Ben Heck Show - Sense Scanner
We’ve had the 3D Systems Cubify Sense scanner for a couple of weeks now, this has been an extremely busy time for the Personalize and TCT team what with Euromold and prep for CES so we’re yet to have chance to really use it properly.
We have however had a few quick goes and the one thing we’ve found so far is that it is, for the price, a fantastic device for scanning people. We’ve had two fantastically quick scan-to-print attempts that showcased the ease of use, speed and quality of the scanner.
We found the best technique for this was to mount the device on a tripod and have the subject rotate on an office chair slowly but surely, this has, for us, produced the best scans with the smallest amount of clean-up.
However scanning smaller objects has not been so easy, the scanner struggled to scan a Christmas ornament of a stag with antlers, but in fairness we had relatively little time with the consumer grade scanner. We are looking forward to getting our teeth stuck into it for the new year.
Fortunately an episode of the Ben Heck Show has been entirely dedicated to the scanning of smaller objects with the Cubify device. In the video the perennial hacker tries out new ways to scan, including using a tripod and rotating platform, taping the scanner to the laptop, hanging objects from the sky and creating a moving arm for the scanner.
The video is fantastically detailed and given us plenty of inspiration. Though the rotating platform (a microwave dish) didn’t work for Ben we’ll certainly be giving that a go as we found that the office chair spinning people worked perfectly.
Most of all though, despite the best results coming from the rotating arm – we’ve not got room for that in the Personalize 3D printing lab – the taping of the arm to the laptop seems interesting. We’ve found that it can be tricky with the wire and computer to keep objects centred and this seems to solve that issue.
Perhaps rather than using tape it may be beneficial to perhaps model and print a mount for the scanner, which can be removed from both the laptop and scanner. Nevertheless this is a brilliant video and anyone with a Sense scanner should watch.
