Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re into 3D printing as much as we are, then you’re probably aware 3D scanners are pretty expensive. We’ve seen the affordably-priced Sense 3D scanner, which retails for around $400, but a smartphone app can make 3D scanning even cheaper as you’ll be able to produce 3D scans straight from your device. (more…)

This App Can Turn Your Smartphone Into A 3D Scanner original content from Ubergizmo.

If we’ve crossed paths in the past week, there’s a pretty good chance I’ve scanned you. This extends well beyond the human race, into the realms of animal, vegetable, plush toy and fruit bowl. Some subjects were too small to be scanned, some too fidgety and, in the case of my attempted 3D selfie, not nearly flexible enough. Such issues were mere roadblocks in my strange one-man journey to 3D-scan the world. I may have a problem. I admit it. For starters, I’m not completely sure what I plan on doing with all these scans, but while such questions are entirely logical, they’ve yet to curb my enthusiasm for the device. Sense is one of those propositions that seems too good to be true: a user-friendly, (relatively) portable 3D scanner capable of capturing objects up to 10 feet by 10 feet, and at a fraction of the price of the competition.

If the product is indeed what 3D Systems claims, it could fill a major hole in the consumer 3D-printing market. In recent years, 3D-printing companies have largely focused on the printers themselves, which have gotten cheaper and easier to use. At the same time, the race to dominate the category has often caused companies to ignore the question of how those without extensive CAD experience can create 3D files in the first place. MakerBot unveiled its solution back at SXSW: the $1,400 Digitizer, a rotating, desktop scanning bed capable of capturing objects up to eight inches by eight inches. 3D Systems’ Sense takes a wholly different approach: This is a $400 handheld scanner that can digitize an entire human being.%Gallery-slideshow123207%

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The folks at Boulder/San Francisco-based Occipital are very much software people — the company’s RedLaser app was a big hit in the early App Store days before the team sold it to eBay, as was 360 Panorama before iOS 6′s Panorama feature took some of the wind out of its sails.

Their roots may be in software, but now the team is trying something very, very new. Occipital just launched a Kickstarter campaign for its very first hardware project: the Structure, a portable 3D sensor that straps to the back of your iPad that should ship by next February.

Update: Wow, the Occipital team has blown past its $100K funding goal in just over three hours.

“It took us out of our comfort zone,” CEO Jeff Powers admitted. “We went from a team of basically three to about 13, which is still ridiculously tiny, and no one sleeps anymore.”

Those sleepless nights seem to have paid off. The Structure itself is an awfully handsome piece of kit. Small and clad in colored anodized aluminum, it doesn’t look anything like the clunky 3D sensors you may have already been exposed to. That’s a testament to the sort of fastidious tweaking that went into making the Structure what it is — there’s a full-sized PrimeSense Carmine sensor in there, but it was up to Occipital to cut out the physical cruft so the Structure could fit in a pocket. Power consumption also had to be cut dramatically since it runs off the iPad 4′s battery (though it’ll technically connect to any iDevice in your arsenal that has a Lightning dock connector).

The really astonishing bit is how quickly the Structure works in capturing all of this data. Powers took the Structure and a few of the bundled demo apps for a brief spin in our New York office, and in a matter of mere moment he was able to capture a virtual bust of his ever-present marketing director and firing it off to Shapeways for printing. Scanning the topology of a side room was similarly quick, as was the process of throwing a virtual cat into the mix that would chase after balls that bounced off of 3D interpretations of couches and under coffee tables.

That breadth of those demo apps speaks to the sort of ecosystem that Powers hopes will rise up around the Structure in the weeks and months to come. After all, as neat as it is, the market for a gadget that lets its users capture and export 3D models for printing is still pretty limited. Powers’ vision is much more expansive: the SDK that’s being released alongside the Structure sensor will allow developers to build consumer-facing apps that take advantage of all that 3D data.

“We’re not really just building a device, we’re building a platform,” Powers said. As far as he sees it, Occipital can’t possibly build every possible augmented reality game or measuring app on its own. Instead, the team is going to make the low level data accessible to developers, and make high level APIs available to developers who know nothing about computer vision in a bid to make the Structure as accessible as possible.

It’s not hard to imagine the sorts of applications that could come along with adoption of the Structure. Looking to buy a new couch? Scan your living room and see if that sucker fits next to your bookshelf. Real estate agents could benefit from easy-to-capture, manipulable models of office spaces and homes (though some startups already have a head start on that front). Thankfully, while the Structure is designed to fit on the back of your iPad, ambitious devs can use connect to PCs, Macs, and Android devices thanks to a so-called hacker cable that allows for a standard connection over USB.

At first glance, this whole thing seems like a drastic shift for a company that has only ever focused on crafting software, to say nothing of on the production perils and pitfalls that come with building hardware at scale. That’s not to say that Occipital’s 3D ambitions have come completely out of the blue though. Earlier this year the company closed its acquisition of French startup ManCTL, which was best known for a 3D scanning desktop app called Skanect that let users fire up cheapo 3D sensors like the Kinect or the Asus Xtion to capture 3D data and convert them into full-color models in a matter of minutes.

Structure, then, seems like the next logical step. It’s a convergence of two seemingly divergent realms of expertise, and it’s arguably happening at just the right time. Smartphones and tablets are growing more capable by the day, which leads people to expect more from their daily companions. And with 3D printers moving into the mainstream, there’s a growing sense of awareness around the value of converting objects and environments into 3D representations.

Even the Kickstarter campaign is a sign of the times. Powers concedes that Occipital doesn’t actually need to go the crowdfunded route — he says they’ve got enough left over from its previous funding round to cover these very early production runs — but it couldn’t hurt to help build buzz among developers and gauge demand for a pricey tablet add-on. If you’re interested in throwing your hat in the ring you can lay claim to an early adopter package for $329, but the package will cost you $349 if you wait too long.

Meet AIO Robotics‘ Zeus “3D copy device”: a 3D printer, 3D scanner and 3D object faxing machine that’s blasted past its $100,000 Kickstarter funding goal after about a day on the crowdfunding trail. This hybrid box is on a mission to consumerise 3D printing by converging multiple functions and taking away some of the rough, manual edges.

Building a hybrid box that incorporates both 3D printing and 3D scanning functions makes plenty of sense. The rise of 3D printers begets obvious demand for 3D scanners. Having an object digitiser on hand means you can clone and remix the real-world objects cluttering up your life, not just pull 3D designs off Thingiverse et al. for printing purposes.

Add to that, making a 3D copy box that’s super easy to use is also a worthy goal — and a required one to accelerate 3D printing towards a more mainstream audience than the hacker/maker community that’s largely been fuelling demand thus far. Which is exactly what AIO wants Zeus to do.

The 3D copier simplifies the print/scan process down to four basic functions: scan, print, copy, fax. Scanning means generating an accurate replica of a real-world object (the machines uses a swiping laser scanning process for increased accuracy) in a 3D digital file form that it can then print out, while the “copy” function means printing a simplified plastic copy of an object (so it’s quicker but less accurate). The fax function allows Zeus’ owner to send a copy of an object to another Zeus printer where it can then be printed out.

Zeus will have a seven-inch colour touchscreen interface where users can select which of its four functions they fancy, and navigate through any stored 3D objects they want to print — there’s a built-in micro SD card slot and also on-board Wi-Fi for faxing and grabbing files from the Internet.

Having a familiar touchscreen window for its owners to poke and prod, and a clean-looking UI, is clearly a key part of what gives Zeus a consumery, mainstream feel — as its creators note (albeit, it remains to be seen if the shipping product lives up to their easy-peasy UX claims):

Our 7 inch Touch-Screen Display and User Interface is bar-none the most beautifully designed touch experience on the planet for 3D printers. We strongly believe this feature will change 3D printing forever as it not only makes everything easier and faster, but really provides that shelf-ready quality product that everyone desires. The incredibly simple UI makes the ZEUS extremely intuitive and user-friendly to transform all the complex technology into a simple experience.

On the print side, the Zeus has a layer resolution of up to 100 microns, a  build/scan volume of 26cm x 18cm x 15cm, and uses machined aluminium parts to improve stability/print quality. Also on board: a 2.1 megapixel camera (used for scanning and to help the machine’s AI correct scanning flaws and produce a smoother print), and a 1.7GHz quad-core chip — powering the on-board AI.

Zeus is not the only hybrid 3D printer contending for your crafty custom. For instance, there’s the FABtotum 3D hybrid, currently seeking funding on Indiegogo, which also incorporates subtractive manufacturing abilities, such as milling and engraving into its print/scan mix. Plus there’s Mebotics‘ Microfactory “machine shop in a box.” However both of these devices are aimed at more specialist maker users/use-cases, rather than the more mainstream consumer Zeus is going after.

Meanwhile if you want to go the Makerbot route, you’ll have to shell out for a separate Digitizer scanner to go with your Replicator 2 printer. And with the Digitizer costing $1,400 and the Replicator circa $2,199 that’s not a cheap option. (Albeit, there are plenty of alternative 3D scanners to pair up with a Replicator.)

Zeus is offering its Kickstarter backers the chance to shave the cost of Zeus ownership down to size a little. At the time of writing, all the lowest price pledges — $1,999 — for its machine are bagged bar one but the next cheapest pledge offer of $2,499 is still a ways cheaper than the Makerbot combo. Backers are going to need to be patient, though. Zeus is not due to ship till July 2014, which is an awful lot of time in tech, so expect the 3D printing market to have changed considerably by then.

If Zeus is able to live up to its promise of converging and simplifying 3D print tech — in an easy to use, consumer-friendly, all-in-one package — it could well carve out a sizeable niche for itself in a rapidly expanding space. There’s no doubt that converged, simplified devices are the future of mainstream 3D printing. It just remains to be seen who will end up making the breakthrough consumer device.

MakerBot tipped off some of its loyal fans last week by way of newsletter, but now the Digitzer’s arrival is officially officially. The next piece of the Brooklyn company’s ever-expanding 3D printing ecosystem has been revealed piece by piece since debuting back at SXSW, and now it’s finally ready to make its way to maker hands. Well, in a few months, at least. Pre-orders for the spinning 3D scanner are open now — plunk down $1,400 (plus $150 for the MakerCare support program, if you’re so inclined), and one of these bad boys can be yours in mid-October. The device captures 3D images from objects up to eight-inches tall with help from two lasers and a camera, a system the company has, naturally, optimized for its own Replicator printers and Thingiverse 3D object catalog. There’s a press release below for those seeking more info.

Filed under: Peripherals

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Source: MakerBot