Micro Bears

[nönöbär]

One thing I wanted to try out with the 3D printer is to "scan" something and then print it.

Which can be done with a normal digi cam or smartphone and some free software. This is then called "Photogrammetry".
And the result was much better then I had thought it would be.

So, my engineer agreed to test it with him. I took about 40-50 phtos of him from different angles with my DSLR camera. Important was not to move him but to move the camera around.

Those photos then were imported in a program called "Meshroom" which is free to use. There you start a process the imported images (which I did without modifying any settings) and after 30 minutes, it generated a textures 3D model wihch then could be used in any other 3D software.

As the scanned object containes also information of the engineers surrounding, I cleaned it with the "3D builder" program which is part of Windows 10.

The so prepared 3D object could then be sliced with Cura and printed on the printer, as it worked so good, I also scaned a few of my engineers friends.

On this picture, there are (left to right) Scratch Bär (the engineer), Noodles, Lümmelbär and NöNö Bär. The big ones are 2,5 cm (1 inch) in size, the small one just 1,5 cm:


The engineer meeds the Micro Bears


The micro engineer:


I printed them with the hightest settings i could find out so far, print time was about 1 hr of the bigger ones.

This method of making 3D scand has its limits, it works best with good textures and non-reflective objects. So my engineer was a good test object. I also tries an aircraft model, but this one was too shiny, the software could not create a 3D object form the pictures. But i was really surpised how good those little bears got after I painted them.

[NARSES2]

That's absolutely brilliant 

Way beyond my understanding, but impressive to say the least 

[kerick]

Can you do this with a $100 bill? Texture might be a little off....

[loupgarou]

Fantastic! Thanks for the experiments and all the info you give. I am sorely tempted, but I'd do an horrible mess. 
Fo the shiny plastic, would a coat of matt paint help?

[zenrat]

Now you have a smaller engineer I expect more small detail...


This is definitely much more advanced than I thought was possible with home equipment.  If you got your head photographed you could print tiny replicas of it so all your models could be crewed by clones of yourself...

<thinks about planned sky pirates builds>

...that's it, I need to get a 3d printer.   

[nönöbär]

@loupgarou: A matt paint might help, but of course you do not want ot paint any object with it if you still want to use the object. I have read that you could also use some chalk powder, but I have not tried this. anyway, I doubt that this method of "copying" objects will produce such a level of detail that you can use it for small, very detailed things. The vidoes I saw about it were l always took objects like figures, statures etc.

@zenrat: So far the Micro Engineer did not talk to me (yet), so i have to see And i was also surprised that this stuff could be made with a 300-400€ 3D printer. I tried a head so fas (co-worker who looks a bit like a viking with his long beared.....) but this one did not work. Maybe I too too few fotos or the light conditions were not good enough, but I will have to retry this.

[Old Wombat]

Laser scan images would be the best option but not necessarily the easiest to obtain.

[nönöbär]

@Old Wombat: Yes, laser scanning would be better, but keep in mind that the scanning I did was made just with a camera and some free softwae.

However, even if this i now made another test with a non-bear. I took about 50 pics of a 1/72 scale M113 tank - and this is the result after scanning, I have not printed it:

The first two pics do not look so bad at all, but you can clearyl see that the surface is quite bumpy. And you can see those parts of the model that were not covered good enough (like the lower front and back) by the photos.



The other side could not be reconstructed as there were not enough pictures.


The close-up shows how bumby the surface is.


This was a quite easy geometric object and the camo painting helped in scanning it. But I guess this technology works better for bears than for tanks....

[NARSES2]

I don't know about being bumpy, I'm just amazed by what this technology can do, or at least what you can do with it