The carbon fibre monocoque in the Bugatti-Rimac Nevera weighs 200 kg. It's the structural core of the car, which means its dimensional precision determines how everything else assembles and performs. It's also dark, reflective, and large enough that conventional optical metrology tools struggle with it.
Bugatti-Rimac's solution was the SHINING 3D FreeScan Trak Pro2, a dynamic tracking 3D scanner that achieves 0.023 mm accuracy across the full structure without scan spray, without extensive marker placement, and without removing the part. A few mounting points on the suspension and chassis elements, and the scanner captures data across the entire surface. That data feeds directly into the company's in-house inspection software.
"3D scanning stands out for its precision, efficiency, and versatility, making it a superior choice for many applications," said Annamaria Hamata, Quality Analyst at Bugatti-Rimac. "That's why we opted for FreeScan Trak Pro2."
It's a result that illustrates a broader shift in industrial metrology, one that SHINING 3D's new white paper, Advancing Quality with High-Accuracy 3D Metrology, documents across the automotive and civil aviation sectors.
What CMMs can't do
Coordinate measuring machines remain the reference standard for point accuracy, but their limitations are well understood by anyone who's tried to use one on a body-in-white structure, a large aerospace panel, or a high-mix production line. They're slow. They require fixed, vibration-controlled environments. They measure discrete points, not surfaces. Their size constraints make them irrelevant for anything at vehicle or fuselage scale.
Calipers and gauges carry their own problems. At Liuzhou Yinrui Automotive, inspecting stamped sheet metal parts previously required custom gauges that took up to two months to design and build, yet still only returned limited data points. The FreeScan Trak Nova replaced that process entirely. The handheld scanner captures the full geometry of a stamped part in minutes, generating a chromatic deviation map that shows springback deformation across the entire surface, instantly comparable against CAD. Project timelines dropped by at least a third. Root-cause analysis on die compensation became immediate rather than iterative.
Aircraft dent detection in 10 minutes
In civil aviation MRO, the inspection challenge is different but the problem with traditional methods is the same. When an aircraft takes a bird strike or foreign object impact, engineers have historically used the grid method: hand-drawing measurement grids onto the fuselage, taking manual depth gauge and caliper readings. It's slow, it's operator-dependent, and it doesn't produce the traceable digital documentation that airworthiness certification increasingly demands.
The FreeScan UE Pro2 changes the workflow completely. At one MRO provider documented in the white paper, a damaged Boeing 737 engine inlet lip is now fully captured in 10 minutes, in situ, without removal, at 3,460,000 points per second and volumetric accuracy of 0.02 + 0.015 mm/m. The output is a standardised digital report with full geometric data of the damage, suitable for airworthiness certification and long-term airframe monitoring.
Download the white paper
The full paper covers the breadth of automotive and aviation applications in detail: BIW dimensional verification, EV battery housing validation, weld distortion analysis, turbine blade inspection, CFD validation and reverse engineering of legacy parts, alongside a practical section on integrating 3D scanning into existing QA and engineering workflows without replacing existing CAD, PLM, or inspection software infrastructure.
SHINING 3D's solutions are certified to ISO 17025, VDI/VDE 2634, ISO 10360, and TISAX AL3.
Complete the form below to download. SHINING 3D may follow up to discuss your specific inspection requirements.
