Project Splinescan - 3D scanning

I just wanted to draw your attention to [splinescan.co.uk] - a DIY 3D scanner that I've been working on. The project is quite old, but there has been a long period of inactivity.

Over the last few months, I have resurrected the project as part of my PhD. project and I have produced a number of templates and diagrams to facilitate the creation of 3D scanners.




In the next month, I will be unveiling a new, graphical front-end for Splinescan. The new gui is codenamed Babylon, and is designed to interface with the computer controlled scanner on the www.splinescan.co.uk website, producing meshed models with a 2000th of a degree accuracy. The code is written in Python using Pygame and Scipy, and should run on windows and linux out of the box.

The current incarnation of the scanner is designed to analyse ancient artifacts, and with a little tweaking to the code and hardware it should be possible to create texture mapped models for general use. The Babylon code features intelligent hole filling and multiple lasers.


The project is opensource under the GPL, I hope that some of you might find this project interesting, and I would really appreciate feedback once the code is released.

In case you are wondering about me, My name is Andrew Lewis, and I'm a computer scientist, author, lecturer, researcher and freelance journalist. I have a strong interest in 3D scanning and computation, and I am currently conducting research in archaeometrics at the University of Wolverhampton.

You can find more information about the project at www.splinescan.co.uk, and about me at [mara-3d.org] - including some links to some of my articles in make magazine.

Thanks for listening!
Andrew

Andrew, I'd be very interested to see some of the recent, best quality scans that you've done with it. (You may want to archive/retire the old pre-1.0 scan of the bust of Columbia, it may discourage potential users who are skimming for 'screenshots'.)

Cheers,
-Sebastien

Very interesting project!

I've looked at the David 3D-scanner and some other DIY projects.
What is the point of the enclosure?

What would you estimate the building cost to be?





May i suggest merging this thread with this one? :

[dev.forums.reprap.org]

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www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
www.thevenusproject.com
www.storyofstuff.com

Thanks all,

I will be putting some new photos up on the site soon - I need to tinker for a while to get the beast working, and I've been bogged down with other projects for the last few weeks.

The cost of building is less than £100, and the enclosure makes it much easier to detect the laser line. You can detect the lines without an enclosure, but variations in environmental lighting affect the accuracy of the scan. Also, I happen to work in a south facing, glass walled office, at the direct sunlight can play havoc with the camera settings

You will be able to see more information in MAKE magazine soon. There is a fairly large article on the scanner coming up in (I think) issue 21.

Once the article is out, I will update the site to reflect the new changes.

Cheers,
Andrew

Hi there, Andrew.

I saw your article in Make and it was by far the most compelling idea for me in that issue. I've decided that I might build my own, but have a question regarding using infrared LED's instead of the laser line. I'm familiar enough with electronics to wire everything to adapt, but will I need to create shutters to limit the infrared to a line on the object I'm scanning?

Thank you, and keep up the good work!