MakerGear Forum

Sent you a PM.

Well I purchased the Matter and Form scanner and its another learning curve. Nicely designed and the software is being updated on a regular basis. But, limitations as not too shiny, or reflective, or as I found to many open spaces in the object. Tried to do a toy metal tractor and it missed a Lot of scanning surfaces. I had the best luck on solid not shiny or reflective like a pottery object. It cleaned up pretty nice and imported into Fusion 360 and could have been printed as Simplify 3D did a good job of fixing the rest of the errors.

Is it ready for prime time? It depends on your expectations. If you just want to do a one time scan and export as a STL and print, nope. According to what I have found out, you need to do several scans and then combine using the supplied software. The Matter and Form software and support is great, and I think this machine is probably the best option for less than $1,000. But you need to be willing to spend a lot of time learning and tweaking the scans to get an acceptable file.

For shiny, reflective, or transparent surfaces, there is a spray that you can spray on and it will make the surfaces white. It will disappear within 24 hours. The alternative is athletes foot powder spray...much cheaper

That's a good idea. I was wishing for something similar when I was trying out photogrammetry for featureless objects. Maybe a white powder spray with coarse speckling. Foot powder + ground pepper?

One more post on the Matter and Form 3D Scanner. Its headed back to Amazon for a full refund. Perhaps I got a bad unit or maybe not, but in over a week of trying to get at least one useable scan and model I gave up. Lighting dim, bright, side, back and overhead and last to my Shop which has great lighting over and around the workbench. Nope, nuttin. Interesting the website and FAQ are great but the only Video they had.... was how to repack for a return. Not ready for prime time, at least the one I had.

Agisoft is free to try before you buy...

Here is the one I ordered and tried. http://store.murobo.com Atlas 3D scanner

Was not very happy with it, but learned a lot. Most important thing I learned is that if your hardware sucks, your software won't fix it and if your software sucks, your hardware won't make it better. The Atlas was not good on either count.

I used the digitizing probe from my Shopbot with very good results. There are limits to digitizing from a gantry(can't digitize overhangs), but it was a very precise scan.

I have also used Catch123d and it is very limited as well. It is OK for things you just need a texture map for, but not precise.

The Atlas and software based camera scans are only good enough for low quality graphics and need a lot of post-processing work. The probe scan is highly accurate, but has no mapping of surface texture. Trade-offs everywhere!

If I had to do it again, I would build a David scanner. You get the surface, you get the accuracy, you get the support, you get a community. It is expensive relative the low-end, but is budget priced compared to other commercial scanners of similar quality.

Take every scanner's marketing with a grain of salt. There is no magic scanning that spits out perfect results, it takes a fair bit of work and preparation to get a good result, expect learning curves and lots of practice. The results posted on a website may have taken hours of scan attempts and even more time post processing to get something presentable.

willnewton wrote:Here is the one I ordered and tried. http://store.murobo.com Atlas 3D scanner

If I had to do it again, I would build a David scanner. You get the surface, you get the accuracy, you get the support, you get a community. It is expensive relative the low-end, but is budget priced compared to other commercial scanners of similar quality.

Gonna buy a scaner for myself. I was thinking about David one, but I feel something more portable. I mean i usually have to scan stuff, i can't rotate, so i need a scanner to be movable while scanning. Could you reccomend me something?

This one seems to be getting good reviews.

http://www.einscan.com/einscan-pro

dklassen wrote:This one seems to be getting good reviews.

http://www.einscan.com/einscan-pro

I can't find the price