3D Scanner

[Jason]

What applications might this have for our industry?

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/photon-3d-scanner

[Barbara O. Ellis]

Interesting . Not large enough to scan what I'd want to scan, however .

[Tim]

Interesting, . Not small enough enough to scan what I'd want to scan, however .

[Jason]

Barbara, you can't scan your husband.

Tim, I'm not going to go there. LOL

[Barbara O. Ellis]

Okay, now that that's out of the way .

What application would these have for jewelry or gemstones?

[Tim]

Heh...

I want to scan gem cuts à la the natural sapphire company (click on 3d interactive stone) and fear that the resolution on this particular scanner will not cut it...

[AlBalmer]

natural sapphire company

If I had cut that stone, I wouldn't be showing it to anyone

[Tim]

[Jason]

Heh...

I want to scan gem cuts à la the natural sapphire company (click on 3d interactive stone) and fear that the resolution on this particular scanner will not cut it...

That was my initial interest in it too. But as you say, it's not going to be adequate. Perhaps a future model?

[Barbara O. Ellis]

If I had cut that stone, I wouldn't be showing it to anyone

[G4Lab]

http://www.david-laserscanner.com/wiki/ ... f/dime.pdf

[G4Lab]

I have had my first interaction with 3D scanning and printing.

I have to say it was all fairly disappointing.

I had a macro sized part scanned on an expensive 3D scanner at the university.
The piece was painted flat black. It needed to be dusted with white powder to get a decent scan and it took lots of tries. Then the scan needed lots of editing.

Then we printed in on a Makerbot. Several tries. Worthless.
Finally after a bunch of editing the scan and the print file we got a facsimile of the original but it was pretty much useless.

In my opinion it would be much much easier to just draw something and compile G code for it and run it on a CNC machine. I am not saying this is the last word on the subject. The person helping me had several months of experience on the scanner and the Makerbot and has a degree in computer engineering. But the result was unusable. and not attractive to look at either.

I am sure there is something to make that this could be the first tool you reach for. But nothing that needs any sort of precision. And the software does strange and unpredictable things.

I could see where such a machine MIGHT be useful for casting waxes (presuming you could beat all those buggy things out) But waxes get CNCed too.

[michael_e]

We just received one of these at the shop a couple of weeks ago: http://b9creator.com/ and it has better resolution than any casting facility has the ability to reproduce. This is a Digital Light Projector style of printer which cost under $3000 and it's just incredible how good the details are. In another couple of weeks we are supposed to be receiving a new resin which will make this capable of getting 25 micron resolutions...not that it would do you any good since casting roughness and finishing requirements are bigger than that.

As for scanners, well I'd forget them for a little while. A person is actually better off taking a good clean set of pictures, importing them into Rhino and "tracing" them, getting the scale right through some judicious measuring. This works really well for gem stones, since you can get really accurate perimeter and depth layouts and then just "fake it" by building a new stone in GemCad and the transferring it back to Rhino as a mesh file. It's nearly as fast as a scanner and you have a decent cutting diagram in GemCad as well when you're done.

[G4Lab]

I saw some articles about that printer. It is really cool when somebody figures out a good way to do something. For those that haven't looked at it this printer makes layers and the X-Y resolution are based on a Digital Light Projector. The image it would project can be magnified or reduced as needed.

I think it of course costs more than the Makerbot which I think comes in kit form at about $900.

What you say about printing from purely digital sources makes a lot of sense to me.

Is there a lower price alternative or even freeware similar to Rhino. It is or was very expensive.

[michael_e]

Is there a lower price alternative or even freeware similar to Rhino. It is or was very expensive.

Are you at a University? if so you may qualify for an educational discount on Rhino. If not you could look at the software that maialetto is using in his Virtual Lapidarist thread here: http://www.gemologyonline.com/Forum/php ... lapidarist I think that he was using Bryce. Blender might work as well, though I have no experience with either. Rhino's something like $825 at Novedge, so it beats the heck out of AutoCad and those really spendy packages.