of making tons of points, we make tons of cubes.
Aaron Moncur:And if I understand correctly, you can actually visualize interior features and components. For example, if you were to scan an entire assembly, maybe you have a medical device or some electronics package, you could you can see you can visualize the components inside, even though you can't see them to the naked eye, they're they're blocked because of the external housing or shroud or whatever is covering this parts. With a CT scan, you can see the parts inside right?
Jeff Kolk:You can see the parts inside, yes. And either the parts inside or the structure inside. There is let there is some limitations to it. The fact that it's there doesn't mean you can get it get a bit of a decent piece of steel or cobalt base metal. The commonly available systems is expensive as advanced as they are. Can't get through them well.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Jeff Kolk:If we were to take a piece of very low density plastic with a high density metal, it's difficult, it's in concept, it's really straightforward. But in practice, what what has to happen is you've got to shoot through that part with an X ray beam. And if you've got a piece of steel in there, you got to shoot through it with an X ray beam strong enough. And you do that in your original part setup. To get through that piece of steel. Well that's wrong of an X ray going through the plastic it's, it's molded over it will just it'll look like air, it would look like nothing next to that steel. So there's some complexities to it and I'll be honest with you, I'm giving you the rough surface and I'm really anxious to dive in and learn all these intricacies and bring our customers a real clear picture of what can and can't be done with it. Best applications for it but yes, you can see inside. I know an application that I've heard come up is In the additive manufacturing world, you can make very complex structures where we think of a lot of lightweight honeycomb.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Jeff Kolk:But they use all over the racecar world, I know they use it in other areas to where you'll get an aluminum honeycomb. And we'll cap it with carbon fiber or aluminum or, and make a super lightweight panel with additive manufacturing, whether it's plastic, or metal, or whatever, you can make that all one piece, you can make that a ball with a honeycomb core or, or bicycle frame, knuckle or corner component, you can put a honeycomb core in the middle of it. And the only way you can ever find out what's in there is with CT scanning. And I think would be some other classic examples that are really easy to conceptualize how that would work.
Aaron Moncur:It sounds like the the density of the materials plays a big role in how well you're able to generate that data right there. Maybe there's some range of densities that will show up really well. And if the range is too large, then maybe not all the parts show up as well. But you have to have different densities to see the different parts inside.
Jeff Kolk:Yes.
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Jeff Kolk:So when we talk about the little voxels or little tiny cubes. Though, as I understand it, the system will also assign a density value to that. So if you do have two different materials and two different densities, you you can see all you can see them separately in there, because each cube has a density or her value to it that identifies it as a different different piece of material. So yeah, it's got I was a little hesitant to say too much, because I'm just going by what I've gleaned
Aaron Moncur:Sure
Jeff Kolk:Search the machines and what the different projects
Aaron Moncur:Do you know if the resolution of CT scanning is comparable to that of structured light scanning?
Jeff Kolk:It is, it's comparable and it has a little bit of an advantage. And again, I'm gonna give you my I can't wait to get my hands on it really tell we we did have a couple of parts come through and trial that showed that it really didn't match the machine specs, if anything, it was better than the machine specs of the particular machine. And the one item in structured light scanning that comes in and is always I don't know what he's problem but it's always something you have to consider is any most parts you have to put a little tiny light spray on the I think we've seen that, we got to put a light dusting right at some point rusting apart, and there's different ways to do it. There's the aerospace world, develop this titanium dioxide powder with its magnaflux product, it's a practicing process. And we spray it on with rubbing alcohol, we keep it quite thin. But that fire right now our thinnest variation of part prep adds five to seven microns. So this is just my own hands on feel to what I'm seeing from a limited CT projects that we've had trials done on it looks like it's the systems have about the same resolution, which is just a few microns in the smaller volumes, but you take spray out with a CT. So some seats
Aaron Moncur:Oh, no deviations of the nominal geometry at all.
Jeff Kolk:What's that?
Aaron Moncur:No deviation to the nominal geometry at all when you're using CT because you don't know what that powder
Jeff Kolk:Yeah, that's out of it. So okay, not sure yet if I'd if I'd call it right there. The claims are pretty strong, but I'm being a little hesitant because I want to I want to see I want to see our machine in here and I want to see a bunch of projects come and go so so our whole team here really gets a clear understanding. I know as an example, when we talk about our structured light scanning, if we go to our A2LA accreditation or scope of accreditation, that's telling you, for the most part is a little variability in there. How much uncertainty is in any measurement you take with that system? Well there's a lot of projects without blowing our time out. I'll talk for way too long on this I'm gonna give you just jumped to the end. There's a lot of projects that really fall below the Publish uncertainty of that process, according to our Accreditation Bureau, and I'm kind of anxious to learn that level of understanding of the CP projects. We had one modest sized part plastic part scanned. But with a actually, I think it was actually the machine we're buying. And they sent the file back, we process it, we took the raw data back into our gallman spec software package, compared it to our reference here at dynamic is always an ultra high precision micrometers if you can get a nice square detail to get your micrometers on, then we can compare the all these computed values that come out of these different software packages of either receipt or structured light scan. And we were, we were within a micron, one micron
Aaron Moncur:Wow, that's incredible
Jeff Kolk:Two values measured were and who knows, with a micrometers, you've got a little, especially on a piece of plastic, you can certainly compress? And
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Jeff Kolk:You could have that much error in math and methods of measurement. So our measurement technique. So anyway, I'm bouncing around on that it's it's an exciting thing for me and for our team at Dynamic. They have that machine coming in here and looping back, it's a very long winded answer to how what's the accuracy comparison? Our understanding is we would expect the CTE to be a good bit more accurate. And its primary is not the system, it's that part prep that you have to do with a structured light scanning. And, yes, we got a few bounce around the shows and what that the different manufacturers try to tell you, you don't need to spray, there are more and more parts you can do without spray even in we're starting to see some and yet, we're finding out that a lot of times even when you can get a decent scan off that part without the spray, you'll get a better scan with a spray. It's kind of a
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, we though the same thing.
Jeff Kolk:Have that process because the manufacturers don't want you to know that you have to do that because it's not desirable when you're at the triage.
Aaron Moncur:Yep, just one more step.
Jeff Kolk:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Well, Jeff, thanks so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it.
Jeff Kolk:Very good.
Aaron Moncur:Tune in next time for the next episode of Being An Engineer. I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at test fixturedesign.com Thanks for listening.