3D Scanner Recommendations  

Re: 3D Scanner Recommendations

Hi kshitij.m

I have little experience.

have you seen this video from Tom Sanladerer

regards Joan

Re: 3D Scanner Recommendations

I've seen Tom's vid on this before. In general, I like his advice/reviews and often recommend his vids, however in this case, I think he coulda/should edited out (and saved us) the first ~8 minutes, and just said his first attempt failed, and he needed to calibrate the scanner and paint the object white before scanning. This seems to be common with the scanners I've seen/read about.

I've seen similar challenges with other 3d scanners, as well as significant post-scan processing needed to clean up the files generated into something usable.

In short, if you think 3d printing requires a lot of tinkering, IMO, 3D scanning takes it to a whole 'nother level. 😯

A lot depends on the object...color, sheen, complexity, geometric vs. organic (from what I've seen, these scanners have a lot tougher time scanning organic shapes, and likewise, organic shapes are more challenging to clean up) and more. If the object scanned needs painting, is it such that the paint can be removed if necessary?

In many cases, (particularly geometric models/parts) I think (at this point in time/technology) it will wind up more time-efficient to measure & redraw the object in a CAD program.

Of course, YMMV.

I just noted the other thread on this that's been bumped up. Please note Phil.s6's comment:
When it works, it's amazing, but I only got it to work about 1/3rd of the time.

Re: 3D Scanner Recommendations

Wish I could remember what it was called but it was a program that used your camera and took multiple photos and made a decent "scanned" model that you then cleaned up a bit. I remember they were using a baby groot I think for the model.

The idea was to leave the model stationary and take as many photos (digital) from as many angles and sides as possible then the program would stitch them together. I only point it out because 3D scanners are so limited in size and/ or portability.

Wish I was more help,

Neal

P.S. SEE PHOTOGRAMMETRY IN JOE PRUSA'S BLOG...that was thing I was thinking of https://www.prusaprinters.org/photogrammetry-3d-scanning-just-phone-camera/

Re: 3D Scanner Recommendations

Meshroom ?
Youtube vids are available, or just google.
Not tried it myself, but will one day 🙂

Texy

Re: 3D Scanner Recommendations

I rather like the Structur scanner - it's like the old Kinect scanner, but it's battery powered and snaps to your iPad/iPhone (and Android, I believe) so you can scan people, places, etc., in a highly portable way. The resolution isn't amazing, though - fine for scanning heads and full bodies, but not for engineering CAD.

I also have a laser turntable scanner from Matter and Form, and it's precise, but only for things that are small enough to fit onto the turntable. And there's the limitation that it really only scans what a laser line can see, with the object rotating in front of the laser, so it really only works for convex objects. For example, if you scan a person standing with their arms down, the laser will never see the area between the arm and the side of the torso.

For CAD applications, I almost always end up taking measurements and modeling the object, not using a scan. CAD modeling isn't too hard. And scanners that are precise enough to use for CAD cost $thousands, which is more than I'm going to spend for a hobby.

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

Posted by: @laird-p

I rather like the Structur scanner - it's like the old Kinect scanner, but it's battery powered and snaps to your iPad/iPhone (and Android, I believe) so you can scan people, places, etc., in a highly portable way. The resolution isn't amazing, though - fine for scanning heads and full bodies, but not for engineering CAD.

I also have a laser turntable scanner from Matter and Form, and it's precise, but only for things that are small enough to fit onto the turntable. And there's the limitation that it really only scans what a laser line can see, with the object rotating in front of the laser, so it really only works for convex objects. For example, if you scan a person standing with their arms down, the laser will never see the area between the arm and the side of the torso.

For CAD applications, I almost always end up taking measurements and modeling the object, not using a scan. CAD modeling isn't too hard. And scanners that are precise enough to use for CAD cost $thousands, which is more than I'm going to spend for a hobby.

I agree with every word you've written.
In my own experience (I've scanned with Asus Xtion and Kinect v2) it was almost impossible to obtain  good quality scans with low-budget 3D sensors. The only way to improve them I found is to use professional 3d software (Skanect, Artec Studio etc) but you will never get high quality models anyway.
It's all about the same thing - the more quality you want, the more money you need to invest in a good 3d scanner.

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

If you have an iPhone with camera for facial unlock/AR support, you can try to use that as a scanner as well. It's probably not what you are looking for, but if you have one such iPhone you can try it.

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

Myself I use Artec Space Spider. More than expencive but sutes good for my work. I scan things 5-30 cm and get the right persicion. 
I've tried biggers things - possible but not really comfortable. The field of view is quite small. For thing smaller than 5 cm - well, I've seen people that can do this but no, not my option. 
It seems they now have a guide to choose the right scanner (it is said for 3d printing, but for me it's just a general "how to choose a 3d scanner" guide). By the wat there was no such info on the site when I was buying a scanner. So It might be usefull 🙂

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

I can save you some headaches: pay attention to the sensor in your camera.

Most of your camera sensors out there have their Red, Green and Blue pixels on the sensor adjacent to each other. To get one pixel location, the sensor does bollocks anti-aliasing. Cameras also do a whole host of noise-correction and bullshit to deal with the fact that your R, G and B pixels are at different spatial locations on the sensor.

This is unfortunate for 3D scanning. It is ultimately the most important that you have exact pixel locations - not blurry anti-aliased garbage. Its what mangles up your correlations. And correlations between images is everything.

The solution is the Foveon sensor. Each pixel's RGB is in the same XY location on the sensor, but it relies on the different wavelengths penetrating deeper into the silicon. Even for the same resolution, it gives much much sharper images. This is what you want when using 3D scanning with photogammetry.

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

I've reverse-engineered dozens of car parts for my race car, just using a good set of Digital Calipers and etc measuring devices.

Are the parts you're replacing, so complicated and detailed, that you can't just measure and remodel them?

I've personally found 3D scanning to take longer than remodelling, and generally is less accurate, and more prone to an entire host of random frustrating problems.

Just imo.

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

Then for the do-it-yourself types, there is this:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1762299

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

I painted this thin on thingiverse and there is no free, bon very expensiv software when the object rotates. All the free or cheap 3d software need a standing object and a moving camera. It uses the background for 3d information.

So i printed half a spool and no use for this device. Also i did not found a possibility in android to take pictures with headset. So its useless.

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

3d scanner is very much new to me, as a non technical person, this subject is quite interesting to me, learned about 3d printer but scanner is a total new thing to me, going through the topic i gathered some information from, https://www.facebook.com/ ] which was quite helpful to understand the subject.

RE: 3D Scanner Recommendations

I have the new Structure II scanner and it sucks, like doesn’t work at all. $500 paperweight.  They keep saying that they are working on it, but it still doesn’t work.   Really looking forward to Apple killing off all these crappy scanners with built in scanners on their iPad Pros.

good 3D scanner ?

Have you find any good 3d scanner  under $£2k-£3k ? I need it for 3D scanning of jewellery / something with high resolution/. Everything i found by now is more like toy with bad resolution or price is really over budget.

The only 3d scanner that I have experience with is the Next Engine at our local 'makerspace', and when I say 'experience with' that means I took their 3d Scanning 101 class soon after they got it.

This model, IIRC, cost between $2 and $3 kilobucks US, pre-Covid, and has the turntable platform so that objects can be scanned automatically and continuously instead of with multiple manual images.

The good news is that it works, and works quite well with regular 3d objects without too much surface detail.  In the first demo, it did a good job on the bust of Nefertari (or however you choose to spell her) with only a few artifacts.

The bad news is that it's nowhere near the 'you press the button, we do the rest' technology.  Almost anything with irregular surfaces will require some tedious manual point-matching and editing to produce a printable 3d .stl file.

My big plan was to use it to get a model of the Lionel 6464 series boxcar that I could edit and use to make them.  After taking the course and watching the demos (which included one of the students placing her chin on the scan table while the instructor did a scan of her face) I realized that it would take far less clock time for me to simply draft a model using a sample and calipers than to book time on the scanner and post-process the model.

good 3d scanner

thank you for reply, i have looked on youtube and as you said its so far from ideal, lots of not scanned area .i have searched a lot but nothing good or high over budget, looks like cheapest one at this moment is thank3d but more than double of my budget which in review looks ok, there is one on kickstarter  Tupel3D for around £1200 promising easy scan and accuracy same as £20k but no any reviews.

Posted by: @jsw

The only 3d scanner that I have experience with is the Next Engine at our local 'makerspace', and when I say 'experience with' that means I took their 3d Scanning 101 class soon after they got it.

This model, IIRC, cost between $2 and $3 kilobucks US, pre-Covid, and has the turntable platform so that objects can be scanned automatically and continuously instead of with multiple manual images.

The good news is that it works, and works quite well with regular 3d objects without too much surface detail.  In the first demo, it did a good job on the bust of Nefertari (or however you choose to spell her) with only a few artifacts.

The bad news is that it's nowhere near the 'you press the button, we do the rest' technology.  Almost anything with irregular surfaces will require some tedious manual point-matching and editing to produce a printable 3d .stl file.

My big plan was to use it to get a model of the Lionel 6464 series boxcar that I could edit and use to make them.  After taking the course and watching the demos (which included one of the students placing her chin on the scan table while the instructor did a scan of her face) I realized that it would take far less clock time for me to simply draft a model using a sample and calipers than to book time on the scanner and post-process the model.

good 3d scanner

I have backed that one from kickstarter .Sounds really good ,here is link to kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jontupel/tupel3d-desktop-3d-scanner?ref=discovery&term=3d%20scanner

Found some review as well:

https://www.fabbaloo.com/news/the-tupel-3d-scanner-will-break-financial-barriers

I hope i will get one in October then will let you know if is does what they promising.

The one thing that project that Peter just linked to does not say anything about is the software, and any need to edit and correct the scanned models.  In my not so humble opinion, this is a glaring omission.

From my limited experience in 3d scanning, the 'real work' is not in the scanning, per se, but in the post-processing.