Scanning in 3D

The hardest part about printing in 3D was having to scan something in 3D first! I tried a number of different objects and found that a few factors had a bigger role in determining the optimal scanned object. I played with the distance from the object to the camera, the laser power, the object itself and angle stepsize for rotation. There is an excellent guide here for use of the Minolta scanner. What's here are some additions to that.

VRML 2 File(right click and download .wrl file)

Editing File(right click and download .wrp file)

After trying many different objects, I found that color plays a large role in whether or not you can get a good scan. I finally settled on a happy face toy that was red and yellow. Since I was using something that was pretty light colored, I ended up putting the object very close to the scanner and then setting the laser power to be very low (the final value that i used was a setting of 9). This was helpful because there the laser did not bounce and scatter for the scan. In calibrating the z-axis, I used a much higher setting of 75.