The business employs dozens of car racing experts that are driven by the need for speed and performance.

One of Apex Race Parts’ lines of business is designing chassis-optimized wheels for all types of vehicle brands, like Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Honda, Ford, Porsche and Tesla. David Liu, Engineering Project Manager at APEX Race Sports, explained the inherent challenges regarding development: “Our primary issue was the lack of documentation regarding OEM brake components. While aftermarket brake system manufacturers will generally provide technical information which allows for well-optimized designs, carmakers do not divulge information for their factory components, which means this data had to be gathered by tedious manual measurements.”

For years, companies in the auto industry have been leveraging 3D scanners for many different applications, including design, quality control, reverse engineering, tuning, and retrofitting.

“We were looking for a handheld solution that was highly accurate,” David said. “As we often are working with cars “in the field” at racetracks or garages, it was imperative that we find a solution that depended on a minimum amount of existing infrastructure. The physical size was also a concern, as we often scan components with limited mobility and clearance, such as in the wheel well of a car.”

That’s when the team started trialing several 3D scanners on the market to test-drive how they stacked up to the requirements with outsourced services.

APEX Race Parts settled on Creaform’s HandySCAN 3D from the SILVER Series after observing favorable results with the scans. The team greatly appreciated the scanner’s compact size and ease of use when 3D scanning in the field as well as how seamless the integrated 3D scanning software could work with APEX Race Parts’ existing software solutions.

“With the training provided by Creaform and its partners, we were able to implement the 3D measurement workflow as part of our standard data collection process very quickly,” David added.

According to David, making a spur-of-the-moment decision during the test fit of a sample wheel to scan a particular car was eye-opening for the team. Previously, it would have been necessary to block out significantly more time to measure components manually or to arrange 3D imaging with an outside supplier—both of which would have taken much longer with no guarantees of availability.

The ability to set up the 3D scanner and almost instantly gather data allowed the business’ experts to enjoy more flexibility in the number of cars selected for data collection.