3D scanner has intrigued me for a couple of years. The lure of being able to quickly and easily recreate something from a physical scan seems like the holy grail of self sufficiency and reducing your reliance on manufacturing or availability. 1.) With a couple of bike related projects that I want to tackle, 2.) the prices of the devices falling easily with the reach of consumers and 3.) the reasonable accuracy you get thanks to the underlying technology – it seems like it was the right time to get started.
Firstly – the device has been awesome, doing exactly what I anticipated and expected. Albeit a slightly cumbersome and slow learning process to understand the nuances of these devices. It is not the technology but rather the workflows involved to turn a “simple” scan, into a “simple” digital representation. There are a variety of steps in different tools and software, and the reality is that, as always, the devil is in the details.
Secondly, In the past with nearly all of my DIY/3D printing projects, I have either used photo representations and modeled my 3D/digital object using them as a reference, or pulled out a set of calipers and did the same. I anticipated that with a 3D scanner, all of this would change. I would simply be able to pull the scan into a tool like Fusion 360, and within a few minutes have a digital version I could dynamically adjust/edit. I couldn’t have been more wrong 🙂 The same technology which makes these devices really accurate and valuable is the technique they use for representing the physical objects which are point clouds. These point clouds in turn highlight and show even the minutest variables of the physical item. This includes paint height differences or even dirty marks. These differences then make the “mesh” (the output from the software) actually quite difficult to work with when you expecting a nice flat surface (as you can see from the height differences in the images/workflow below).
Lastly, like anything, this is a tool. A tool is only as good as the workflow, preparation, and knowledge that goes into knowing how to use it effectively.
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