My keyboard is working fine. Thanks for caring. 3D printing has taken off in recent years, but if you plan to copy an object, you’d have to reproduce it in digital form in AutoCAD or other program, which may be difficult and time consuming.
An obvious solution is 3D scanning, and I initially thought that 3-in-1 3D printers that scan print, scan, and copy object would really bring such products into more household, so I wrote about somewhat affordable printers such as AIO Robotics Zeus or Blacksmith Genesis, that would sell for $2,200 and up. The company doing the latter appears to have closed business, and the Zeus is still for sale but some users reported various issues with 3D printing. So if you’d rather not put all your eggs into one basket, it may be smart to purchase a 3D printer and a 3D scanner separately.
The price range is impressive from $133 to $7,000 on a site like GearBest. The cheaper model may not be very accurate, scan in a single color, and according one review “interesting, … but not suitable for a person without technical knowledge”, and most people won’t want to spend $7,000 on a 3D scanner especially when buying from overseas. So instead I’ll have a look at the strangely named OOOOOO T-1 Desktop 3D Scanner that sell for “only” $1,141 shipped.
T-1 3D scanner specifications:
- Maximum scanning volume – 240x240x240 mm
- Scanning mode – full-automatic scanning
- Scanning accuracy – <= 0.1 mm
- Model Triangulation – Around 1000K (meaning one million triangles?)
- Scanning time – Less than 12 minutes (high speed scanning is possible under 2 minutes)
- Stepper motor – 1.8° step angle
- Camera – 24-bit, 1.3MP sensor in main specs, but description says “3 MP industrial camera”
- Light source – White light/LED cold light source
- Host Computer connection – USB
- Power Supply – 100-240V AC / 1.6A, 50-60 Hz to 12V/5A
- Dimensions – 270 x 130 x 72 mm (scanning unit)
- Weight – 3.3 kg
- Operating Temperature Range – 15 to 32°C
The scanner can generate STL, ASC or OBJ files. It ships with a turntable and a metal stand. If I understand correctly, no specific software is needed, the scanner will just generate a 3D file which you can then copy to your computer over USB, and open in your favorite “3D visualizer” program.
I could not find any reviews online yet, but the results look pretty good if we can trust the photos released by the manufacturer.
Beside the full featured scanners, I’ve also noticed some solutions leveraging your smartphone’s camera such as EORA 3D scanner with a smaller turnable, and a smartphone holder, and some are hand-held scanner which are quite cheaper than the desktop ones, but obviously it should be fairly more complex to get a good scan out of those. Feel free to share your experience if you’ve used any 3D scanners yourself.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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You can build the cyclops for like 50$ i think, but i wonder how good it is.
Jeroen: This blows the basic Cyclops/Ciclop out of the water.
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I am currently prototyping an application-specific A-Axis 3-D scanner, so my viewpoint is a little jaundiced.
For those who do not speak metric, 240mm is just under 9.45″ and .1 mm is just under 4 thou. <.004 inch 3-D points. Accuracy vs Resolution… no idea.
The T1-3D appears (at a quick glance) to be a calibrated single camera/ IR line laser/light source system (1.3 MP implies 1280×1024 resolution and limited autofocus based camera) with what is likely a 30-50 degree field of view. Very nicely packaged and well thought out for a C-Axis scanner. Having the camera above the rotary plane of the turntable allows a "see the top" viewpoint and eliminates the "balding onion top" error that a "look up or over at object" scheme causes. Laser and light source are fixed, allowing most non-image related calculations to be executed by simple trigonometric equations. Probably uses some form of feature extraction or target recognition on the platter to allow autonomous calculation of the distance from camera to turntable. At a complete and total guess, the carousel conceals either a -really fast- A5 or A7. It Could be done with an M4 with dog's-dinner level performance.
Just based on the images and the above article, if I needed a C-Axis "plug and play" scanner, I'd be looking at this one – especially based on the .1 mm resolution.
Nice, but at over 1000€ ist a bit pricey for a hobbyist