iPhone 3D Scanning vs Professional 3D Scanner

i do a lot of design work in the computer which is pretty straightforward when you're building something entirely from scratch but if you're building around an existing structure it's really helpful to have a 3d scanner it's also nice if you're shoving an engine into something new and different which is the thing normal people do all the time i'm assuming you can do it the hard way with a tape measure and lots of patience but things like engines and vehicles have so much detail you don't always need all of that detail but you don't want to forget to cad something and then design a frame tube right through it here's the problem 3d scanners currently fall into two categories the consumer versions which are just kind of toys and the professional versions which are amazing but are really expensive there are a few consumer choices around the 300 range and then there's a big gap up for the professional range there's also iphones and ipads which are a bit more expensive than 300 but they do come with a free calculator i own a couple of the cheap kind and i got a chance to borrow one of the professional ones so are the professional scanners really worth the price jump there are a lot of 3d scanners out there that promise amazing results for not very much money i talked about a couple of these solutions in a previous video the truth is that the results are not really that amazing i have the intel l515 which does a decent job at scanning large things like a car and the revo point pop scanner which does an okay job at scanning smaller things but they both have pretty serious limitations and there are things that neither of them will scan at all i have used professional scanners before that's why you see the white powder and targets on old pictures of my honda but it's been a few years so i wanted to see how much better things have gotten i got my hands on an einscan hx this scanner is north of ten thousand dollars so it's slightly more expensive than the other two [Music] i talked about both my scanners in a previous video both of them are good at scanning a few very specific things but there are a lot of things that neither of them will do at all like the door cards from my jag these are pretty challenging there's not much in the way of features they're black and they're basically flat scanners have a hard time with these things the iron scan had a bit of trouble but with targets and some white powder spray it got everything i needed with just a little bit of patience the revo point has trouble with shiny things and dark things the intel won't scan in sunlight but the iron scan will pick up most things albeit with a little bit of foot powder sprayed on what about a motorcycle engine this is right in the advertised range of all these scanners it has plenty of features and i got a nice coat of powder on it so it should be scannable with all of these scanners and my iphone the intel didn't do well at this though that has something to do with the size of my garage you have to be decently far away from the object you're scanning and you can't scan outside in the sunlight because the infrared will throw off the scanner i know it will do it because i use this scanner on the tesla motor and subframe that went into the jag it's not great at getting details like bolt holes but it will get data that is usable the revo point is good at getting details but it was really hard to get the entire engine usually it would get about a third of the way and then lose tracking and ruin the scan so you have to start over [Music] the newer iphone comes with a lidar sensor on the back for augmented reality stuff and another one on the front is a biometric security to scan your face the rear lidar works great for tracking but the resolution is horrendous it can't even pick up something like the oil filter with any accuracy it looks like a scoop of ice cream the thing is good at scanning an entire vehicle especially if you don't need small details i'm gonna do an aerodynamic analysis on my car and i'm definitely gonna get the 3d data with the rear lidar on my phone because it will be so much easier and the data will be good enough for a full vehicle cfd analysis the front lidar gets better resolution but the tracking is a lot harder this problem is further exacerbated by the fact you can't see the screen while you're scanning because you're facing the screen at the same time you're scanning there is a workaround for this and that is to use an external monitor i happen to have one for making these videos so i just used my iphone to hdmi adapter and then ran a cable to the small screen then i can read the warnings that the app is giving me about losing its position or being too close or too far away you could probably also airplay your iphone to a tv or laptop and not have to buy a separate screen it's really hard to scan around corners without losing your position this is true for every type of scanner this happens because you lose all your tracking points you can sort of trick this by using something like the edge of a desk to help ease the transition i used a few different apps for this i like hedges and scandi pro the data from the front sensor is good but you have to scan very slowly you also have to make sure to go over the important areas carefully the scans will pick up background surfaces without much confidence so you end up with lots of garbage data if you're not careful some of you are wondering about using the camera on your phone and not the lidar this is called photogram photogrammet frodo grammar tree the problem with this approach is that it's hard to scale these things correctly and if you're only off by two or three percent all your important geometry might be too far off for your use case it definitely is for mine [Music] tracking on this thing is way better this might be its biggest advantage it got the scans the first time and i didn't have to move impossibly slowly it's way less likely to lose its position and screw up the scan you can stop and then start again and it will pick up where it left off doing this is easy because it has the pause button right on the scanner i stopped partway through this scan and flipped the engine over to the other side and it picked up where it left off no problem the cheap ones have trouble just moving along one surface and then when they lose tracking they will often assume it's somewhere else and just start adding scan to the old scans so you get this overlapping mesh and it just ruins your whole scan this was a problem while scanning the whole jag i had to do it several times to get large sections and then i still had to stitch the scans together to get the whole car the software for this is not great the einscan software will also automatically line up existing scans and i found it to be way better at this than any of the cheap or free software the software is all around much better on the ion scan easier to use more intuitive the revo point software gets the job done but it's not easy and the english translations are sometimes so bad that i don't even know what it's trying to tell me i believe this is asking me if i want the mesh to be open or closed watertight einscan asks the same thing much more clearly there's also an audible alarm on the einscan software that lets you know if you've lost your tracking so you don't have to keep looking back and forth between your scanning and your computer [Music] it's also good at getting very small details while also being able to pick up the whole engine it was easier to use with targets these are little reflective dots that help the scanner know where it's at there's somewhat of a pain to put everywhere and the price adds up but i'd happily do it again for a good scan it is just better in every way than the other two scanners and it better be because it cost about 30 times as much if you're running an engineering office this is a no-brainer the other scanners are basically toys you're going to spend more on your engineer's salary while they're messing around with poor software and mediocre scans but if you're a garage tinkerer building the occasional electric swapped jag the quality just doesn't justify the price jump even for someone like me who designs most things in the computer the iron scan has amazing detail but i don't actually need that detail in fact the first thing i did after i got a scan of the engine was to simplify it and get rid of a ton of that detail if you load all that detail into a cad program it runs super slow so a lot of times you don't even want that data i need accurate measurements on about six parts of this engine the mounting points the sprocket location maybe the intake and exhaust geometry the easiest way to do this is to get a decent scan and then go back with a pair of calipers and manually cad all the detailed parts a professional scanner would make this easier but the price increase is just so significant that it doesn't make sense for someone working in their garage i wish there was a middle ground and i am kind of surprised that there's still such a big price difference between the consumer grade scanners and the professional ones if that gap was narrower i might actually spend over a thousand dollars on a good professional scanner but that's a far stretch from where they're at now going forward i will probably end up using my intel l515 for most of my scans i might use my iphone for whole car scans and perhaps the front-facing iphone lidar for smaller details but if i didn't have an iphone i'd probably just use the intel for everything and then just supplement the details with a pair of calipers and some patients when i started making these videos i was using a real camera but the phone cameras are so good now that i mostly just use my phone fingers crossed that the lidar technology on cameras improves to make them good enough to replace actual scanners i really think the price difference is mostly from economy of scale there's just not that many people who need detailed 3d scans which is why this video will get eight views and why i should be focusing my time on building giant t-shirt canons but google and apple are working hard on augmented reality and that might be the forcing function that makes the phone scanning great for now is the einscan hx 30 times better than a phone yeah is it worth the cost not if you don't need that kind of detail and if you're anything like me you probably don't what will i build next i don't know i do know actually it's right in there but if you want to find out hit that subscribe button and follow along be sure to like and share and all that other stuff and i'll see you next time [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: SuperfastMatt

Views: 809,356

Keywords: Einscan

Id: MTE7XbOJvgk

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2022