White light scanning is a 3 dimensional scanning process using a non contact optical device. It uses white light source to project fringes on the part being scanned. The non contact method is extremely useful when the object has multi surface with different geometric sizes. The main element used for scanning the objects is light. A sequence of black and white fringes is thrown straight down on to the surface to be measured. The light reflects back from the surface of the object. The three dimensional measurement is obtained by studying the deformation suffered by the light. The camera in the system captures the different images of the part and records the deformation that the rays of light suffer. With this a cloud having 3 dimensional points of the objects surface are calculated. For larger objects many measurements are taken and later merged together for final output. The whole process is completed within a time period of few seconds.

It can be used for CAD reconstruction and physical replication. Fast data acquisition is there so it is ideal for quality control and inspection. It is a method preferred by most industries for their 3D scanning techniques. It is considered simpler than the laser technique as there is no need for any other coordinating measurement machines. The main hindrance is that the result depends upon the skills of the operator as well as the complexity of the object to be measured. The process on the whole finally results in geometric accuracy as no part of a surface can go unnoticed and there is increase in output results.