3D Arm Digitizer

3D Digitizing Arm Project

For many years I dreamt of creating a 3D digitizing arm similar to the great Microscribe3D or FaroArm products. I've dabbled in various data gathering projects before e.g. building a 3D laser scanner, 2D computer vision for extracting data measurements and 2D motion capture for animation purposes but to this date the unique mechanism of these digitizers has always intruiged me.

As usual my inquisitive nature got the better of me and I was pretty sure I had the skills to build my own 3D arm based digitizer. I gathered as much technical detail and knowledge as I could find relating to how this device functioned and set about the project with eager interest. This article follows and details the project to completion with photos of the prototype arm, the serial connection utility and the Blitz3D virtual interface.

Approach

Without access to a real Microscribe I had to research it's characteristics by watching product videos, reading patents documents, manuals and product reviews. I gained invaluable knowledge into its mechanical inner workings, its precision digital encoders, and how it applied complex trigonometry in hardware to work out the location and orientation of its digitizing tip. These findings were crucial to help formulate a solid idea in my mind of how to simplify the whole project, keep costs to a minimum, yet still create a fun 3D arm digitizer that was reasonably accurate and robust.

Project Kit Requirements

Arduino Uno

Four potentiometers

Micro switch

Wooden doweling

Jump wires

Screws

Tie wraps

Blitz3D

VB6