3d scanned parts?

I have some physical parts that I want brought into CAD, esk8 deck sized. I’ve got some quotes from local scanning services that were way too steep for my budget and probably way overkill for my needs. Has anyone here done this themselves (photogrammetry even?) or have suggestions for how to go about it?

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@Fosterqc

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A couple of guys have done PhotoGrammetry

Have you tried some of the places down near me? I know a few people have gotten them done.

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Ive only reached out to those in the Hollywood area so far, any you’d recommend?

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This is how I did it on one of my builds, it took a lot of work

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Not sure, but the shops around LAX have to have one. Wish I could remember the name of the guy who built the Mega VW beetle, he had one in his shop that was open for public use for awhile

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There was a thread where @SpeedDemon was giving tips on modeling decks, cut it into halves or quarters and try that.

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That is a god-tier level writeup, cleared up most of my questions regarding PG

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Oh yeah I see several in that area

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Haha I appreciate the compliment. Took me ages back when I did it but I’m glad someone got some use out of it

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My professional experience is that is still expensive and finally the quality of scanning is not so accurate that you will be able use it without any additional effort. In our job we are using CT machine and output is in .igs file with lot of small mistakes. So anyway in case of use for rapid prototyping process, CAD designer need to do new 3D data and shapes of scanned .igs is used like model for dimensions doublecheck. I can imagine that in very accurate parts needed 3D scan can help, just for normal eskate engineering I would say that build new 3D is faster and cheaper. And model accurate is depend on designer :slight_smile:

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Yes that’s a good point, I don’t think I could use scanned or PG data directly but it would be useful as a dimensional reference. Too bad scans are so expensive even for a very coarse model, but PG looks like a serviceable DIY solution.

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It’s much easier for smaller things than an entire reflective esk8 deck lol

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Ive done it a few times with my phone, followed this video. put your object on a post or bar stool or something so you can also take some pictures from the parts below. Make sure you take a ton of pictures from a ton of angles, I thought I took enough but I could have used more. Also a simple background like a white wall works pretty well.

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Have You tested how accurate it is? I mean Some comparable measuring on small scanned project , data vs.reality?

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No I have not, this was 2 years back unfortunately I dont have the items I scanned anymore. Anyway the models will include noise like you see in the video. I used the photogrammetry mesh as a reference in CAD, I did not really care about the exact dimensions or the noise.

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Ok. Thank You. If anybody will test it and do comparing measurement, please share it to us. It looks interesting.

Yo computers, have you considered biting the bullet and grabbing your own scanner? Revopoint pop is a new consumer scanner. Probs about $500 US which is leagues cheaper than the next one up. Heard pretty good things about it and it’s software. Not perfect but pretty damned good. Plus you could then offer the service of scanning for other folks, which you now know is a fairly lucrative venture. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I had a chance to practice 3d scanning so I sneaked in my 36’’ evo underneath a ‘‘romer arm 3D laser scanner’’. It’s a high precision scanner that gives high accuracy results, end file has to be put in geomagic to sort the point cloud and in the end you get pretty good result:


Ignore the gray surface, that was me trying to make case arround it. Also there where lot more pints, I just simplified the shape to increase performance.

My conclusions from entire experience (was building case for first time), quite time consuming (building plug from scratch would’ve been twice as fast) but worthwhile I could predict lot more things before 3d printing the mold and in my instance where I tried to squeeze in 12s4p p42a it saved me a 2nd mold, for such a complicated deck shape like evo it was worth the time scanned. For simpler flatter decks a rough measuring would’ve done it just as well. of a job. Sadly, didn’t had time to make photo scan of the deck to compare it to photo 3d scan method.

IMO wouldn’t do 3d scanning for motor mounts or any other 2d shapes, not worth the time or the effort, it’s way faster to just measure it out, print it on paper to confirm the dimensions and go on from there. You will have to do multimple prints to confirm it’s a snug fit for a 3d print anyway.

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Have you looked at any of your local libraries? My county library has a mini makerspace with a 3D scanner open to the public.

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