General Machining Question - Part Duplication in Different Material

I have a general question for you CNC machine guys.  Is it easier to duplicate a part from a actual part, or from drawings?

For example: if one wanted a existing part that is made with carbon fiber made from aluminum instead?  Like this on-road RC car chassis plate:

If you had a CAD drawing that would be awesome, but if you had a flat drawing and could deal with some minor tolerance issues that can be used, or if you have none, then the actual part needs to be reversed engineered. Not hard to do on 2 1/2D stuff, just time in measuring.

Oh, and what you wanted it made out of in the end means nothing. Same drawing is used for any material.

Thanks for the reply.

Once I saw a "measuring thingy" on a granite surface plate at a company and they told me it was to measure parts very accurately.  It resembled a micrometer feeler gauge on a arm similar to those used in quality control but this was connected to a computer.  I was wondering if something like that could be used to create the measurements from a existing part.

There are lots of measuring thingy's out there, laser scan, CMM, arm measuring thing, you can measure right in the spindle of a CNC with a probe, there are optical comparators, each has it's place. The arm thing would be cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAbFti298-c

I just use caliper and straight edge to obtain points where lines will be snapped to.

Tormach makes a really neat USB microscope CMM scanner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XyKCFZxLTM

I really should get one someday.

The Tormach program is really cool.  I wish it wasn't a Mach3 plugin so you could adapt it to other machines.  You should have this rigged up on your machine Tyson.  It's darn near free.

...Tiger

I know, there is a triangle island just waiting to be scanned 

Those were great videos!  The Faro arm is more like what I saw.  But if you have a Tormach I don't see why you haven't already "MacGyver'd" yourself a web cam.

It would be nice, but the cheapest you could go is to just get the software CD and make your own camera stuff...

http://www.tormach.com/store/index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodshow&ref=31453

Did I miss something?  Sounded like the guy in the video said you could use the free version for scanning since it doesn't use any lines of code (limited to 500) and the web camera he used cost $20.  I concluded that the whole thing could be done for $20 plus some electrical tape and a piece of bar stock.

There is software called "Mach 3" that actually drives the movement of the table on the CNC machine. This is what can be un-registered. The scanner software works as a plugin to Mach 3 to capture the images as the table moves. The scanner software can also be used un-registered, but the export to .DXF is disabled until you give them $$$

No .DXF = pretty picture on computer, but no actual part making.

Hmm.  Kind of deceiving video then.

I can see where it would seem that way, most Tormach video watchers are owners of the machine and followers of Mach 3 for the last 10+ years. And the videos are produced for that audience, they could have taken a better approach with the editing I suppose. But I think they are used to dealing with the same group of people. The main reason I (and a lot of us) bought a Tormach is their unparalleled customer service. It is like non other, most of us owners know Andy from calling with tech questions during the setup, and when there was ever an issue they had parts on the way ASAP. They flew a part to me on an airplane overnight free of charge even though I said it was not that important. I have also spoke many times with Greg Jackson the CEO. He was impressed with the product I make and arranged for a magazine to do a story on me. I did a phone interview with some guy in New York one morning. It was submitted but it never made it into print (one of the issues was they needed high definition photos and I did not own a camera better than a cell phone at the time).

This door latch was added as an upgrade to the Series One machine based on feedback I gave them after I had some issues with a door coming open during a heavy cut:

http://www.tormach.com/store/index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodshow&ref=31217

I was watching a video today and saw this reference to using a scanned image for creating a drawing. The links starts right at it, but basically it looks at the edges of the photo and turns it into data. They call this a raster to vector conversion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tzgjggwsUw&t=7m20s

That's pretty cool.  So all you would need is a 1:1 photo of the above chassis plate?

Not even 1:1, just scan and compare, and scale to suit.

Even better!