Hello!
The company I work for just purchased a 3D Laser Scanner, and we are looking into 3D Printers. Does anyone happen to have a 3D Printer that we could send a sample to and see what the results look like? It would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you
What are planning on printing? The raw scans are very difficult to print and require lots of work. The laser scanner is just a tool that aides you in getting a 3D model made, 3d printers require water tight 3d meshes for the most part to work. You also need to consider tolerances, orientation and minimum standards for the medium you are printing as they are all different. Not trying to sound negative, but, it isn't as easy as it sounds
No apologizes necessary. We are certainly looking for more information on the subject. We are not overly familiar with 3D printing. We have a variety of different scans that would could test, and we could even take just a small portion of the scan to test. Is the material for the printers expensive? Any information you have is very welcomed!
Thank you!
If you are trying to use laser scanning to enter 3D printing that is the hard way. Basically scanning gives you outliers to fix and holes in the data. You will end up having to offset meshes to make things print they way that you want. After you have the mesh you need to have the mesh faces oriented more or less in the same direction or it will get kicked out. If it is several meshes they will need to be blended together and ALL of the holes filled so that it has depth and is water tight. Offsetting a real world scan to give it a printable dimension can be very painful.
Quite a while ago, I wanted to see if it was possible to take lidar data, combine with GPS positioning data, off set the surface and print it on a phone case blank I have. I downloaded the public lidar of the area around a local race track. I had the crew that was working out at the site take a GPS edge sample of both track edges at 25 foot intervals and make both data sets on the same vertical and horizontal datums. They fit a little too well as it hid the track, so, I cut some non-existent ditches on both sides. This was very clean data as outliers were just not an issue, but, I still needed an opposing surface to be able to print. I calculated, memory says, a 42 foot offset would give me the 1 mm depth I was looking for. Off setting this mesh and adding the edges was not a small feat and the re-sizing the entire mess down and doing more trimming to the box I had designed on the case was even worse.
This was a simple example and it was painful.
These end up being big and clunky files. I use the scan data as more of a tool to create the parametric surfaces now and don't use the meshes much anymore. Think of it as a tool to give you the measurements, but, yes you can print from the scan.
Great to hear about your new 3D Laser Scanner! At the moment, there are many companies are available that provide high-quality 3D printing services. So you need to find a makerspace or 3D printing service provider that can print your sample. Also a number of online platforms also offer 3D printing services in different materials and finishes. Best of luck with your project!
What are you scanning? We would scan fragments and other objects and 3d print them. What type of scanner are you using and software. I used Meshy for the fragments and other objects and a radial arm scanner. I also used a Faro and their software and then off to meshy again to build the final surface of a building model the. Scaled and printed. That was a regular scanner much like we use in surveying terrestrial scanner.