Fast and precise reverse engineering of spare parts for mattress innerspring production

AGRO Tooling Systems GmbH specializes in the manufacture of spare parts for mattress innerspring machines. In addition to contract manufacturing, mechanical engineering with in-house design has now become an important pillar of their business. Their activities are divided into two main areas: manufacturing / machining and mechanical engineering.

Many of AGRO Tooling’s customers own machines for which the original manufacturer has stopped servicing spare parts or is charging prices that are not cost-effective. The parts required for these machines often have complex free-form surfaces that cannot be measured by hand. It was therefore important for the company to find a 3D scanning solution for reverse engineering tasks that would be both portable and simple to use. However, it still had to deliver precise results so that corrective loops with various iterations would be reduced to a minimum or avoided entirely. They decided on Creaform’s HandySCAN BLACK Elite and VXmodel Software.

“The HandySCAN 3D enables us to supply our customers with spare parts, which allows them to continue operating their existing machines,” explains Björn Greis, Managing Director of AGRO Tooling Systems GmbH.

The company already had a component recording division, which in the past measured mechanical components with conventional measuring equipment. They will continue to operate in this way for simple components, but as soon as a component has complex geometries, the employees now use the HandySCAN 3D. The component is cleaned and placed on a specially designed measuring station on a turntable with reference glued onto it. Once the component has been scanned, the employee proceeds with the reverse engineering, models the 3D contour in CAD and derives a drawing.

“Component recording has become significantly faster and the iteration loops when testing new components are almost non-existent. Whereas before, we sometimes had to make 5-6 adjustments with repeated test loops before a component was accepted by the customer, these days we need at most a minor rectification only,” comments Björn Greis. “We now offer component recording as an independent service. Creaform’s HandySCAN 3D speeds up design processes and reduces the need for rework.”