FarFire70 said:
I want a 3D scanner so badly because I need to design/fab a support system for my new air intake. A scanner would be amazingly beneficial so I could go into CAD and then use Send-Cut-Send.

I bought a 3DMakerPro Moose scanner a few months ago, so I have some feedback for you. The reason I bought it was that I have in mind a skid plate made from AR400 or AR500 steel for my Dana 44 pumpkins, a la Currie's Dana 60 skid. It would mount to the "snout" and then wrap around the bottom, with mounting bosses welded to the cover. I wanted a 3D model of the cover for that.

The software for the Moose is very quirky and cumbersome, but I did get it to work. It's supposed to be capable of freehand scanning, but I couldn't get that to work, so I made a lazy susan to spin it on, and that worked. I had to do it on a workstation at the office because my laptop at home doesn't have a fancy enough graphics card. The biggest problem is the point cloud you get is huge, and the free version of Fusion doesn't allow you to simplify the mesh, so it's very dense and hard to work with. AutoDesk had a 50% off on Fusion subscription in early September, but I missed out on it. I'm hoping they do it again for Black Friday because I really need to simply the mesh. Oh, and I do need a new laptop. J.E.E.P.!

Anyway, here's a screenshot of the Dana 44 cover mesh in Fusion:

You can see how dense the point cloud is. In fact, if I zoomed out enough to see the entire thing, it's just a black blob. I know I can adjust the scanning resolution some, but I really just did that scan as a proof-of-concept back in July and haven't gotten back on that, yet.

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