Anders Häggman

MAS.863 Portfolio

WEEK 3 // 3D-Scanning

Having never used a 3D scanner, I had high hopes for these devices, but I soon found out that the quality of the scanner in the IDC at least, leaves a lot to be desired.

As I have a lot of shoes that have very flat bottoms and no arch support, which I am concerned might become an issue in the long run, I was planning on taking imprints of my feet in clay (or plaster), scanning the footprints, and creating individualised insoles for my shoes. I reasoned, that simply scanning my feet would not give the optimal shape as no pressure was put on them.

The plan was to then slice the 3D model into layers, and laser cut the layers out of leather or neoprene (or a combination of the two, assuming you can cut neoprene in a laser cutter without toxic fumes). I would then assemble, and glue the layers, and have customised insoles for my shoes. Before making the clay imprints, I wanted to familiarise myself with the scanner first, but soon found out that no clay imprints would be necessary, as the quality of the output from the machine was so bad that it made no sense.

I ended up scanning insoles from my running shoes, and will perhaps cut that into layers later on, and try making the insoles based on those layers.

  • Level of previous experience:              
  • Time taken:               
  • Tools used:
    3D Systems Sense 3D scanner
  • Got help from:
    -
  • Main learnings:
      3D scanners (at least the ones in the IDC) are not as good as I thought
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The 3D Systems Sense 3D scanner.
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Some of my shoes that would benefit from a customised arch support insole.
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Sometimes the scanner would lose tracking, and if it did, it was very hard to get the machine to 'find it's spot' again. I ended up just starting from scratch a couple of times.
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To be fair, the scanning is not completely terrible, but scanning any real detail was not possible. Also, even though I tried moving the scanner to the edges, for some reason it did not want to pick up the sides of the insoles.
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After the solidify command.
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For some weird reason, the program always insisted on placing the scanned items on a 45°-ish slope.
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Although you had very little control in the 3-dimensional space regarding your trim and cut commands, the action felt somewhat intuitive, and actually worked pretty well. I also tried the smoothing option, but that seemed to do more harm that good, so I went with what I had. The only problem I had, was defining which side of the line to cut. Often it would cut the 'wrong' side of the trimming line. My plan is to use AutoDesk Meshmixer to transform the .STL file into something I can edit, then use AutoDesk's 123 D to slice the model, then laser cut the different layers of 'topography' out of leather, for example, glue them together, and add one final leather layer on top of the topography to create the custom made insoles.
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After scanning the existing insoles, I also played around with scanning other objects. I tried scanning my feet and my shoes (the results were so terrible I did not even save the files). The only other object that turned out OK was my cap.
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And here is the .STL file of the hat I scanned.