First 3D Scan

Setup Scanner

Open Scanner Software

Rotary Table

Set Distance and Height

Calibrate Rotary Table

Rotary Table Scan

Scan Alignment and Export

Design X: Mesh Buildup Wizard

Design X: Mesh Cleanup

Design X: Alignment

Setup Scanner

If it is not already set up, start by unpacking the scanner and tripod and plugging them into the dedicated 3D scanner computer.

First level of the box with the scanner, cables, key, markers and more.

Second level of the box with rotary table, cables, rotary table calibration piece, calibration sheets and more.

Set up the tripod.

The top of the tripod has a special latching mechanism that will automatically lock the scanner into place.

Carefully place the scanner on top of the tripod (be careful it is heavy!) and ensure it latches and the lever moves forward.

Plug in the three ends of the long cable, the USB B, the HDMI, and the power (silver).

Plug in the USB A and HDMI into the computer as well as the key (black) which is required to run the software.

Plug the silver end of the cord into the power block and plug that into an outlet.

Open Scanner Software

Turn on the computer dedicated to the 3D scanner. It should automatically log into the public account. If it doesn't have a staff member sign in for you.

Next open eviXscan 3D Suite.

On the top right, click Select scanner.

Our scanner is actually two scanners, an inner and outer scanner. The inner scanner can pick up much higher detail but it can only capture small objects (approx 5"x5" cube limitation). The outer scanner has less detail but can capture a larger objects. The software can combine information between the two scanners for instance if you wanted more detail on a certain part of a larger object.

Select which scanner you would prefer for this project and click USE SELECTED.

Remove the lens cap of the projector in the center.

If you selected the outer scanner, remove the lens caps of the outer two cameras as shown the picture.

If you selected the inner scanner, remove the lens caps of the inner cameras.

It is preferred to leave the caps on when a particular scanner is not in use.

Rotary Table

If your project is small enough to fit on the rotary table, it is recommended to use it. The table rotates the object around while taking scans of all the angles and it knows the center of rotation of the table so it can place all of your scans together relatively accurately.

Unpack the rotary table from the case and place it on the table in front of the scanner.

Plug in the USB cable and power cable. Plug the power block into an outlet. The USB will need an adapter to plug into the computer because there are not enough ports.

Place the object you'd like to scan on the rotary table.

Set Distance and Height

Next we will have to set the distance and height of the scanner with respect to the object being scanned.

Point the scanner at the object so that is is covered by the projector's light.

On the software, click Single Scan on the top menu. On the top right click the picture of the target labeled Distance. This should cause a cross to appear on the projector, two laser pointers to turn on, and a green line on the screen over the left camera's image.

You want to adjust the height of the tripod, the angle of the scanner, and its distance to the object so that the two laser pointers cross on the object and the vertical line of the cross lines up with the green line on the screen. You would also like the horizontal line of your cross to be around the center of the object.

You can change the cross to a target by changing the drop down to Distance (Viewfinder).

Set Exposure

We are going to set the exposure for a test scan. It helps to turn off some of the room lights while scanning. To remove the cross (or target) and laser beams, click the Brightness option on the top right.

We have two options to set the exposure, auto-exposure or manual. Manual gives you more control but requires more experience to do it correctly.

Auto-Exposure

Under the exposure settings on the right, ensure that Auto is selected. You can choose auto calculate the exposure settings for a single spot, multiple spots, or a rectangular area spot.

Once you've selected, click on a location on your object in the left camera view where you'd like the scanner to get good data from.

Manual Exposure

To adjust the exposure settings manually, ensure you are on the ADVANCED tab (bottom left) and select the Manual mode. Turn on both overexposed and underexposed pixels. To begin adjusting the manual exposure, follow a simple 3 step process, manipulating only a couple settings. Once you get more comfortable, you can experiment with more settings.

STEP 1. Set the projector brightness to 50%

STEP 2. Click through exposure options (16.67, 33.33, 50.00, 66.67) until red pixels (overexposed) begin to show up. Select the exposure setting before the red pixels show.

STEP 3. Increase the projector brightness until right before the red pixels start to show.

Ensure both of these settings are checked to reveal the overexposed (red) pixels and the underexposed (blue) pixels.

Ensure you are on the ADVANCED tab.

STEP 1. Reduce the projector brightness to 50%.

STEP 2. Step through exposure options (16.67, 33.33, 50.00, 66.67) until red pixels (overexposed) begin to show up. Select the exposure setting before the red pixels show.

For this part, I increased the exposure options until 66.67 where red pixels appeared. So I reduced the setting to 50.00 which was the max exposure where there were no overexposed red pixels.

STEP 3. Increase the projector brightness until right before the red pixels start to show.

For this part, I increased the projector brightness to 62% when a small amount of red pixels appeared.

Test Scan

To do our test scan, click the SCAN button.

It will take a moment and the projector will project a pattern onto the part which the scanner will use to generate a bunch of points on our part.

You should get something that looks like this →

You can see your scans on the left.

Calibrate Rotary Table

The location of the rotary table needs to be calibrated every time you move it with respect to the scanner. So if you bump the scanner you will have to do it again. Fortunately it's a pretty quick process.

Start by selecting Scan with rotary table.

Scroll down to on the menu on the right until you see the circle representing the rotary table.

Use the arrows to turn it 15 degrees and ensure that it is working properly.

Next we are going to calibrate it by clicking START POSITIONING.

Next place the rotary table calibration piece on the table.

Then click RESET & TAKE PHOTO →

Then use the arrows to move the table so it is in a different position for the next photo. Sometimes it resets the brightness after each photo and then cannot recognize the calibration piece in the next photo. If this happens move it back to 50 or whatever value the brightness was at.

Once you've taken all 3 photos, the table will be calibrated. Take care not to move it with respect to the scanner until you are done.

Rotary Table Scan

To begin your rotary table scan, select the number of scans you would like it to take or the preferred angle between scans then click START SERIES. It may take some time to complete.

I chose to do 12 scans for this part to get more detail.

Ensure the exposure is set correctly before starting.

After this first set of scans, you should have something like this:

Scroll around and check if everything looks pretty consistent. (I hid the first scan from view)

Feel free to rotate it around to see what wasn't captured

We can see we're still missing some pieces so we can try orienting the object in a different

After this first set of scans, you should have something like this:

Scroll around and check if everything looks pretty consistent. (I hid the first scan from view)

Feel free to rotate it around to see what wasn't captured.

We can see we're still missing some pieces so we can try orienting the object differently on the table.

Repeat the above steps with a new scan. I won't take as many scans as the first rotary table, I'm just trying to fill in the missing information.

Here we can see I did another scan with the part on its feet instead of its head.

Scan Alignment and Export

Once you feel like you have sufficient scans to cover most of the missing information we can do an approximate alignment. Do not worry about getting every inch covered, the next software is very good at filling the holes. You also do not need to use every scan you took, it can result in far too large of files.

Under the Post-processing tab, click Best fit.

Then select all of the table and individual scans that you want to align under moving. Then select the blue BEST FIT button.

If the alignment looks pretty good, then click APPLY.

Once you are satisfied with your scans and have aligned them, select the desired ones, right click and select Export.

Change the file type to STL and choose an appropriate folder to save them to.

Design X: Mesh Buildup Wizard

Open the Design X software and click Import. Select all the STLs exported from the scanner and click Import Only.

Your files should come in with different colors for each STL.

Under the POLYGONS tab, select Mesh Buildup Wizard.

Data Preparation:

Ensure all of the scans are selected.

Since we did aligning in the Evixscan software, make sure Is Pre-Aligned is checked. Our scanner, for both the inner and outer options is the small/medium size object scanner so that shouldn't change unless you use a different scanner. Then click the forward arrow (not the check mark) to move to the next step.

Data Editing:

Select Find Noisy Cluster, then Delete the clusters. This removes extraneous data because a lot of our scans cover the same area and we don't need the file size to be too large. Then click the arrow to move on the next stage.

Best-fit aligning:

The prior alignment of the scans was ok but not perfect. This step will improve it. Since it was aligned in the Evixscan software, select all scans under the moving category. This can be done by ensuring Moving is highlighted and selecting Ctrl + A. Increase sampling ratio if the part is very small (~95%). Apply Only Small Transform is only important if the part is very nonunique like a cube, so it doesn't try to match all corners together but we can leave it checked. Then hit the check mark next to Best-Fit Aligning.

The part should look very speckled after the best fit aligning. This indicates that all of the scans are right on top of each other.

Data merging:

Leave at default, we will come back and make a watertight mesh later. (Note: it must be watertight to be printed). Click the apply check mark next to data merging. If everything looks good, click the check mark next to Mesh Buildup Wizard to finish.

The part may have some holes it is but that is ok, we can fix that in the next steps.

Design X: Mesh Cleanup

Next select the Healing Wizard option under the POLYGONS tab. Leave the options at default and click Yes if it says it "Failed to heal some singularities. Try again?".

Next click Fill Holes under POLYGONS. You should be able select the hole boundaries. Click the check when you've selected all the ones you want to fill and it should disappear.

It can even fill pretty large holes relatively successfully.

Next select Smart Brush under POLYGONS.

Clicking ALT and dragging will allow you to change the brush size.

You can use the brush for several operations like smooth or decimate. I used it to smooth the some weird areas with sharp points.

To clean larger odd bumps, you can select on different triangles and delete them to create holes. Then you can fill the holes using the Fill Holes tool to smooth some of those out.

Under the POLYGONS tab select Global Remesh.

Check make clean and manifold solid mesh. This will make sure your STL is watertight and able to be 3D printed.

To additionally clean up the model, you may want to try options like Enhance Shape or Decimate (which reduces the number of triangles) or Subdivide (which increases the number of triangles). Our last task in the POLYGONS tab will be to Optimize Mesh. This can be left at default settings.

Our final figure should look something like this:

Design X: Alignment

Our figure is not aligned well to the origin so we would like to orient it so that it does not import at a weird angle when we want to 3D print this. For this we go to Interactive Alignment in the ALIGNMENT tab, ensure our model is selected, and click the next arrow.

If we had more flat faces we could possibly align our origin with that but we do not. If we wanted, we could create regions in the REGION tab but that may be too much effort for this file. Instead we will just rotate the model around and align in by eye. The views tab (indicated in the image with the red arrow) will help you view the model from different planes to ensure that it is aligned how you would like. Once it is to your preference, click the check mark.

Select your model under Moving Entities, then click the next arrow.

Move the part around by eye. You can use the different views button indicated by the red arrow to get a normal view of the planes.

To export our model, go to Menu>File>Export. Select your model and click the check mark. Name the file and Save it as your preferred file type.

Congratulations! You've 3D scanned a part!

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