Laser scanning, a widely used technology, has been highly developed and adopted in various industrial applications. The methodologies used for scanner data processing are mostly point based. In this thesis, a new approach is presented to analyze spatial data obtained from a 3-D laser scanner for shape error inspection. Different from traditional methodologies, the method proposed in this research is frequency based.

The method utilizes the Fourier transform to decompose a 2-D curve or 3-D shape into its spatial components by applying two 1-D FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) on 2-D curves or two 2-D FFT on 3-D shapes. The spatial components including frequency, amplitude, and phase are defined as shape characteristics to represent the shape under inspection. By relating spatial components with GD&T (Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing) standards using proper analysis techniques, such as frequency spectrum and cross correlation, shape errors can be detected and characterized.

One of the applications of this method is automated inspection. In this research, the spatial data method is applied to MIG (Metal Inert Gas) weld inspection. Experiments are carried out to analyze the 2-D curve of a projection weld data, and the 3-D scanning data directly. A MIG weld inspection system is also developed for production use.