How Walworth de México Is Using 3D Scanning to Build a Digital Archive of a Century-Old Product Line
A large slab gate valve body, one operator, one scan with the SCANOLOGY NimbleTrack-C wireless 3D scanning system—about 30 minutes.
In brief
- Who: Walworth de México, part of a valve manufacturer founded in the 19th century, with a large catalog of cast valve bodies and components.
- Problem: Many components still have no usable CAD model; the existing record is the casting itself and its drawings. Rebuilding CAD by hand is slow, and large valve bodies cannot be carried to a measurement room.
- Solution: SCANOLOGY NimbleTrack-C wireless optical tracking 3D scanner with DefinSight, used on the production floor with two tracker positions.
- Result: A complete mesh of a large slab gate valve body in about 30 minutes, exported directly to STL for CAD reconstruction. A repeatable workflow for the rest of the catalog.
- For you if: You manufacture or maintain heavy cast or fabricated parts and need accurate CAD for parts that were designed before CAD existed.
When the most reliable drawing is the part itself, how do you turn it into CAD?
At Walworth de México, that was not a hypothetical. The company's valve portfolio has grown for well over a century, and for many of the heavier bodies the most reliable record of the geometry was the casting itself. Updating technical documentation meant measuring by hand and rebuilding the model from scratch—one part at a time.
Don't let a long history become an engineering problem
Walworth was founded by James Walworth in the 19th century and has been producing valves for fluid control ever since. Its Mexican operation manufactures industrial valves across a wide range of sizes, pressure classes, and part numbers.
That history is an asset in the market and a problem in engineering. A product family that spans decades accumulates parts whose definition lives in different places: older drawings, pattern shops, and the parts themselves. When the company wanted to update its technical information, support maintenance and refurbishment, and build a digital archive of its components, the first step was always the same: get an accurate 3D model of the physical part.
For a large gate valve body, that step was the expensive one.
- Hand measurement does not describe a casting. Calipers and tapes capture nominal dimensions. They do not capture the actual cast surfaces, drafts, and transitions that a CAD model has to reproduce.
- The part does not come to the instrument. A large slab gate valve body is a heavy casting that lives on the shop floor, under the crane.
- Too many parts to do slowly. The project covers components of different geometries, sizes, and part numbers. A method that took a day per part would never finish.
What Walworth needed
What Walworth needed was a way to capture complete, accurate geometry on the floor, part after part, by a small team. That put several requirements on the measurement tool:
| Requirement | Why it mattered |
|---|---|
| Complete surface capture, not a few points | The output is a CAD model and 2D drawings, so every surface of the casting has to be in the data |
| Works where the part is | Heavy valve bodies stay on the shop floor; the equipment goes to them |
| Scales from small components to large bodies | The same project covers parts of very different sizes |
| Fast setup per part | Hundreds of part numbers mean setup time is multiplied hundreds of times |
| Metrology-grade accuracy | The models will also be used for dimensional validation against nominal design |
| Standard output formats | Meshes go on to reverse engineering software for parametric CAD |
Walworth de México evaluated the options with 3D Metrology, SCANOLOGY's partner in Mexico, and chose the NimbleTrack-C wireless 3D scanning system.
Why Walworth chose SCANOLOGY
The difficulty with large castings is not how clearly the scanner sees the surface. It is how accurately the pieces fit together: a handheld scanner captures only a small patch of surface at a time, and the software has to know exactly where each patch was captured to assemble them into one complete model. The bigger the part, the harder that gets.
Handheld scanners that locate themselves solve this by covering the part in reference targets, which has to be done again for every part. Fixed structured-light systems solve it by moving the part or the sensor through a series of positions and stitching the results.
The SCANOLOGY NimbleTrack-C works differently. A compact optical tracker, the i-Tracker, watches the handheld i-Scanner and records its position continuously, so the scanner can move freely around the part. Because the tracker—not the part—provides the reference, the casting does not have to be covered in targets before scanning starts, and setup time per part drops to minutes.
Tracking also does not come at the cost of accuracy. The system measures to 0.025 mm, metrology-grade accuracy that holds across a large valve body, so the same data serves both reverse engineering and dimensional validation against nominal design. And the scanner captures fast: 120 frames per second with millions of measurements per second, dense enough to resolve cast surfaces, flange faces, and stud rings in a single pass.
Both units are wireless and battery-powered: the operator carries the scanner, sets the tracker on a tripod, and connects to a laptop running DefinSight. There are no cables across the floor and no fixture to build.
For Walworth's gate valve body the team used two tracker positions to see all sides of the casting.
At Walworth, the workflow from casting to CAD-ready mesh runs in three steps.
1. Prepare the part and set up the trackers.
The scanning area is cleared and the valve body surface is cleaned. Two i-Tracker positions are set up to cover the casting, including the flanged ends and the stud ring on the bonnet face.
2. Scan.
One operator scans the body by hand while the i-Tracker follows the i-Scanner. The scan of the complete slab gate valve body took about 30 minutes and produced a dense, uniform point cloud with no gaps.
3. Process in DefinSight and export.
DefinSight aligns the data from both tracker positions into a single model, removes noise, and generates a clean polygon mesh. The mesh is exported as STL and handed to reverse engineering software for parametric CAD reconstruction. From there, Walworth's engineering team produces 2D drawings, dimensions and tolerances, and deviation reports against nominal design.
What Walworth got
A complete model in about half an hour.
The valve body scan was finished in roughly 30 minutes on the shop floor, with no fixturing and no part movement. The mesh was unified in DefinSight and exported directly to STL.
Data that describes the casting as it is.
High-density surface data captured the real cast geometry, not a nominal approximation of it, giving the reverse engineering team an accurate starting point for CAD.
One workflow for the whole project.
The same equipment and the same steps cover small components and large bodies. Parts are organized by part number, size, geometry, and priority, then scanned in sequence.
Traceability for the digital archive.
Each part now has a measured digital record that can be compared with its nominal design, used for maintenance and refurbishment, and kept as the reference for future documentation updates.
One scan, several downstream uses.
Reverse engineering was the reason Walworth bought the system, but the same scan data will also serve dimensional validation and comparison against nominal design, technical documentation, and the maintenance and refurbishment of parts already in service. Because every component is captured the same way, the data is traceable, repeatable, and consistent across the whole project—the condition for using it in quality control rather than only in engineering.
For Walworth de México, that makes the project more than a digitization exercise. A measured digital record of each part strengthens the company's capabilities in digital asset management, manufacturing, maintenance, quality control, and engineering development, and gives it a base to build on for digital transformation and Industry 4.0 initiatives.
Is this the right fit for your parts?
This workflow applies when:
- Your parts were designed before CAD, or the CAD you have no longer matches what you cast or machine.
- Parts are heavy or numerous enough that bringing them to a fixed measuring station is not realistic.
- You need complete surfaces for reverse engineering, not only inspection points.
- You have a backlog of part numbers and need per-part setup time measured in minutes.
It is less of a fit when you need only a few critical dimensions on a part that is already well documented—a CMM or a measuring arm does that job well—or when you are scanning very small components where a dedicated small-part scanner is more efficient.
About SCANOLOGY NimbleTrack-C
NimbleTrack-C is a wireless optical tracking 3D measurement system: a handheld i-Scanner tracked by an i-Tracker, both battery-powered and connected over Wi-Fi. The specifications relevant to this application are below; figures are from the SCANOLOGY NimbleTrack data sheet.
| Specification | NimbleTrack-C Gen2 |
|---|---|
| Accuracy, scanner-only mode | Up to 0.020 mm |
| Accuracy, system (scanner + tracker) | Up to 0.025 mm |
| Volumetric accuracy | 0.060 mm at 3.5 m tracking distance |
| Tracking distance per i-Tracker | 3.5 m |
| Scanning area | Up to 500 mm × 600 mm |
| Measurement rate | Up to 6,630,000 measurements/s, 120 fps, 54 blue laser lines |
| Hole position accuracy | 0.050 mm |
| Wireless | Scanner and tracker both wireless (Wi-Fi 6); i-Scanner 1.4 kg including battery |
| Output | .stl, .obj, .ply, .igs and other standard formats via DefinSight |
Accuracy figures are evaluated under ISO 17025 accreditation based on JJF 1951 and VDI/VDE 2634 Part 3.
Talk to us about your parts
If you have castings, fabrications, or legacy components that need accurate CAD, tell us about the part. We will show you, on representative geometry, how NimbleTrack-C fits the way your team works.
Walworth de México was supported in this project by 3D Metrology (3dmetrology.mx), SCANOLOGY's partner in Mexico, which provided on-site application support and training.
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