South African-born Jaco van Gass came to Britain at the age of 20 to pursue his ambition of joining the British Armed Forces.

After completing his training, he joined the Parachute Regiment and was deployed to Afghanistan. It was during his second tour of the country that he sustained life-changing injuries, losing his left arm below the elbow after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Following his injury, Jaco has undertaken a number of physical challenges and made his international para-cycling debut in 2013. After being reclassified as a C3, he won a silver medal in the road race in Emmen in 2019 before enjoying an outstanding 2020 Track World Championships. He won silver in the pursuit before going on to take three golds – in the kilo, scratch race and omnium – underlining his talent.

Scanning was carried out to support the engineering of a new prosthetic limb.

Using the Creaform Metrascan, scans were performed quickly to reduce the time Jaco needed to hold various positions. This helped reduce the amount of post-processing required to remove overlapping data caused by movement. Although some movement remained due to breathing, scans were taken of his arm, chest and leg (on one side) to achieve the correct position while riding.

Multiple scans were taken in the following positions:

- In position on the bike

- The bike-to-prosthesis connecting socket

- The prosthesis

- The sock

- His arm

Jaco’s positioning

3D scan

The bike socket

Creaform Metrascan scan

The prosthetic

Scan data

The merged scans

Creaform Metrascan scan

Once all scan data was gathered, post-processing was carried out to remove noise and overlapping points. For Jaco’s arm, the scan was split into separate files due to movement, and the individual sections were realigned. After cleaning up the scan data, the ‘master’ scan (Jaco in position) was aligned to an origin. The separate scans were then aligned to their correct locations on the master. Each file was exported in both its separate and merged state.

Using the Creaform Metrascan, all scans were aligned and merged, and additional data was captured from areas not reachable from the initial scan position. Scanning these separately and aligning them back to the original posture created a fuller picture of the overall setup.