3D Print Your 3D Scanner

[QLRO] wanted a 3D scanner, but didn’t like any of the existing designs. Some were too complex. Some were simple but required you to do things by hand. That led to him designing his own that he calls AAScan. You can see the thing operating in the video below.

In general, you can move the camera around the object or you can move the object around while the camera stays fixed. This design chooses the latter. You’ll need a stepper motor with a driver board and an Arduino to make the turntable rotate. You also need a computer running Python and Meshroom. The phone also has to run Python and [QLRO] used QPython on an Android device.

The base of the turntable has a crazy background. Presumably, this helps Meshroom figure out when the orientation of the thing changes. We wondered if some sort of logarithmic-scaled grid might work even better.

The source code includes two Python files: one for the client and one for the server. You’ll have to change a few things if you are on Windows instead of Linux or if your Arduino doesn’t show up as the same port as his setup. The Python code is surprisingly simple. The PC just sends the string “chez” to the phone via the network and “go” to the Arduino via the serial port. The phone sees that string and takes a picture, while the Arduino turns the platform 1/180th of the way around. As you might expect, then, the whole thing repeats 180 times.

The phone holder is printed, but honestly, it looks like any kind of articulated phone tripod would work just as well. We might even be tempted to just take a stepper motor and cut the platform out of cardboard and call it a day. Still, you probably have a 3D printer if you want to make this, so why not use it?

If you want to go more complex, you might try this 3D printed scanner. Or, try OpenScan.