The Makerbot Digitizer Is Nearly Magic

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When I was a kid I was amazed by advances in technology. I went to a friend’s house when I was in fifth grade and his father had a PC – an IBM PC, I believe – with a built-in hard drive. We loaded King’s Quest and Colossal Cavern in seconds and he even had a menu of apps that you could select by tapping a key. As a kid who grew up with tapes and later floppy disks, this was close to magic.

A few years later I got a dot-matrix printer and Print Shop. Up went the long, flowery banners (“Welcome home, Mom!”) and birthday cards. Fast-forward further and I was using a primitive desk top publishing app to make flyers for my “Acoustic Folk Poetry” band that I started with my buddy Rick. Then I mastered CDs, made DVDs of my wedding, and fired up a 3D printer that could churn out copies of my head. All of those were like making love outside Hogwarts – surprisingly close to magic. That changed over the past decade – I was probably most excited by the iPhone – but almost everything we see these days is an iteration of the old CPU/screen/input system paradigm. Nothing since has truly amazed me. Until now.

Now we have real magic. It’s here. It’s not always perfect nor is it quite consumer-ready but the $1,400 Makerbot Digitizer is one of the coolest things I’ve seen this decade.

The Digitizer is essentially a turntable, a webcam, and some lasers. It uses Makerbot’s conveyor app to control the motion of objects on the turntable and then scans the points generated by the laser during the rotation. It works best with light, matte objects like ceramics, clays, and non-glossy plastics but with a little glare-reducing baby powder you can scan just about everything as long as its taller than two inches and small enough to fit on the platform.

 

To scan you simply load up the Digitizer software – an excellent, intuitive system that should be a model for all 3D printer and scanner makers – and, once you calibrate the system using an included, laser-cut object, you press Digitize. Nine minutes later you have a scan. The system interpolates missing information which can be good or bad, depending on the lighting, and then asks if you want to take a photo of your object. You then slide away a filter over the camera to reveal the bare webcam, shoot your, photo, and then share or print your object.

The process is addicting. When you put one object on you want to put another and another. Sharing these objects is an amazing feeling – it’s essentially the equivalent of dot-matrix teleportation. It will be amazing, then, when we get to the laser printed version of object teleportation.
Are the scans perfect? No. Because of vagaries of materials, reflections, and ambient light a perfect scan is impossible. This scan, for example is far from a perfect replica of the original statute. The statue itself has tarnished to an even, matte finish but even with some effort I couldn’t get all of the detail. The Digitizer is like a mimeograph machine rather than a true scanner. It grabs only the important parts of an image and reproduces the rest the best it can. For example, the scanner couldn’t tell what to do with the lens on this OMO camera, below, and so essentially gave up, filling it in. I was able to scan the lens by turning the camera on its side.

Take a look at this statue scan. I printed it fairly small just as a test but it grabbed a certain amount of detail on the statue but elided quite a bit more. In the end I created an approximate, not an exact, copy of the statue. Or take this beer stein for example. The handle sort of disintegrated but I suspect I could have gotten a far better scan if I dusted it down in baby powder. Scanning requires work and trade-offs but, in the end, you get approximately what you’re looking for.

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Is the system perfect? Yes and no. When it works it works wonderfully. However, I’ve had some minor hang-ups in OS X that the Makerbot team as seen and is working on fixing. That said, I got a good scan 95% of the time and most of the errors were my own fault caused by excitement or ignorance of good scanning technique. You can see more of my scans on Thingiverse.

At $1,400 the system is also expensive. While I didn’t take apart the case it’s clear that the R&D and engineering that went into this – plus the fact that it was made entirely in Brooklyn – add a premium price to what is essentially a solid webcam and some Class 1 lasers. The hardcore among you will scoff at the price but when you want your scanner to work the first time, right out of the box, this product can’t be beat. There are better, far more expensive scanners out there but this hits the sweet spot at the intersections affordability, usability, and utility.

Can you do this all yourself? Absolutely. A Kinect, a webcam, some lasers, and even your iPhone can create passable 3D models. But nothing I’ve seen can consistently produce quality results in a package that is nearly foolproof and surprisingly robust. I could imagine an archeologist taking this device to digs, an artist setting this up in a studio, or an engineer using this to model aerodynamics. It’s tough enough to withstand rough treatment by kids and adults and the quality, while in no way perfect, is close enough for the vast majority of uses.

What the Digitizer gets right is that it hides away all of the vagaries of 3D scanning and just leaves the magic. The system itself looks like something Jeff Bridges would use in Tron and the lasers, the ticking turntable, and the black case make it clear that this object is from the near future. This product leaves almost every other home computing advance in the dust and I feel like a kid again, amazed at hard drives, printers, and the ability to create things out of thin air.

Hands On With The Brooklyn-Made Makerbot Digitizer

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The Makerbot Digitizer looked too good to be true. It was a solid, compact 3D scanner that could replicate a solid object without much fuss and had a level of detail unparalleled in the home scanning market. Now it’s clear that this is much more than a compelling idea.

I saw the Makerbot in action yesterday and spoke with Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis about his experience building the entire system – from PCBs to case – in America and how it felt to be a manufacturer in the heart of Brooklyn. “It feels great,” he said.

The whole system is surprisingly light and uses Class 1 lasers and a special camera to gather a point cloud based on the object you’re scanning. You tell the system how light or dark the object is and then click a button. A few minutes later you have a complete object that you can modify, edit, or augment digitally and then print using almost any printer. It also exports files into Makerbot compatible .thing files.

A turntable rotates the object slowly so every surface is scanned.

The Digitizer will ship in October and sell for $1,400. Pettis promised that they would have enough on hand to meet demand and that his factory was working overtime to get the devices ready.

Daily Roundup: MakerBot Digitizer eyes-on, BlackBerry’s bad news, iPhone 5s goes on sale, and more!

DNP The Daily RoundUp

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Adobe takes to new hardware like Project Mighty and Napoleon

adobe-mighty-penWho would have thought that Adobe would churn out hardware apart from software that they are so famous for? Adobe originally shared their vision for the Creative Cloud at MAX, where they claimed that this would open up the door for innovation and ultimately, help empower a new generation of creative folk. Of course, in order to make that vision come to pass, Adobe has decided to dip their toes into the world of creative hardware, and in this particular milestone, Adobe has introduced the idea of two devices – the cloud pen known as Project Mighty as well as the digital ruler that they call Project Napoleon. In order to bring both devices to pass as part of our reality, Adobe has teamed up with Adonit, who happens to be an awesome band of manufacturers that also believe in the power of creative devices that are paired with apps and services. The Adobe Mighty and Napoleon are tipped to ship sometime in the first half of next year.

In an early demonstration of Project Mighty, this unique creative pen happens to be pressure sensitive, which allow the artist in you to draw out natural and expressive lines. Not only that, the Project Mighty will be hooked up to the Creative Cloud, which enables one to tote one’s favorite personal digital assets wherever he or she goes, in addition to brushes and colors, not to mention the ability to copy and paste across devices, among others. No longer do you have to make the either-or decision of having the accuracy, expressiveness and immediacy of pen and paper while sacrificing the wonders of the Creative Cloud. Folks who are familiar with Wacom’s digitizer tablet should be able to resonate with Project Mighty right from the get go.

Needless to say, pricing and availability details remain unclear, but rest assured, Adobe will reveal additional information in due time.

Press Release
[ Adobe takes to new hardware like Project Mighty and Napoleon copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

iSketchnote digitizes your doodles to an iPad using a natural pen (video)

iSketchnote digitizes your doodles to an iPad using a natural pen

iSketchnote has hit Kickstarter with an interesting take on the sketch digitizing game. Rather than drawing straight onto the screen of your tablet with a stylus, Galaxy Note or Wacom style, its iPad cover digitizer lets you draw in ink with a “natural pen” onto any notebook or paper. A sensor matrix detects your scrawls and even color thanks to a magnet in the pen, and the drawings appear on your iPad screen with about 50ms of latency. Thanks to a built-in SD card slot, you’ll also be able to take the cover on the road without the iPad (4GB will hold about 100 pages). When it ships around May 2014, it’ll just work with an iPad, but the developers say you’ll eventually be able to digitize to a Mac or PC with a free software update. iSketchnote’s already zoomed past its $35,000 Kickstarter goal, having bagged around $50,000 with 29 days left. If you want to grab one along with three pens, its $119 for early birds at the source.

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Source: Kickstarter

This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: Ubuntu, Omate, Digitizer And A Gold iPhone?

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The Ubuntu Edge may have been the most successful crowdfunding campaign in history, but that doesn’t mean it made its goal. Meanwhile, yet another smartwatch joined the fray this week, coaxing John’s money out of his wallet by being just a tad “smarter” than the rest. Makerbot released a scanner this week called the Digitizer, which lets you scan objects to then print them, but we’re not sure we’re down with the high price tag. And last, but certainly not least, we all pretty much agree that a gold iPhone will make its way into the world come September 10.

We discuss all this and more on the latest episode of the TC Gadgets podcast, featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Darrell Etherington, Natasha Lomas and Romain Dillet.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
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Intro Music by Rick Barr.

MakerBot Digitizer pre-orders open, shipping mid-October for $1,400

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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.

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Source: MakerBot

MakerBot’s $1,400 Digitizer Now Available To Pre-Order, Will Ship By Mid-October

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The folks at MakerBot have been teasing their Digitizer desktop 3D scanner since this past March, but now they’re just about ready push it out the door. For $1,400, you too can scan all the little knick-knacks in your life and turn them into 3D schematics to print or share with others.

In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on the Digitizer, here’s how the thing works: you place an object on its central turntable and fire up the device, at which point a pair of lasers (for greater accuracy, naturally) will scan the object’s surface geometry and turn that cloud of data points into a 3D model. MakerBot says the whole process takes about 12 minutes, after which you’re able to push the file to a 3D printer of your choosing and have a grand ol’ time.

There are, of course, some limitations to be aware of. The turntable can only support objects that are 3kg (or about 6.5lbs) or lighter, and you should ideally use the thing a very well-lit room. And while the Digitizer promises to be fast and easy, at $1,400 it’s not exactly impulse buy material.

When we visited MakerBot’s new 50,000 square foot factory in Brooklyn, CEO Bre Pettis referred to the Digitizer as a “game changer” for the 3D printing movement and it’s not hard to see why. For the past two years now, MakerBot’s efforts have largely been about making the process of 3D printing as accessible as possible. With a little bit of tinkering (and some patience for the occasional screw-up), 3D printing novices can get a feel for turning the contents of pre-produced files into actual physical objects.

It’s the other half of that equation that’s so tricky — if you wanted things to print you either had to trawl Thingiverse in hopes that someone had already modeled the thing, or figure out a way to model it on your own. To put it mildly, that’s a fair bit of work. With the advent of scanners like the Digitizer though, the barrier to creating those 3D blueprints and disseminating them to the world is almost nil… as long as you can afford it.

Of course, MakerBot isn’t the only company making it easier to turn physical objects into printable data — hackers and startups have harnessed Microsoft’s venerable Kinect to do just that, there’s a sea of crowdfunded hardware projects that aim to put their own spin on the experience. Still, MakerBot is easily one of the best known proponents of the 3D printing movement, and a device like Digitizer may just be what the movement needs to make 3D printing a fixture of the mainstream.

Toshiba reveals WT310 business tablet: Windows 8 Pro, 11.6-inch display and digitizer pen

Toshiba reveals WT310 business tablet Windows 8 Pro, 116inch display, Intel Core CPU and SSD storage

Toshiba’s got an Ultrabook hybrid on the way for general consumption, and now it’s targeting the business-savvy Windows 8 user with its WT310 tablet (a product code borrowed from an old Windows 7 model). Running Windows 8 Pro, the 11.6-inch 1080p slate packs an unnamed Intel Core processor, SSD drive, and comes bundled with a DigitizerPen for quick note scrawling. Around the edges, you’re looking at an HDMI-out port, an SD card slot and USB 3.0 port, with standard WiFi (Intel WiDi supported), Bluetooth 4.0 and optional HSPA+ / LTE radios for connectivity. A dock that offers additional ports will also be available.

As the tablet “means business,” it comes with a bunch of pre-installed utilities for those that need a slate for more than browsing and media, including the Trusted Platform Module, as well as Intel’s Active Management Technology and Anti-Theft software. It measures 229 x 189 x 12.4mm (roughly 9 x 7.5 x 0.5 inch) and weighs in at 825g (29 ounces), with the only choice of color being “steel grey metallic.” We should find out some of the finer details, like specific CPU, RAM size and SSD capacity, closer to the UK release window of Q2 2013, which we assume will coincide with a US launch. We’re also in the dark about price, but given it’s aimed at business users, it probably won’t be cheap.

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Purported iPad Mini parts leak as WSJ reports production has started

Purported iPad Mini parts leak as WSJ reports production has

Hey look, another round of purported iPad Mini parts has surfaced, this time courtesy of Ukrainian iPhone. Conveniently enough, the Wall Street Journal also happens to be reporting that its sources have confirmed “mass production” of the still unannounced slate has begun by Apple’s “Asian suppliers.” This time we’re looking at an anodized black version of the familiar back plate, alongside a separate digitizer in white, hinting that we’ll see the final device in the same colorways as the iPhone 5 . As 9to5Mac points out, the casing houses a SIM card tray, similar antenna spacers to the current iPhone crop and a layout akin to the current iPod Touch. WSJ further notes that its sources state this tab’s LCD screen is indeed 7.85-inches, being sourced from both LG and AU Optronics. Naturally, pricing is almost definitely set to be cheaper than the full-size iPad — here’s to waiting for an invite to the supposed unveiling event set for this month.

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Purported iPad Mini parts leak as WSJ reports production has started originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 04:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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